Fracking or waves - Forty love

Fracking

The Scottish Government has announced a moratorium on fracking to further consider the issues.  Consent for fracking will be devolved to the Scottish Parliament after the general election but in the meantime the Government can refuse planning consent. The government plans to seek advice and consider the issues and will:

• Undertake a full public consultation on unconventional oil and gas extraction
• Commission a full public health impact assessment
• Conduct further wve ork into strengthen planning guidance
• Look at further tightening of environmental regulation.

The announcement was welcomed by environmental groups but INEOS, the owners of the Grangemouth oil refinery stated they would engage with the reviews.  One independent review, carried out by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, stated that fracking was no worse than mining - provided that strong regulations were in place. While the public consultation is likely to produce more heat than light.

Forty-love

The most interesting aspect of First Minister questions was a twitter exchange between the three leaders about watching Andy Murray's semi-final rather than preparing questions and during the questions Murray received applause as the Conservative leader, Davidson, announced he had won. She then went onto to lament the decline in STEM subjects in colleges though Sturgeon stated that there was an increase in the number of students obtaining recognised qualifications.

Wave energy

In general questions it was announced that a wave energy Scotland, WES factsheet was available but that the funding model has still to be decided by HIE.  There was also concern expressed about the Oyster project and in particular the issue of funding from the Carbon Trust,  the Minister promised to look into it and help if possible.

Science Education 

Late last year the learned society's report on Science Education was launched at the Science in Parliament event but only recently received publicity due to member's motion debate. Last week the issue was debated with the Education committee. However, the First Minister, denied that Science education was under-funded quoting OECD figures on education spending and pointing out the low sample group in the learned society's report.

Creative industries review

Creative Scotland and Scottish Enterprise gave evidence on their roles in supporting the creative industries and apologised for their handling of the sector. Creative Scotland said that its structure was initially not set-up in  a way to deal with the film and TV industries due to an emphasis on art.  However, they did point out that Outlander was a success and later in the week it was revealed this had brought in £40 million to the Scottish economy and that the Games Industry had also scored some big successes.  In case you are wondering, Outlander is an American series filmed in Scotland but as yet not shown here and was covered in previous blogs.  This week it is the turn of Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, with a hand from John Swinney.  She may be helped by the announcement of an additional £3million funding for the screen sector.

Outlander an American series filmed in Scotland