The first poem I studied in secondary school began: “The pig lay on a barrow dead, motionless”. Poet Laureate Ted Hughes’ ensuing nine sickeningly graphic, non-rhyming stanzas made me want to vomit and scuppered any chance that Wordsworth, Byron or Shelley might offer the  key to my romantic soul.

It was not surprising, therefore, that the death of Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney a few weeks ago caused nothing but a slight flutter in the iambic pentameter of my heart.

Heaney,  like  many modern poets who had studied the works of William McGonnagal – the world’s worst practitioner of the art – did not feel constrained by the need for the perfect rhyme-ending. He would happily plump for the partial rhyming of assonance (rhyming vowels) such as: “Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests; snug as a gun” or consonance, which is the same concept but with the consonants matching rather than the vowels: “We trekked and picked until the cans were full”. Assonance and consonance are, evidently, great ways to get a message across into the readers subconscious. Had I started my poetry appreciation career with Wordsworth’s “On Westminster Bridge” rather than Hughes’ pigswill, I might now be in a position to explain this – but I didn’t so I aint.

In recent years the heavily oil dependent economies of the western world have been energized by the development of “FRACKING” – the hydraulic fracturing of underground rock formations by the high-powered injection of water and other liquids to free enormous quantities of shale gas and oil. The Americans, particularly, have discovered that by widespread FRACKING they can raise the proverbial digit to the medieval dictatorships of the Middle East who have, for 40 years, been able to periodically  hold the world to ransom for a barrel of the black elixir. FRACKING is helping to fuel  the US economic recovery.

What is interesting is that  British hunting for shale gas has been less successful than in America. This has been largely due to greater public discourse on the subject and a much more significant populist backlash than across the Atlantic.

The Economist ran a leader a couple of weeks ago on the successful protests in a South East English village against FRACKING. Objections are based on environmental issues – there is a fear of greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution (not to mention earthquakes and the implosion of the earth’s crust), as well as the disruption caused by the diviners. The free-market Economist dismissed the environmental thing as balderdash (and who am I to argue?) but chose to understand the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) argument.

The reason FRACKING has worked in America, the Economist claims, is that landowners own the rights to what is under their fields and the States (rather than the Federal Government) tax the extracted oil and gas – pumping the revenue back into the local economy.  In Britain the State (strictly, the Crown, which is the thing the Queen wears on her head sometimes) owns the rights and almost all tax revenue flows to the central government coffers. Thus, the NIMBYs do not feel any advantage rising from the ashes of their disadvantage. As with so much else in the Tax Conundrum, ordinary people need to feel ownership of their taxation  – be it fracking, health care, education or bombing Syria – to make the system work. For once, the British should take a leaf out of the Americans’ book.

However, I think there is more to it than that. What’s in a name? For a word that does not officially exist (you try and find it in a respectable dictionary), FRACKING has penetrated the English language most effectively. In its various fictitious forms it is a noun, a transitive verb, an intransitive verb and, even, an adjective, closely shadowing its most infamous consonantal relative.

To the delight of the protesters, FRACKING even has a construction as a phrasal verb in the imperative  form followed by a particle. As a result, the protesters have been winning support waving banners with a short, punchy message that gives  more bang for its buck.  For those of you who spent your time in school studying the various metres in English Verse rather than English Grammar, the imperative in this case is FRACK and the “particle” is “OFF”. A hyphen between the two words is optional.  By association, FRACK is not a nice word, FRACKERS are not perceived as nice people and, as for FRACKING – absolutely “Not In My Back Yard”.

Perhaps the Power of Speech has taken on a new meaning.  Could it be that Consonance is helping to screw up the recovery of the British economy?