Looking forward to 2014? John Sheard isn’t. He fears a year of Punch and Judy politics and an increasing threat to the Dales in the form of fracking.

ACCORDING to the story published in America almost 200 years ago – and probably a re-write of even more ancient fairy tales in German and early Jewish writings – Rip van Winkle fell asleep for 20 years and thus missed the horrors of the American War of Independence.

Well 20 years would be a tad on the lengthy side for me but the prospect of slumbering through the coming 12 months of 2014 sounds most appealing.

Hopefully, I would not miss an actual shooting war, but a 12 month long war of words it is bound to be.

The reason, a subject I have tried to avoid in these columns, is Punch and Judy politics: non-stop politics from the European Union elections in May, via the Scottish independence referendum in September, on to May 2015 when there must be a general election, with or without the Scots.

And sadly, here in the Yorkshire Dales, try as we must, we cannot copy Old Rip because there are two events of greatly different weight which we will follow with interest.

In the European elections, we have lost Godfrey Bloom, our sitting MEP, who has been thrown out of UKIP for his remarks about not sending more aid to “bongo-bongo” land. This is a bit of a shame in that old Godfrey did at least give us a laugh from time to time, a commodity so rare in the political bubble these days that he will be fondly remembered by many. But I will bet that whoever replaces him as UKIP candidate will win hands down.

The other matter of intrigue involves our very own Tory MP, Julian Smith, who is campaigning to have the Guardian newspaper prosecuted for treason for publishing leaked documents which, say MI5 and MI6, have gravely weakened our fight against terrorism.

The Crown Prosecution Service is examining these allegations and, should the case ever go to court (which I doubt) it would be one of the most explosive legal battles since we hanged Lord Haw Haw for broadcasting Nazi propaganda to Britain during World War Two.

And wearisome though this list might be, I am afraid that there are other skirmishes afoot which will put neighbour against neighbour.

And the most bitter of those is likely to be over a new technology that is already changing politics on a global scale: fracking.

This method of pumping out gas and to a lesser extent oil by forcing water at high pressure into underground shale has already reduced the price of energy in the USA by 60 per cent, which is probably why America has lost interest in the Middle East and its oil.

Here, where the lights could well go out in 2015 because of our lack of electricity generation capacity, the Government has just given the go-ahead for the granting of hundreds of exploration licences.

But the very first publically acknowledged attempt to start such a project in leafy Sussex had to be abandoned after massed demonstrations by hundreds of bussed-in “green” protesters. A long way from the Dales, sure, but guess where fracking experts are saying lies the biggest reservoir of natural gas in England?

It is under the Trough of Bowland, from the outskirts of Blackpool right up to – and who knows? – into Craven, pushing towards the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

This has all the makings of a monumental clash between environmentalists and the politicians and big business, who say we have enough shale gas to last us 60 years and the potential to create tens of thousands of new jobs.

On this one, I must admit that I am torn, as will be millions of people and the split will be, as ever, between townies, who use most of the energy, and the country folk who will have to bear the burden of thousands of heavy trucks passing back and forth from fracking sites.

But is this worse that having hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles of electricity pylons from wind farms which won’t keep the lights on in cold, still weather?

Just to add to this already simmering cauldron, there’s trouble on the land too.

The Country Landowners’ Association recently announced that their members were feeling much more optimistic that the long recession was ending whilst the National Union of Farmers is fuming about plans to taker away 15 per cent of their EU subsidies to plough them into environmental schemes.

So, Dear Reader, hang on for a bumpy ride. Me, I’m looking for some advice. Does anyone out there know how I could join Rip van Winkle?