I get a bit worried when I find myself agreeing with Cameron, Osborne and Davey (Ed Davey, that is, the Lib-Dem “Energy Secretary”).  It doesn’t happen very often.  But it they seem to be right on shale gas.

The Tory Party, like other parties, has been somewhat taken aback by the concerns, indeed outright opposition of Middle England, as represented by the good people of Balcombe in Sussex, to a rather small scale drilling project adjacent to their village.  Taken aback, too, by the way that the “usual suspects” of opposition to almost any infrastructure development, the Swampies of this world, have descended on Balcombe, and have been welcomed (albeit with some understandable trepidation) by local residents.  This is doubly bizarre, since the particular well in Balcombe is for conventional oil, not fracking, and is no different from a number of similar wells that are operating in the county without…