Cuadrilla’s central fracking lair (AKA HQ) protest in the Midlands

1st August 2013

We’ve all heard about the rev­o­lu­tion kick­ing off in Bal­combe, but before today few would have known that the HQ of Britain’s pre­mier frack­ing cor­po­ra­tion Cuadrilla are locat­ed in the Mid­lands. Their offices in Lich­field were stormed today by a group act­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the bock­ade in West Sus­sex.

A man in a suit, call­ing him­self Mr Frack­tas­tic, was accom­pa­nied by anoth­er man in a high vis car­ry­ing a frack­ing rig, which appeared to be made of card­board. The unsight­ly duo were chased down the streets of a pic­turesque city, known by the locals as LichVe­gas, by an artic­u­late and well-dressed mob armed with well-researched facts and catchy chants.

Mr Frack­tas­tic shout­ed inco­her­ent­ly through a mega­phone: ‘It’s going to be frack­ing fan­tas­tic, we’ll pro­duce bil­lions of litres of chem­i­cal­ly enriched deli­cious water for you all to drink.’

The group respond­ed by chant­i­ng: ‘No Dash For Gas! Reclaim the Pow­er!’ and hand­ed out infor­ma­tive leaflets to bemused onlook­ers. The pro­test­ers explained how frack­ing has become the front­line of the Government’s Dash for Gas, their lans to build up to 40 new gas-fired pow­er sta­tions as our exist­ing pow­er sta­tions come to the end of their life. They’ll be pumped full of fracked gas fresh from our dev­as­tat­ed coun­try­side, leav­ing a trail of bro­ken com­mu­ni­ties behind. As we spin into cli­mate chaos from fur­ther fos­sil fuel fanati­cism, the price of gas is set to rock­et, push­ing even more peo­ple into fuel pover­ty.

The rag tag bunch final­ly arrived at Cuadrilla HQ only to find that the doors of the office were locked and de-logo’d, guard­ed by police and suround­ed by a (mod­est) media fren­zy.

‘Ha!’ Mr Frack­tas­tic exclaimed. ‘The police are doing their job; pro­tect­ing cor­po­rate prof­it and not the peo­ple.’ The copo­rate big wig pro­ceed­ed to launch into a tirade, declar­ing the pro­test­ers a ‘bunch of smelly hip­py ver­min who sim­ply do not under­stand the med­ical­ly proven ben­e­fits of water enhanced with frack­ing flu­id.’

With­in a minute the posh exec­u­tive was ove­come by the crowd, first cow­er­ing under the card­board drilling rig. Final­ly, he lay on his back, arms and legs raised in the air and whim­pered ‘I sub­mit’ in a dis­tinc­tive Eton­ian accent.

It was a small vic­to­ry for the forces of san­i­ty, in a bat­tle that is set to con­tin­ue in the com­ing weeks, with an ongo­ing block­ade at Bal­combe and the Reclaim the Pow­er camp

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