Newspaper review: To frack or not to frack? ask Sundays

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23565279

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The Sunday Telegraph describes it as the new gold rush.

For the Mail on Sunday, Britain is sitting on an energy bonanza.

It is the new dash for gas, and Britain needs a 21st century version of North Sea oil, the Sunday People says.

The problem is - the paper points out - no one wants it in their back yard.

Many are opposed to fracking, the Sunday Times says, and it is a conflict that is pitting Conservative against Conservative, with the business end of the party excited by the dawn of a £1 trillion revolution, while rural Tories fret over the threat to the countryside.

So, to frack or not to frack is the question - as Eamonn Holmes puts it in the Sunday People.

The People's leader column says that riding roughshod over local communities is not the way to proceed. If our future depends on it, then we deserve to be properly consulted.

The Mail warns that the industry is going to have to prove to a tough, powerful, sceptical audience that fracking is safe, considerate to neighbours and diligent in clearing up after itself.

Mummy breadwinner

Several papers report that a study has found that more than two million mothers - one in three of those who work - are now their family's main breadwinner.

The Sunday People says the figure, published by the Institute for Public Policy Research, represents a rise of 80% in 15 years.

The Independent on Sunday says women's earnings play a huge and rapidly increasing role in the survival and prosperity of the nation's families. Without the earnings of Britain's women, it adds, Britain would sink.

'Vans backfired'

The Sunday Times says David Cameron's election strategist has suggested that the Home Office scheme for "go home" vans targeting illegal immigrants is flawed and has backfired.

According to the paper's lead story, Lynton Crosby indicated at a private meeting that the vans were playing into the hands of UKIP, by focusing the debate on the "tactics not the issue".

Simon Cowell's private life makes the front pages of the Sunday Mirror, the Sunday People, the Sun and the Star - and is reported inside other papers, too.

The man behind The X Factor has been named in divorce papers after allegedly having an affair with Lauren Silverman, the wife of a friend and property millionaire, and getting her pregnant. Simon Cowell has not made any official comment.

'Phubbing' fightback

Finally, the Sunday Times reports on a growing worldwide movement aimed at tackling what it calls the latest in modern-day bad manners; people texting and checking the internet on their mobile phones while ignoring the people they are actually with.

It is apparently a phenomenon called "phubbing" - snubbing someone in a social setting by looking at your phone.

But a fightback against phubbing is taking many forms, the paper says. A growing trend is for restaurant diners to place their phones in the middle of the table and anyone checking their phones during the meal ends up paying the bill.