Stars make a stand against fracking

I needed to know more so I took to Twitter where I discovered England is the only country in Europe still under threat from fracking! Every other country in Europe has banned it.

I chatted to a poor woman in Yorkshire who has been told fracking will happen directly under her house. What has always confused me is that those people who care about keeping the planet fit for our grandchildren’s children are called loony left and those that put profit before anything else are seen as good upstanding citizens.

So I was delighted to see a number of stars; Julia Roberts, Harrison Ford, Kevin Spacey, Edward Norton, Penélope Cruz, Robert Redford and Ian Somerhalder have all got together to give nature a voice under a series of short videos called ‘Nature is Speaking’. The films are all under two minutes and you can see them on YouTube. They’re well worth a watch as a good reminder the planet does not need humans and that if we keep poisoning it, it is us that will not survive.

The highlight of my weekend was going to the open air cinema put on by the Dukes. It was a clear reminder just how stoic we are up here. We paid £10 each to sit in the pouring rain to watch Nosferatu - and everyone had a great time! Nosferatu, if you don’t know it, is a very old black and white silent Dracula film, which has been lovingly restored. I was half expecting someone to be sitting there playing the piano but what we got was even better. The score, composed and performed by Lee Affen and Ric Smithson, was just perfect. Sitting under cover with their computers they did an amazing job of creating the atmosphere for it. Mind you the bats flying over head also helped with that!

I wrote last week about all the hacking going on. Earlier in the summer Ashley Maddison, the adultery website whose strap line is “Life is short. Have an affair”, got hacked which left their 37m users very nervous. Well this week Ashley Maddison failed to meet the hackers demands and so the names and contact details of all the registered users has been shared publicly online. I think it’s fair to say Ashley Maddison did not do all they could to keep that data safe.

Have a great week and stay safe online