The Telegraph reckons that things are about to get heated on the shale gas front, with protestors threatening to sue anyone who tries to drill under their homes. Their hope is that the law of trespass will prove equal to the task, and it seems that David Cameron is sufficiently worried that he is considering a change to that law in order to ensure that the nascent shale gas revolution is not crushed before it gets going.
In some ways I sympathise with the homeowners who are objecting, however ephemeral any problems may may prove to be in practice. Drilling under someone's home seems like an imposition, even if it is thousands of feet down, and regardless of the letter of whatever law Mr Cameron gets put on the books.
But if, as was once said politics is "the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy" then Mr Cameron's approach is the archetype. Ramming shale gas down people's throats is not going to win any friends, let alone the wider PR battle.
A far better approach would be to repeal the Petroleum (Production) Act 1934, which nationalises ownership of onshore oil and gas resources. This would send out a signal to the country that shale gas development will take place on a voluntary basis. Landowners would be clamouring to be at the front of the queue to have their land drilled. Those who really objected could sit secure in the knowledge that they were in control of their own destinies.
Coincidentally, there have been mutterings in Parliament about a lack of bills put in front of the house - a function it seems of most decisions now being taken by bureaucrats in Brussels. What better use to put our MPs than to get them to bring about a voluntarist revolution.
Some months ago, I mentioned this idea to a BBC journalist, who was appalled at the suggestion that valuable assets might be put into private hands (even the private hands from which they had originally been taken by the state) and in reality I think these kinds of objections would probably be insurmountable. In public life, the taking of valuable assets from private people is permissible, or even to be desired. Giving them back is not.
So instead of adopting a policy of voluntarism, we will carry on down the spiral of coercion and outrage, more coercion and more outrage that characterises most aspects of the UK today.
Sad really.