Prominent anti-fracking campaigner and prospective parliamentary candidate Mike Hill has been very good at promoting himself in recent years. But media attention can be a double-edged sword, as Mr Hill has found to his cost in recent days. Last week he was the subject of a two stories at Guido Fawkes blog, when it emerged that he had once applied for a job at Cuadrilla, that he had pretended spun things so as to present himself as an adviser to the European Union, the Royal Society and DECC, when his role had been little more than to be involved in discussions with them.
Today he is in the Times, which reveals that Mr Hill helped produce a report on fracking that persuaded a doctors' organisation to take a stand against fracking. However, Mr Hill's anti-fracking background was not revealed and with his colourful background now revealed to all it could be argued that the doctors' statement is now a dead letter.
But Mr Hill's story seems even stranger than we first thought. A 2012 post on the Counting Cats blog suggests that he is not only an engineer and campaigner but is also a citizen of extraordinary public spirit, having spent £17000 of his own money on his shale-related activity. This seemed just a bit too good to be true, as Counting Cats explained:
Most people who have money to burn and want to push for regulation tend to lobby the government directly. Or, if they are in a hurry, bung enormous bribes at corrupt politicians. I’m cynical enough to wonder if Mr. Hill has an angle so I went trawling but where to start? At the foot of each page of the report is © Michael Hill – GCAL. GCAL could refer to Glasgow Caledonian University. It also refers to this.
Gemini Control and Automation Ltd (GCAL) make bespoke filters for industrial centrifuges – Heinkel centrifuges in particular. This company is based in Lytham, not a million miles from Preece Hall. One of the uses for Heinkel centrifuges is in the fracking industry, specifically servicing flow-back. By amazing coincidence a bloke called Mike Hill is associated with Gemini Control and Automation Ltd.
Well knock me down with a filleted kipper!
It’s possible that Michael Hill B.Sc. C.Eng. MIET has no connection with Gemini. If he is not associated with this GCAL then I apologise in advance for thinking him less of a philanthropist and more of a mercenary. I also apologise to Gemini in advance if this is nothing more than a very weird coincidence.
However, the GCAL website apparently no longer mentions the connection to the fracking industry, so I think many people will conclude that Counting Cats was barking up precisely the right tree.
[Updated slightly after an email from Mike Hill's wife. See here]