Great shakes
Shale gas commissioner Natascha Engel resigned in protest at what she called ‘absurd’ restrictions on fracking — in particular rules which state that fracking operations must cease. Has anyone ever been harmed by a tremor at magnitude 0.5?
— The Richter scale was devised by seismologist Charles F. Richter in 1935. It is a logarithmic scale, each ascending number marking an increase of approximately 31 times the amount of released energy.
— The largest recorded earthquake, in Chile in 1960, measured 9.5. A tremor less than 4.0 is unlikely to cause damage and one of 2.0 or below unlikely even to be felt.
— A tremor of 1.0 releases less than one 30th of the energy of the lightest tremor detectable by humans, and there are several million such tremors a year. There were six in Britain in April, none related to fracking.
Counting the pennies
Philip Hammond decided the government would not, after all, withdraw penny and 2p coins.
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