The UK Secretary of State for Business 'would be delighted to have fracking in his back garden'

[speak easy]

Here is Jacob Rees-Mogg’s remarks that he would be ‘delighted’ for his back garden to be fracked, as he risked deepening divisions within the Conservative party by deriding those who oppose the controversial practice as ‘socialists’.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/oct/03/truss-expected-to-abandon-plan-to-abolish-45-top-rate-of-income-tax-live

[Srkdqltr]

1. Can that be arranged?

[deminks]

2. Perhaps he has earthquake insurance

For the ensuing rattling of his fine dinnerware, or extra fire insurance for the spontaneous combustion of his water faucet. No worries.

O brave new world that has such people in it.

[Emrys]

3. Which back garden?

Does his £5 million five-storey London mansion near parliament have a garden?



Probably.

Or does he mean his country hovel, Gournay Court in Somerset?



Somewhat ironically, he wasn't happy about coal mining being allowed in the grounds of his mother-in-law's ancestral home, Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, after the Second World War:

The house is renowned as the inspiration for Jane Austen’s Pemberley, possibly erroneously given that there is no evidence that the author visited the estate. Its ill-repair dates from the post-war Labour government’s decision to allow coal mining in the gardens after the nationalisation of the coal industry in 1945. Mr Rees-Mogg described the move as “the most outrageous act of socialist envy”, although the Fitzwilliam family, the owners, had built their vast fortune from mining on their lands.

https://www.ft.com/content/d5efd3a0-b32f-11e6-a37c-f4a01f1b0fa1

Even more ironically, Wentworth Woodhouse has needed enormous sums of public money to counter the effects of subsidence as an aftermath of the mining.