Tell this to the Trump-funded idiots of CATS and every other self-serving nimby cretin.
"Renewable energy is the future: nuclear energy is the past"
Read all about it:
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/PageFiles/391751/Renewable%20Energy.pdf
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Friday, 24 February 2012
PREVENTION OF TOURISM
One of the leading charges made against windfarms by nimby hysterics is that they have a devastating impact on local tourism.
There's no actual evidence to support this claim, and the nimbies may not even believe it - they just want everyone else to believe it.
And so we find, up and down the country, demented groups of self-serving anti-windfarm campaigners banging on and on about the dire effects on tourism. It even happened in the great Lenchwick Windfarm Farce over a year ago.
Our minted friends over at Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm (previous winners of the Wind of Change Nimby Whopper Award for their bizarre claim that the lorries which transport wind turbine parts are "longer than an aircraft carrier") have long insisted that the installation of two community-owned wind turbines near Bridgnorth in Shropshire would destroy the local tourism industry. Standard nimby nonsense. Nothing unusual there.
But what's this? Ten miles down the road from Bridgnorth, there are plans to erect nine turbines near Shifnal. The local nimby busybody group is supported by right-wing Tory MP Bill Cash (whose son leads the Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm campaign) and has recently been sounding off with its usual crazy gibberish at a planning appeal hearing.
The Stop Turbine Action Group (STAG) boobies of Shifnal told the planning inspector that the nine-turbine windfarm would bring tens of thousands of tourists to the area. Naturally, this is a Bad Thing. Can you imagine? All those sightseers blocking the roads, buying stuff locally and getting in the way of the peasants!
One Bill Boon, "traffic witness" for the STAG group, reached his findings by studying "the experiences of four other windfarms". And, to his horror, he discovered that windfarms attract tourists in their droves.
So - at Bridgnorth (as elsewhere, apparently), a proposed windfarm will "devastate" the local tourism industry. Allegedly. While, ten miles down the road, a proposed windfarm would attract "tens of thousands" of tourists, making life unbearable. This latter claim is based on evidence gathered from other - presumably successful - windfarms.
Incredibly, some nutters are members of both Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm ("windfarms kill tourism") and STAG ("windfarms encourage too much tourism")!!!
Evidently, then, there are some local protesters who are making one claim at Bridgnorth and a completely different claim, diametrically opposed to the first claim, ten miles away at Shifnal!
Where it suits them to argue that windfarms are bad news for tourism, that's what they say (very loudly and dishonestly). When it suits them to argue the opposite, windfarms magically become promoters of a blossoming tourism industry (but only, of course, where this is seen as undesirable).
Only in the second instance do the unhinged nimbies actually produce anything approaching evidence to support their claim.
So - which is it? Do windfarms wreck tourism or create tourism?
All the evidence points to the latter. In which case, those witless nimbies (such as the cretins of CATS, now sponsored by Buffalo Bill Trump and his monstrous machinery of lies) who keep insisting that windfarms and tourism don't mix are clearly telling very big porkies.
One wonders at the kind of person who can make both claims at once - windfarms stifle/stimulate tourism - depending on which local campaign they're fighting at the time.
It's pretty clear that the fools of Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm simply do not believe in telling the truth, when they're quite happy to make the opposite claims a few miles down the road.
It's also interesting to note that a group of deranged nimbies has now blown the gaff on their "windfarms bad for tourism" claims. If, that is, they really did bother to study the "experiences of four other windfarms". Because, as the pompous oafs of STAG were so keen to point out to the planning inspector the other day -
WINDFARMS ARE EXTREMELY GOOD FOR TOURISM!!!
There's no actual evidence to support this claim, and the nimbies may not even believe it - they just want everyone else to believe it.
And so we find, up and down the country, demented groups of self-serving anti-windfarm campaigners banging on and on about the dire effects on tourism. It even happened in the great Lenchwick Windfarm Farce over a year ago.
Our minted friends over at Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm (previous winners of the Wind of Change Nimby Whopper Award for their bizarre claim that the lorries which transport wind turbine parts are "longer than an aircraft carrier") have long insisted that the installation of two community-owned wind turbines near Bridgnorth in Shropshire would destroy the local tourism industry. Standard nimby nonsense. Nothing unusual there.
But what's this? Ten miles down the road from Bridgnorth, there are plans to erect nine turbines near Shifnal. The local nimby busybody group is supported by right-wing Tory MP Bill Cash (whose son leads the Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm campaign) and has recently been sounding off with its usual crazy gibberish at a planning appeal hearing.
The Stop Turbine Action Group (STAG) boobies of Shifnal told the planning inspector that the nine-turbine windfarm would bring tens of thousands of tourists to the area. Naturally, this is a Bad Thing. Can you imagine? All those sightseers blocking the roads, buying stuff locally and getting in the way of the peasants!
One Bill Boon, "traffic witness" for the STAG group, reached his findings by studying "the experiences of four other windfarms". And, to his horror, he discovered that windfarms attract tourists in their droves.
So - at Bridgnorth (as elsewhere, apparently), a proposed windfarm will "devastate" the local tourism industry. Allegedly. While, ten miles down the road, a proposed windfarm would attract "tens of thousands" of tourists, making life unbearable. This latter claim is based on evidence gathered from other - presumably successful - windfarms.
Incredibly, some nutters are members of both Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm ("windfarms kill tourism") and STAG ("windfarms encourage too much tourism")!!!
Evidently, then, there are some local protesters who are making one claim at Bridgnorth and a completely different claim, diametrically opposed to the first claim, ten miles away at Shifnal!
Where it suits them to argue that windfarms are bad news for tourism, that's what they say (very loudly and dishonestly). When it suits them to argue the opposite, windfarms magically become promoters of a blossoming tourism industry (but only, of course, where this is seen as undesirable).
Only in the second instance do the unhinged nimbies actually produce anything approaching evidence to support their claim.
So - which is it? Do windfarms wreck tourism or create tourism?
All the evidence points to the latter. In which case, those witless nimbies (such as the cretins of CATS, now sponsored by Buffalo Bill Trump and his monstrous machinery of lies) who keep insisting that windfarms and tourism don't mix are clearly telling very big porkies.
One wonders at the kind of person who can make both claims at once - windfarms stifle/stimulate tourism - depending on which local campaign they're fighting at the time.
It's pretty clear that the fools of Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm simply do not believe in telling the truth, when they're quite happy to make the opposite claims a few miles down the road.
It's also interesting to note that a group of deranged nimbies has now blown the gaff on their "windfarms bad for tourism" claims. If, that is, they really did bother to study the "experiences of four other windfarms". Because, as the pompous oafs of STAG were so keen to point out to the planning inspector the other day -
WINDFARMS ARE EXTREMELY GOOD FOR TOURISM!!!
Thursday, 23 February 2012
GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS
It is generally agreed that there is only one Planet Earth, so we'd better take care of it.
Sometimes, though, it would appear that there are two worlds on Planet Earth.
On the one hand, there is the world in which the solutions to some of our most pressing crises have been recognised and are being implemented. Thus, the United States weather office (NOAA) has recently announced that large-scale green energy systems can affordably replace fossil fuels as the world's primary energy source within the space of twenty years. The key word here is "affordably". If you're a nimby idiot, you'll tell anybody who'll listen that renewables don't work and cost the earth. People who know what they're on about, though, beg to differ.
Over three years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has collated 16 billion pieces of weather data. It then ran various programmes to determine the optimum sites for wind and solar farms in the United States and figured out that regional variations could easily be compensated for by means of a sensible grid. All those daft arguments against wind and solar power have started to crumble.
Good news, then, from the States. And good news too in the UK, where David Cameron was moved to reply to the insane letter sent to him by 101 Tory MPs, led by that fearsome crusader against the facts, Chris Heaton-Harris, which called on the prime minister to sell Britain downriver once and for all.
Cameron pointed out in his letter to the 101 Tory traitors and dimwits that there are "perfectly hard-headed reasons" for building more onshore windfarms. The PM added: "I am determined that we seize the economic opportunities in renewable supply chains as the global race for capital in low-carbon sectors intensifies."
Putting it plainly - not only are onshore windfarms an integral part of a "balanced UK electricity mix", but when the rest of the world is competing for capital investment to stride ahead with their renewables, which means jobs and lots of them, then it would be political suicide for the UK to duck out of the race just because a few right-wing lunatics don't approve of windfarms. We need the electricity that windfarms so ably produce, we need to reduce our carbon emissions, and we need to face up to reality. Harrumphing from the back-benches and throwing your support behind grotesquely selfish and dishonest nimby groups does Britain no favours at all. It's a betrayal of the national interest for the sake of the narrowest of ideological prejudices.
So, sometimes the world isn't so bad. But, as the Delingpoles and Heaton-Harrises of our once decent land continually prove, there is another world out there. One which cares nothing for the facts, the public good, the national interest, the needs of future generations and the planet. It's an alternative reality in which everything - but everything - is subject to personal greed, self-interest and the power of the lie.
Step forward Donald Trump, uber-nimby and fanatical right-wing bastard.
We've mentioned before that Trump, who has been building an unsightly and unnecessary "luxury" golf resort in Aberdeenshire, has got his knickers in a twist about a proposed offshore windfarm. He's thrown his toys out of the pram because the First Minister of Scotland isn't behaving like a proper little native and giving this tasteless American hoodlum everything he wants.
Now, Trump has thrown his not inconsiderable weight behind the depressingly bigoted anti-windfarm group known as CATS (Communities Against Turbines Scotland).
Quite funny that they call themselves CATS, by the way, seeing as domestic cats kill thousands of times as many birds as wind turbines do.
Anyway, CATS isn't based anywhere near the proposed Aberdeenshire offshore wind array, of course. No, the nasty nimby nutters who really are determined to destroy our nation's future now campaign a long way from home. Remember the argument that Lenchwick Windfarm shouldn't go ahead because the locals opposed it (even though most of the locals didn't oppose it, the rest didn't really know what a windfarm was, and many of the objections came from people who'd never even heard of the Lenches)? Well, there's a coda to that argument now. Windfarms shouldn't happen where (a) the locals don't want them and (b) where anybody else doesn't want them (see Callanish, Isle of Lewis).
So Eric "Jabba the Hutt" Pickles better be ready for this when his silly Localism Bill is introduced. Then it won't matter at all what the locals actually think. A few nutcases from somewhere else in the British Isles will believe that they have the power (and the right) to prevent a windfarm from being installed anywhere.
CATS is a Delingpole of an organisation. Guess what - they think nuclear is the answer (a sure sign of someone who really hasn't thought things through) and they quote those professional liars of the Renewable Energy Foundation. We can gather from this that CATS is not particularly interested in the truth - hence their claims, already and repeatedly disproven, that renewable "subsidies" are the cause of sharply rising fuel bills.
Donald "DO AS I SAY" Trump is giving CATS money, lawyers and anything else he can think of to fight the offshore windfarm that won't affect him at all. Yep, that's right: an American billionaire with weird hair is marching around our country telling us what we can and cannot do. He has dedicated himself to fighting a perfectly sane, safe, unthreatening and VITAL development because he doesn't want his gormless golfers to see something in the sea off the coast of a country he doesn't own. And he has decided that the self-serving delusionists of CATS are the people to do his dirty work for him.
Evidently, there are still people around for whom reality is a flexible concept. People for whom the future doesn't exist. People who care nothing for their country.
Alex Salmond simply cannot afford to let a super-rich American thug trumple all over him. Neither can Scotland. And neither can the UK.
So the crazy CATS will be getting their thirty pieces of silver - and then some.
That, as we all know, is the going rate for betrayal.
Sometimes, though, it would appear that there are two worlds on Planet Earth.
On the one hand, there is the world in which the solutions to some of our most pressing crises have been recognised and are being implemented. Thus, the United States weather office (NOAA) has recently announced that large-scale green energy systems can affordably replace fossil fuels as the world's primary energy source within the space of twenty years. The key word here is "affordably". If you're a nimby idiot, you'll tell anybody who'll listen that renewables don't work and cost the earth. People who know what they're on about, though, beg to differ.
Over three years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has collated 16 billion pieces of weather data. It then ran various programmes to determine the optimum sites for wind and solar farms in the United States and figured out that regional variations could easily be compensated for by means of a sensible grid. All those daft arguments against wind and solar power have started to crumble.
Good news, then, from the States. And good news too in the UK, where David Cameron was moved to reply to the insane letter sent to him by 101 Tory MPs, led by that fearsome crusader against the facts, Chris Heaton-Harris, which called on the prime minister to sell Britain downriver once and for all.
Cameron pointed out in his letter to the 101 Tory traitors and dimwits that there are "perfectly hard-headed reasons" for building more onshore windfarms. The PM added: "I am determined that we seize the economic opportunities in renewable supply chains as the global race for capital in low-carbon sectors intensifies."
Putting it plainly - not only are onshore windfarms an integral part of a "balanced UK electricity mix", but when the rest of the world is competing for capital investment to stride ahead with their renewables, which means jobs and lots of them, then it would be political suicide for the UK to duck out of the race just because a few right-wing lunatics don't approve of windfarms. We need the electricity that windfarms so ably produce, we need to reduce our carbon emissions, and we need to face up to reality. Harrumphing from the back-benches and throwing your support behind grotesquely selfish and dishonest nimby groups does Britain no favours at all. It's a betrayal of the national interest for the sake of the narrowest of ideological prejudices.
So, sometimes the world isn't so bad. But, as the Delingpoles and Heaton-Harrises of our once decent land continually prove, there is another world out there. One which cares nothing for the facts, the public good, the national interest, the needs of future generations and the planet. It's an alternative reality in which everything - but everything - is subject to personal greed, self-interest and the power of the lie.
Step forward Donald Trump, uber-nimby and fanatical right-wing bastard.
We've mentioned before that Trump, who has been building an unsightly and unnecessary "luxury" golf resort in Aberdeenshire, has got his knickers in a twist about a proposed offshore windfarm. He's thrown his toys out of the pram because the First Minister of Scotland isn't behaving like a proper little native and giving this tasteless American hoodlum everything he wants.
Now, Trump has thrown his not inconsiderable weight behind the depressingly bigoted anti-windfarm group known as CATS (Communities Against Turbines Scotland).
Quite funny that they call themselves CATS, by the way, seeing as domestic cats kill thousands of times as many birds as wind turbines do.
Anyway, CATS isn't based anywhere near the proposed Aberdeenshire offshore wind array, of course. No, the nasty nimby nutters who really are determined to destroy our nation's future now campaign a long way from home. Remember the argument that Lenchwick Windfarm shouldn't go ahead because the locals opposed it (even though most of the locals didn't oppose it, the rest didn't really know what a windfarm was, and many of the objections came from people who'd never even heard of the Lenches)? Well, there's a coda to that argument now. Windfarms shouldn't happen where (a) the locals don't want them and (b) where anybody else doesn't want them (see Callanish, Isle of Lewis).
So Eric "Jabba the Hutt" Pickles better be ready for this when his silly Localism Bill is introduced. Then it won't matter at all what the locals actually think. A few nutcases from somewhere else in the British Isles will believe that they have the power (and the right) to prevent a windfarm from being installed anywhere.
CATS is a Delingpole of an organisation. Guess what - they think nuclear is the answer (a sure sign of someone who really hasn't thought things through) and they quote those professional liars of the Renewable Energy Foundation. We can gather from this that CATS is not particularly interested in the truth - hence their claims, already and repeatedly disproven, that renewable "subsidies" are the cause of sharply rising fuel bills.
Donald "DO AS I SAY" Trump is giving CATS money, lawyers and anything else he can think of to fight the offshore windfarm that won't affect him at all. Yep, that's right: an American billionaire with weird hair is marching around our country telling us what we can and cannot do. He has dedicated himself to fighting a perfectly sane, safe, unthreatening and VITAL development because he doesn't want his gormless golfers to see something in the sea off the coast of a country he doesn't own. And he has decided that the self-serving delusionists of CATS are the people to do his dirty work for him.
Evidently, there are still people around for whom reality is a flexible concept. People for whom the future doesn't exist. People who care nothing for their country.
Alex Salmond simply cannot afford to let a super-rich American thug trumple all over him. Neither can Scotland. And neither can the UK.
So the crazy CATS will be getting their thirty pieces of silver - and then some.
That, as we all know, is the going rate for betrayal.
Monday, 20 February 2012
GO TELL THE SPARTANS
Pop the corks! This is the 300th Wind of Change blogpost.
Yay!!
This blog has been running for nearly three years now. In that time, we have reported on the sickening tactics - the lies, intimidation, overthrow of local democracy, misappropriation of funds - routinely employed by extremist nimby groups like VVASP in the pursuit of their fanatical, selfish aims.
We have exposed the effects of such atrocious, mendacious and vicious campaigns on conscientious locals.
We have countered the insane and idiotic myths promulgated by anti-windfarm hysterics by researching and publishing the facts (windfarms are not noisy, they do not trash property prices, they do not make you ill ...)
We broke the news that the independent Advertising Standards Authority had judged VVASP's ludicrous claims - the basis of their entire despicable campaign - to be untruthful and unsubstantiated. We revealed the extent to which the hoodlums of VVASP, led by a desperately dishonest cabal, had misled local people, overtaken parish councils, set up a fraudulent "Windfarm Working Party", siphoned off public money and tricked the district council into hiring a biased noise consultant.
We were extremely proud to have this blog archived by the British Library, so that future generations can discover the depths to which their grandparents stooped just to prevent a wholly harmless, beneficial and necessary development from taking place.
300 blogposts. Makes us think of the Spartans at Thermopylae. Each post is a Spartan soldier, holding the "hot gates" against a filthy horde of self-serving liars and right-wing nutcases.
That, you see, is the problem. Only those on the extreme right keep trying to shout down those who care about the future of our society and our planet. Take the exceptionally irrational Delingpole, climate change denier extraordinaire. To him, "green" policies are really "red" policies. Rampant free-market capitalism, of the kind which has plunged the world into economic, social and environmental chaos, are threatened by far-sighted and sensible planning - the sort that gives us technologically-brilliant and aesthetically-pleasing wind turbines.
To the cretinous Delingpoles of this world, the good of the planet is bad for their bank accounts. And so they lie, and they lie, and they lie. And every tinpot little nimby out there gobbles up their lies with gormless gratitude. They don't want to see a windfarm, and so they love the Delingpole lies. Makes them feel less bad about their betrayal of everything and everyone.
Nimbies are consistent only in their treachery. In Lenchwick, they insisted that because a local minority - mostly those within sight of the proposed windfarm - had been bullied and misled into opposing it, the windfarm could not go ahead. And yet, on the Isle of Lewis, where a windfarm is proposed some eight kilometres away from the Callanish standing stones, the locals are not opposed - and so the windfarm must be stopped because people who don't live in the area don't want it. See the problem? They change the rules whenever it suits them, these subhuman nimby types.
And surely the Callanish issue puts paid to the monstrously silly "2 kilometre" rule demanded by nimby maniacs. Suddenly, eight kilometres is too close. The fact is that these weirdos don't want windfarms full stop - even though they're a low-cost, effective and elegant solution to an imminent crisis - for the usual Delingpole reasons. Renewables are "socialist". It's as simple, and as demented, as that.
Well, all in all the news isn't looking good, folks. While the Delingpoles of this world continue to lie their heads off about climate change and renewable energy, the real experts are sounding the alarm louder than ever. Read this and weep:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/20/climate-change-overconsumption
That's the real problem. These insane, self-centred, woefully dishonest and greedy anti-windfarm activists are a sideshow. They're the nutters who refuse to face up to reality.
But they're evil, and they're dangerous. Every nimby campaign is another nail in the Earth's coffin. They are the ones who will be held responsible for our failure to adjust to the realities of the 21st century.
We will fight them all the way. Already, 300 blogposts have exposed their shabby lies, their shallow selfishness, their hypocrisy, dishonesty and treachery.
This blog is a monument to their crass stupidity.
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
Yay!!
This blog has been running for nearly three years now. In that time, we have reported on the sickening tactics - the lies, intimidation, overthrow of local democracy, misappropriation of funds - routinely employed by extremist nimby groups like VVASP in the pursuit of their fanatical, selfish aims.
We have exposed the effects of such atrocious, mendacious and vicious campaigns on conscientious locals.
We have countered the insane and idiotic myths promulgated by anti-windfarm hysterics by researching and publishing the facts (windfarms are not noisy, they do not trash property prices, they do not make you ill ...)
We broke the news that the independent Advertising Standards Authority had judged VVASP's ludicrous claims - the basis of their entire despicable campaign - to be untruthful and unsubstantiated. We revealed the extent to which the hoodlums of VVASP, led by a desperately dishonest cabal, had misled local people, overtaken parish councils, set up a fraudulent "Windfarm Working Party", siphoned off public money and tricked the district council into hiring a biased noise consultant.
We were extremely proud to have this blog archived by the British Library, so that future generations can discover the depths to which their grandparents stooped just to prevent a wholly harmless, beneficial and necessary development from taking place.
300 blogposts. Makes us think of the Spartans at Thermopylae. Each post is a Spartan soldier, holding the "hot gates" against a filthy horde of self-serving liars and right-wing nutcases.
That, you see, is the problem. Only those on the extreme right keep trying to shout down those who care about the future of our society and our planet. Take the exceptionally irrational Delingpole, climate change denier extraordinaire. To him, "green" policies are really "red" policies. Rampant free-market capitalism, of the kind which has plunged the world into economic, social and environmental chaos, are threatened by far-sighted and sensible planning - the sort that gives us technologically-brilliant and aesthetically-pleasing wind turbines.
To the cretinous Delingpoles of this world, the good of the planet is bad for their bank accounts. And so they lie, and they lie, and they lie. And every tinpot little nimby out there gobbles up their lies with gormless gratitude. They don't want to see a windfarm, and so they love the Delingpole lies. Makes them feel less bad about their betrayal of everything and everyone.
Nimbies are consistent only in their treachery. In Lenchwick, they insisted that because a local minority - mostly those within sight of the proposed windfarm - had been bullied and misled into opposing it, the windfarm could not go ahead. And yet, on the Isle of Lewis, where a windfarm is proposed some eight kilometres away from the Callanish standing stones, the locals are not opposed - and so the windfarm must be stopped because people who don't live in the area don't want it. See the problem? They change the rules whenever it suits them, these subhuman nimby types.
And surely the Callanish issue puts paid to the monstrously silly "2 kilometre" rule demanded by nimby maniacs. Suddenly, eight kilometres is too close. The fact is that these weirdos don't want windfarms full stop - even though they're a low-cost, effective and elegant solution to an imminent crisis - for the usual Delingpole reasons. Renewables are "socialist". It's as simple, and as demented, as that.
Well, all in all the news isn't looking good, folks. While the Delingpoles of this world continue to lie their heads off about climate change and renewable energy, the real experts are sounding the alarm louder than ever. Read this and weep:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/20/climate-change-overconsumption
That's the real problem. These insane, self-centred, woefully dishonest and greedy anti-windfarm activists are a sideshow. They're the nutters who refuse to face up to reality.
But they're evil, and they're dangerous. Every nimby campaign is another nail in the Earth's coffin. They are the ones who will be held responsible for our failure to adjust to the realities of the 21st century.
We will fight them all the way. Already, 300 blogposts have exposed their shabby lies, their shallow selfishness, their hypocrisy, dishonesty and treachery.
This blog is a monument to their crass stupidity.
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
Friday, 17 February 2012
LIES, DAMNED LIES AND DELINGPOLES
A while back, we awarded a special, non-existent award for the Nimby Whopper of the Week to the anti-windfarm activitists of the Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm campaign (a campaign organised by extremely wealthy individuals to combat a community-owned wind "farm" of two medium-sized turbines). This was as a result of our breathless admiration for their stunningly stupid claim that the lorries which deliver turbine parts are "longer than an aircraft carrier".
Funny, yes. Grossly untruthful, yes. Immoral terror tactics, yes. But nothing - repeat, nothing - to the unfettered lie machine that is James Delingpole.
Indeed, there are Nimby Lies. Insidious, stupid, self-serving, designed to frighten the children. Then, there are Spectacular Nimby Lies, like the "award-winning" rumours spread by the Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm group. And then there are Delingpoles.
A Delingpole is the new SI unit of nimby mendacity. When a lie is so huge, so eye-wateringly and crazily demented, that it defies the full scope of the English language to sum up its staggering dishonesty, that's a Delingpole.
Delingpole makes money by selling crap. Specifically, he sells climate change denial, and he does it on a huge scale. Naturally, one of his targets is those beautiful, clean, green, harmless, quiet and efficient devices known as wind turbines. They really get his goat. Because they're beautiful, clean, green, harmless, quiet and efficient. He really hates that.
And he's got a new book out. No prizes for guessing that his "book" is yet another mentalist rant against reality, peddling a whole flock of lies and myths to idiots.
Of course, given that Delingpole makes his living by lying his head off to anyone who'll listen - betraying his country and the planet in the process - he wants to publicise his latest outrageous assault on science and common sense. So he wrote an atrocious piece for the Daily Express. And what an atrocity it is. The Delingpole counter went right off the scale. It is a Super-Delingpole of deranged b*llsh*t masquerading as ... well, actually no, it's not masquerading as anything. The man is clearly insane.
He was spurred on by Simon Jenkins's ill-judged comments to what is in fact Delingpole's favourite newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. Jenkins, you may remember, abused his position as Chair of the National Trust to pretend that the said charity was turning against wind turbines. The said charity then had to correct its chairman's false claims, pointing out that its position on renewables remains the same - broadly in favour.
But, in the mad, mad world of the nimby, one man's lies are meat and drink to the next purveyor of lies. One feeds off another, and it all goes round in circles in a weird vortex of nonsense designed, by some magical process, to turn an obvious lie into some sort of "truth". Simon Jenkins said things he had no right to say - and which were blatantly wrong anyway - so Delingpole jumps on the bandwagon to repeat them. He has got a "book" to flog, remember.
Delingpole out-Delingpoled himself in the Express. These weren't just lies. They were Delingpole lies - lies so massive you can see them from space.
One lie: wind power "drives anyone who lives nearby mad with its strobing effects and low subsonic hum". How can a hum be "subsonic"? Does this maniac even understand the English language? He certainly knows nothing about windfarms, preferring to regurgitate foolish and disproven nimby myths than to risk a narrow brush with reality.
Another lie: wind power "trashes property values". Delingpole has no evidence whatever to support this monstrous claim, because it's a lie.
Another lie: wind power "costs between three and nine times the amount of conventional energy". He's making these figures up, of course, because it doesn't. And he fails to explain what he means by "conventional energy". If he means coal, oil, gas or nuclear, then he's clearly lying.
Yet another lie: wind power "slows economic growth". Again, no evidence is offered, because no such evidence exists. Across the world, wind power is growing (in Europe, installed wind energy capacity increased by 11% last year), and anyone who thinks that this is the cause of the global financial malaise is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. Delingpole, by the way, is honorary President for Life of cloud-cuckoo-land. The reality is that the wind industry is actually creating jobs at a time when other industries are shedding them. Oh, but, if you're a Delingpole, living in a topsy-turvy nimby wilderness of gibberish, that means that wind power "destroys jobs". Honestly, what a twat!
And then - surprise surprise - Delingpole quotes figures from the Renewable Energy Foundation, an organisation funded and staffed entirely by Delingpoles. Which simply tells us that Delingpole relies entirely on dishonest lobby groups for his falsified information.
As if that wasn't enough, Delingpole then leaps off the high board into the deep end of nimby paranoia. Apparently, according to his perverse fantasies, the wind industry employs an army of lobbyists, many of whom pose as ordinary citizens in order to write to their MPs in support of wind. This is madness, pure and simple, and it proves only that Delingpole has vanished so far up his own bottom that he can no longer tell day from night or left from right. Still, in his frothy-mouthed craziness, he argues that the "real people who have to live alongside these eyesores stand no chance against such well-orchestrated, lavishly funded and utterly cynical campaigns."
Delingpole likes the word "utterly". Not only are the principled and conscientious supporters of green energy "utterly cynical" - unlike, say, a Delingpole ranting his way through an overflowing trough of his own mendacity - but wind turbines are "utterly pointless monstrosities" ... "utterly pointless", that is, in the sense that they currently produce between 6 and 12% of our electricity, while in Denmark they're getting close to 25%. At the current rate, the UK's windfarm fleet will be as "utterly useless" as the infinitely more expensive and hazardous nuclear power industry by about 2015.
Much of this is just a warm-up, really, for Delingpole's major problem, which is his fanatical and "utterly" bonkers climate change scepticism. But that's what he makes his money from - pleasing the Fox News-watching Tea Party extremists of America and a few grizzled Australian pensioners by flogging them a cosy but "utterly" dishonesty misrepresentation of scientific fact.
The more wild-eyed anti-windfarm maniacs almost invariably turn out to be head-in-the-sand climate change deniers. And Delingpole is their poster-boy. He'd rather blame "watermelons" (those who are "green on the outside and red on the inside") for destroying the Earth than even think for a single moment of letting a word of truth cross his lips.
Unbelievably, a member of BLoW ("Back Local Windfarms") is still receiving nuisance letters from a truly bonkers person in the Lenches, more than a year after the thugs of VVASP bullied the local council into betraying the electorate. These letters, scrawled as if they were written in an asylum, come along every few weeks, usually accompanied by a clipping from the Express with their latest diatribe of nimby drivel.
We're willing to lay bets that the nimby nuisance of Church Lench will be posting our friend a clipping of Delingpole's massive Delingpole of anti-wind gibberish. And why not? If you're so soft in the head that you actually believe anything the Express publishes or Delingpole writes, then you're certainly silly enough to use it to harass somebody who's actually got a heart, a soul and a brain.
But there are liars, and there are damned liars, and then there are Delingpoles. And they're dangerous. Because they are quite, quite mad, and they're making a fortune out of stirring up the nasty nimbies and selling our children downriver. And that, folks, is treachery on an epic scale.
Funny, yes. Grossly untruthful, yes. Immoral terror tactics, yes. But nothing - repeat, nothing - to the unfettered lie machine that is James Delingpole.
Indeed, there are Nimby Lies. Insidious, stupid, self-serving, designed to frighten the children. Then, there are Spectacular Nimby Lies, like the "award-winning" rumours spread by the Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm group. And then there are Delingpoles.
A Delingpole is the new SI unit of nimby mendacity. When a lie is so huge, so eye-wateringly and crazily demented, that it defies the full scope of the English language to sum up its staggering dishonesty, that's a Delingpole.
Delingpole makes money by selling crap. Specifically, he sells climate change denial, and he does it on a huge scale. Naturally, one of his targets is those beautiful, clean, green, harmless, quiet and efficient devices known as wind turbines. They really get his goat. Because they're beautiful, clean, green, harmless, quiet and efficient. He really hates that.
And he's got a new book out. No prizes for guessing that his "book" is yet another mentalist rant against reality, peddling a whole flock of lies and myths to idiots.
Of course, given that Delingpole makes his living by lying his head off to anyone who'll listen - betraying his country and the planet in the process - he wants to publicise his latest outrageous assault on science and common sense. So he wrote an atrocious piece for the Daily Express. And what an atrocity it is. The Delingpole counter went right off the scale. It is a Super-Delingpole of deranged b*llsh*t masquerading as ... well, actually no, it's not masquerading as anything. The man is clearly insane.
He was spurred on by Simon Jenkins's ill-judged comments to what is in fact Delingpole's favourite newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. Jenkins, you may remember, abused his position as Chair of the National Trust to pretend that the said charity was turning against wind turbines. The said charity then had to correct its chairman's false claims, pointing out that its position on renewables remains the same - broadly in favour.
But, in the mad, mad world of the nimby, one man's lies are meat and drink to the next purveyor of lies. One feeds off another, and it all goes round in circles in a weird vortex of nonsense designed, by some magical process, to turn an obvious lie into some sort of "truth". Simon Jenkins said things he had no right to say - and which were blatantly wrong anyway - so Delingpole jumps on the bandwagon to repeat them. He has got a "book" to flog, remember.
Delingpole out-Delingpoled himself in the Express. These weren't just lies. They were Delingpole lies - lies so massive you can see them from space.
One lie: wind power "drives anyone who lives nearby mad with its strobing effects and low subsonic hum". How can a hum be "subsonic"? Does this maniac even understand the English language? He certainly knows nothing about windfarms, preferring to regurgitate foolish and disproven nimby myths than to risk a narrow brush with reality.
Another lie: wind power "trashes property values". Delingpole has no evidence whatever to support this monstrous claim, because it's a lie.
Another lie: wind power "costs between three and nine times the amount of conventional energy". He's making these figures up, of course, because it doesn't. And he fails to explain what he means by "conventional energy". If he means coal, oil, gas or nuclear, then he's clearly lying.
Yet another lie: wind power "slows economic growth". Again, no evidence is offered, because no such evidence exists. Across the world, wind power is growing (in Europe, installed wind energy capacity increased by 11% last year), and anyone who thinks that this is the cause of the global financial malaise is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. Delingpole, by the way, is honorary President for Life of cloud-cuckoo-land. The reality is that the wind industry is actually creating jobs at a time when other industries are shedding them. Oh, but, if you're a Delingpole, living in a topsy-turvy nimby wilderness of gibberish, that means that wind power "destroys jobs". Honestly, what a twat!
And then - surprise surprise - Delingpole quotes figures from the Renewable Energy Foundation, an organisation funded and staffed entirely by Delingpoles. Which simply tells us that Delingpole relies entirely on dishonest lobby groups for his falsified information.
As if that wasn't enough, Delingpole then leaps off the high board into the deep end of nimby paranoia. Apparently, according to his perverse fantasies, the wind industry employs an army of lobbyists, many of whom pose as ordinary citizens in order to write to their MPs in support of wind. This is madness, pure and simple, and it proves only that Delingpole has vanished so far up his own bottom that he can no longer tell day from night or left from right. Still, in his frothy-mouthed craziness, he argues that the "real people who have to live alongside these eyesores stand no chance against such well-orchestrated, lavishly funded and utterly cynical campaigns."
Delingpole likes the word "utterly". Not only are the principled and conscientious supporters of green energy "utterly cynical" - unlike, say, a Delingpole ranting his way through an overflowing trough of his own mendacity - but wind turbines are "utterly pointless monstrosities" ... "utterly pointless", that is, in the sense that they currently produce between 6 and 12% of our electricity, while in Denmark they're getting close to 25%. At the current rate, the UK's windfarm fleet will be as "utterly useless" as the infinitely more expensive and hazardous nuclear power industry by about 2015.
Much of this is just a warm-up, really, for Delingpole's major problem, which is his fanatical and "utterly" bonkers climate change scepticism. But that's what he makes his money from - pleasing the Fox News-watching Tea Party extremists of America and a few grizzled Australian pensioners by flogging them a cosy but "utterly" dishonesty misrepresentation of scientific fact.
The more wild-eyed anti-windfarm maniacs almost invariably turn out to be head-in-the-sand climate change deniers. And Delingpole is their poster-boy. He'd rather blame "watermelons" (those who are "green on the outside and red on the inside") for destroying the Earth than even think for a single moment of letting a word of truth cross his lips.
Unbelievably, a member of BLoW ("Back Local Windfarms") is still receiving nuisance letters from a truly bonkers person in the Lenches, more than a year after the thugs of VVASP bullied the local council into betraying the electorate. These letters, scrawled as if they were written in an asylum, come along every few weeks, usually accompanied by a clipping from the Express with their latest diatribe of nimby drivel.
We're willing to lay bets that the nimby nuisance of Church Lench will be posting our friend a clipping of Delingpole's massive Delingpole of anti-wind gibberish. And why not? If you're so soft in the head that you actually believe anything the Express publishes or Delingpole writes, then you're certainly silly enough to use it to harass somebody who's actually got a heart, a soul and a brain.
But there are liars, and there are damned liars, and then there are Delingpoles. And they're dangerous. Because they are quite, quite mad, and they're making a fortune out of stirring up the nasty nimbies and selling our children downriver. And that, folks, is treachery on an epic scale.
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
THE MADNESS GOES ON
How do we know that the anti-windfarm fanatics are losing the argument?
Their lies get louder and stupider.
And so we kick off with our old friends, those scoundrels of the Renewable Energy Foundation (don't be fooled by the worthy-sounding name: they hate windfarms and really don't give a damn about renewable energy).
In their most recent press release, the running-dogs of REF have announced that, inspite of overwhelming public opposition, 70% of windfarm applications are getting approved. Naturally, this must stop.
Ha ha ha ha ha - ! How low can REF go? First of all, their claim that there is overwhelming public opposition to windfarms. Is there any evidence for this? When every poll and survey carried out reveals that a clear majority of UK residents actually support windfarms and even believe that the government should be subsidising them?
What REF presumably means is that, at the local level, the witless, self-centred nimby maniacs (who regularly trot out REF propaganda) all too often manage to whip up opposition by lying about windfarms and bullying anyone who expresses an independent opinion. But that's not an overwhelming majority. As we've pointed out elsewhere, nimby groups - the Lenches' despicable VVASP cabal of frauds and thugs being a good example - routinely exaggerate the level of local opposition to a windfarm. So, while nimby groups lie (to themselves and to everybody else) about a mythical "overwhelming majority", the genuine majority of British people, as demonstrated time and time again, are strongly in favour of windfarms.
Secondly, REF even lied about the percentage of windfarm planning applications which are successful. They did this by means of the standard nimby practice of massaging the figures. In fact, more like 42% of windfarm planning applications eventually receive approval, and the timespans involved are getting longer (see this DECC graph: https://restats.decc.gov.uk/app/pub/repd/tracking)
So, two lies for the price of one - not bad, even by REF's standards.
And, of course, the mealy-mouthed myth-mongers of REF keep insisting that wind turbines are "inefficient". It's a familiar claim, and it's b*llsh*t. Alan Whitehead MP has taken the trouble to investigate the relative "efficiencies" of various power generation sources. Amazingly, wind power comes out just behind gas in the efficiency stakes, and ahead of nuclear and coal. See here:
http://www.alansenergyblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/theres-inefficient-and-then-theres-really-inefficient
Bearing in mind the fact that wind power is now cheaper than nuclear, gas and coal, as well as being considerably safer and much, much cleaner, to discover that it's also more efficient than two of the others and almost as efficient as gas means that, well folks, it's a no-brainer. Wind wins, every time, and only a nimby deadhead with personality problems would disagree with that.
Oh, but some people don't like the look of wind turbines. One of these people is Sir Simon Jenkins, who just happens to be the chair of the National Trust.
Jenkins doesn't like windfarms at all, and he's made that perfectly apparent in the past. But he's gone a bit further, and has actually done something quite naughty. In an interview with the Daily Torygraph, he has claimed that the National Trust is now "deeply sceptical" about wind turbines (which Jenkins, in his almighty weirdness, thinks are a "public menace"). He also advanced the usual, phenomenally stupid and - as we have just seen - utterly WRONG claim that windfarms are inefficient.
What makes Jenkins' loopy interview with the anti-renewables Telegraph so odd is that the National Trust has previously made clear that it is broadly in favour of windfarms. And no sooner had Simon Jenkins blown off about wind turbines to the Torygraph, than the National Trust announced that its Chair was talking nonsense.
What the National Trust actually said was this: "our chairman has long-held views on wind that don't necessarily chime with our current views as an organisation on wind". And Jenkins' claims that the charity was coming round to his blinkered way of thinking? "No," says the National Trust, "our position hasn't changed on renewable energy."
Read all about it here:
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2152561/national-trust-rejects-chairmans-anti-wind-power-comments
This all illustrates one of the fundamental problems of the wind power debate. The anti-wind nutters simply cannot be trusted. They are absolutely incapable of telling the truth. Jenkins, just because he doesn't like windfarms, lies about the stance of the nationwide charity he chairs and makes out that his own bigotry and foolish intolerance is shared by the rest of the organisation (of course, he spilled this gibberish to the Daily Telegraph which has a pretty impressive track record of publishing misleading rubbish and blatant lies about windfarms, presumably because its fogeyish readership lives on country estates where, if you're not earning nicely from turbines, you're likely to oppose them because they "ruin" "your" "view"). The charity then has to set the record straight by politely pointing out that its chair is a madman with truth issues.
At the same time, the REF (why isn't Simon Jenkins chair of that fake charity?) publishes a press release claiming - wrongly - that there is overwhelming public opposition to windfarms and - equally wrongly - that 7 out of 10 windfarms get planning permission.
What is this? Is this what Britain has become - a nation of liars and their lies? A country in which anyone who has a bee in his bonnet about windfarms can sound off to the right-wing press, spouting whatever nonsense pops into his mind, to the detriment of our nation's future?
The roll call of traitors grows longer every day. The wild-eyed nimbies out there just love it when the REF - founded by Noel Edmonds - unleashes another dose of anti-wind claptrap, or when someone like Simon Jenkins grossly misrepresents the facts. That, folks, is why it's taking longer and longer to get wind turbine applications approved - because of the demented gobbledegook that these fools are spreading.
Do we want the rest of the world to march ahead with renewables, sustainability and a low-carbon economy, while we sit around telling each other lies about renewables? Is that what we want? To be in hock to Russia for our relatively-inefficient, increasingly-expensive and not-very-carbon-neutral gas supplies?
These people are insane, and if the Daily Telegraph and the Blimps who read it had a trace of patriotism in their sclerotic arteries they would start telling the truth about windfarms. They're cheaper, cleaner, safer and just-as-if-not-more efficient that the other sources. And the overwhelming majority of Britons like them. Get over it.
Oh, and the Co-operative Group currently expects to exceed its target of £1bn invested in green energy projects by 2013. There's just so much demand out there for renewables. In the real world, that is. Not the bizarre alternative universe inhabited by the likes of Simon Jenkins, REF and the nimby nutters of Middle-brow England.
Their lies get louder and stupider.
And so we kick off with our old friends, those scoundrels of the Renewable Energy Foundation (don't be fooled by the worthy-sounding name: they hate windfarms and really don't give a damn about renewable energy).
In their most recent press release, the running-dogs of REF have announced that, inspite of overwhelming public opposition, 70% of windfarm applications are getting approved. Naturally, this must stop.
Ha ha ha ha ha - ! How low can REF go? First of all, their claim that there is overwhelming public opposition to windfarms. Is there any evidence for this? When every poll and survey carried out reveals that a clear majority of UK residents actually support windfarms and even believe that the government should be subsidising them?
What REF presumably means is that, at the local level, the witless, self-centred nimby maniacs (who regularly trot out REF propaganda) all too often manage to whip up opposition by lying about windfarms and bullying anyone who expresses an independent opinion. But that's not an overwhelming majority. As we've pointed out elsewhere, nimby groups - the Lenches' despicable VVASP cabal of frauds and thugs being a good example - routinely exaggerate the level of local opposition to a windfarm. So, while nimby groups lie (to themselves and to everybody else) about a mythical "overwhelming majority", the genuine majority of British people, as demonstrated time and time again, are strongly in favour of windfarms.
Secondly, REF even lied about the percentage of windfarm planning applications which are successful. They did this by means of the standard nimby practice of massaging the figures. In fact, more like 42% of windfarm planning applications eventually receive approval, and the timespans involved are getting longer (see this DECC graph: https://restats.decc.gov.uk/app/pub/repd/tracking)
So, two lies for the price of one - not bad, even by REF's standards.
And, of course, the mealy-mouthed myth-mongers of REF keep insisting that wind turbines are "inefficient". It's a familiar claim, and it's b*llsh*t. Alan Whitehead MP has taken the trouble to investigate the relative "efficiencies" of various power generation sources. Amazingly, wind power comes out just behind gas in the efficiency stakes, and ahead of nuclear and coal. See here:
http://www.alansenergyblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/theres-inefficient-and-then-theres-really-inefficient
Bearing in mind the fact that wind power is now cheaper than nuclear, gas and coal, as well as being considerably safer and much, much cleaner, to discover that it's also more efficient than two of the others and almost as efficient as gas means that, well folks, it's a no-brainer. Wind wins, every time, and only a nimby deadhead with personality problems would disagree with that.
Oh, but some people don't like the look of wind turbines. One of these people is Sir Simon Jenkins, who just happens to be the chair of the National Trust.
Jenkins doesn't like windfarms at all, and he's made that perfectly apparent in the past. But he's gone a bit further, and has actually done something quite naughty. In an interview with the Daily Torygraph, he has claimed that the National Trust is now "deeply sceptical" about wind turbines (which Jenkins, in his almighty weirdness, thinks are a "public menace"). He also advanced the usual, phenomenally stupid and - as we have just seen - utterly WRONG claim that windfarms are inefficient.
What makes Jenkins' loopy interview with the anti-renewables Telegraph so odd is that the National Trust has previously made clear that it is broadly in favour of windfarms. And no sooner had Simon Jenkins blown off about wind turbines to the Torygraph, than the National Trust announced that its Chair was talking nonsense.
What the National Trust actually said was this: "our chairman has long-held views on wind that don't necessarily chime with our current views as an organisation on wind". And Jenkins' claims that the charity was coming round to his blinkered way of thinking? "No," says the National Trust, "our position hasn't changed on renewable energy."
Read all about it here:
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2152561/national-trust-rejects-chairmans-anti-wind-power-comments
This all illustrates one of the fundamental problems of the wind power debate. The anti-wind nutters simply cannot be trusted. They are absolutely incapable of telling the truth. Jenkins, just because he doesn't like windfarms, lies about the stance of the nationwide charity he chairs and makes out that his own bigotry and foolish intolerance is shared by the rest of the organisation (of course, he spilled this gibberish to the Daily Telegraph which has a pretty impressive track record of publishing misleading rubbish and blatant lies about windfarms, presumably because its fogeyish readership lives on country estates where, if you're not earning nicely from turbines, you're likely to oppose them because they "ruin" "your" "view"). The charity then has to set the record straight by politely pointing out that its chair is a madman with truth issues.
At the same time, the REF (why isn't Simon Jenkins chair of that fake charity?) publishes a press release claiming - wrongly - that there is overwhelming public opposition to windfarms and - equally wrongly - that 7 out of 10 windfarms get planning permission.
What is this? Is this what Britain has become - a nation of liars and their lies? A country in which anyone who has a bee in his bonnet about windfarms can sound off to the right-wing press, spouting whatever nonsense pops into his mind, to the detriment of our nation's future?
The roll call of traitors grows longer every day. The wild-eyed nimbies out there just love it when the REF - founded by Noel Edmonds - unleashes another dose of anti-wind claptrap, or when someone like Simon Jenkins grossly misrepresents the facts. That, folks, is why it's taking longer and longer to get wind turbine applications approved - because of the demented gobbledegook that these fools are spreading.
Do we want the rest of the world to march ahead with renewables, sustainability and a low-carbon economy, while we sit around telling each other lies about renewables? Is that what we want? To be in hock to Russia for our relatively-inefficient, increasingly-expensive and not-very-carbon-neutral gas supplies?
These people are insane, and if the Daily Telegraph and the Blimps who read it had a trace of patriotism in their sclerotic arteries they would start telling the truth about windfarms. They're cheaper, cleaner, safer and just-as-if-not-more efficient that the other sources. And the overwhelming majority of Britons like them. Get over it.
Oh, and the Co-operative Group currently expects to exceed its target of £1bn invested in green energy projects by 2013. There's just so much demand out there for renewables. In the real world, that is. Not the bizarre alternative universe inhabited by the likes of Simon Jenkins, REF and the nimby nutters of Middle-brow England.
Thursday, 9 February 2012
DISSECTING A NIMBY RANT
Nimbies never learn. They're like Daleks. They go round screeching out their nimby nonsense and insisting that absolutely everybody must - and even does - agree with them, regardless of the evidence. As we saw in the Lenchwick Fiasco, they are prepared to tolerate no opinion other than their own, and will go to terrifying lengths to set up their own smokescreen of lies and then make sure that nobody, repeat nobody, else gets a word in. The very notion of free and open debate terrifies them, because it's only by enforcing a monopoly of opinion that they can avoid being exposed as morons, liars and frauds.
They also like trolling the pages of green and pro-renewables websites looking for an excuse to throw a tantrum.
One pro-renewables website posted up a blog page giving supporters advice about writing to the local press. Naturally, this perfectly fair and reasonable piece attracted a nimby Dalek. And so his wildly irrational rant began:
Could you please also include in your letters the devastation that wind turbines cause to unspoilt landscapes and communities?
Now, let's just stop him there, because he's already kicked off with two massive nimby myths. The first is the myth of the "unspoilt" countryside. It's easy enough, if you live in a bubble of your own smugness, to fall for this myth. But a moment's reflection, and the least appreciation of history, will tell you that it's nonsense. Try finding any part of the British landscape that hasn't been altered by human beings - go on, try and find one. Or, put it this way: if the "unspoilt landscape" you're on about has got fields, hedges, livestock, drainage, roads, lanes, pylons, canals, ancient heritage sites and not an awful lot of deciduous woodland on it, then it is NOT unspoilt. It has been changed. By people.
The other myth is that wind turbines devastate communities. Even when those wind turbines don't even exist yet. Or, put it another way: a windfarm that doesn't even exist is blamed for "devastating" a community.
This is impossible, of course, and if your community has been devastated by something that doesn't actually exist, then you and your neighbours have lost your heads.
Windfarms do NOT devastate communities. That is a fact. What devastates communities is nimby idiots who launch angry, noisy and downright dishonest anti-windfarm campaigns. We saw this during the Lenchwick Scandal. The weirdos lie their heads off in order to whip up unnecessary fear and alarm and then come down very, very hard indeed on those who have the capacity for abstract thought. That is what ruins communities. Not a windfarm that doesn't exist yet.
Anyway, Nimby Idiot (who signs himself "Hammer" - it's odd that these passionate protectors of "unspoilt" landscapes and communities love to give themselves violent profile names and pictures: tells you something about what they're really like) - he continues:
Here in Mid Wales, we are threatened with hundreds of extra turbines, which the vast majority of the Monmouthshire population don't want.
Okay, first of all - the ludicrously emotive and unreasonable language. These people are not being "threatened" with hundreds of extra turbines. Partly because the local communities will benefit, financially and in other ways, from the turbines. If you think you're being "threatened" with turbines, then you've got a screw loose.
Secondly, are we sure that the "vast majority" of the local population don't want them? Nimbies are notoriously for grossly misrepresenting the level of opposition, sometimes wheeling in their local MP to lie about public opinion (as VVASP did at the Wychavon District Council Planning Meeting). In fact, time and time again we discover that the majority of local people are not opposed to the turbines. But the Daleks insist that, because they are opposed to them, then everybody else must be as well, and so they distort the figures accordingly. Besides which, if you set out to devastate your own community by spreading a load of alarmist lies about the proposed windfarm, then a few sheep will start bleating in chorus. If they had the facts, rather than nimby lies, to base their opinions on, things might be different.
And so he goes on -
In addition to the turbines, we are threatened [again!] with a spider's web of electricity pylons and a 19-acre sub station that are going to ruin either the Upper Severn or Vyrnwy Valleys.
A "spider's web" of electricity pylons would be something to see! We can't really imagine what such a thing is, but we're fairly confident that - like all the other pylons that have been in existence for almost 100 years - we'll soon learn to live with them.
Since the economy of Mid Wales is underpinned by tourism, you can imagine the impact that wind turbines and hundreds of pylons and high powered lines is going to have on employment here.
Yes, we can imagine that, actually. There will be no impact on employment at all, except that some local jobs will be created. This is yet another nimby myth in action - the myth that windfarms adversely impact on business and tourism. They don't, as anyone who's been to Scotland, Cornwall or even Mid Wales will be able to tell you. But note how facetiously this "Hammer" nincompoop smuggles in the idea that they might. He assumes that we will imagine a local economy devastated by the turbines. And that's all we can do, because that devastation exists, and will continue to exist, entirely in the nimby imagination.
Perhaps, after your supporters have erected all their turbines against the wishes of local people, the last one to leave our beautiful region would be kind enough to turn off the lights!
What a strange sentence. Most windfarm supporters will not be erecting all the turbines - we'll leave that to the developers and their expert contractors - and the whole point is that, by doing so, the lights won't go out! Is this addled dimwit suggesting that we should erect all our turbines in his "beautiful" region and then leave all the people there in darkness? What an idiot!
Of course, the real purpose of this insane sentence is to allude to the Nazi invasion of various parts of Europe in the 1930s. Mr Raving Looney here is hoping that we'll all make the connection: conscientious supporters of renewable energy = Nazis; misinformed and selfish locals = freedom-fighters; arrival of windfarm = World War II. Honestly, you couldn't make it up, could you? Except that this drooling pranny did.
We keep hearing disturbing noises from the Coalition Government that sometimes the opinions of local people have to be over-ruled in the national interests.
Yep. And libraries are being closed, people with disabilities targetted, the NHS is being privatised by stealth and public sector workers sacked. Get real.
The last time we heard a similar statement was when the Tryweryn valley was flooded to provide water for Liverpool. That part of Wales will never forgive the Government of the day for riding roughshod over their wishes. Neither will the people of Montgomeryshire.
Nice to know that the people of Montgomeryshire are still standing firm with the displaced villagers of Tryweryn after all these years. At a guess, though, we'd have to say that "Hammer", whoever he is, doesn't sound like a real local. More likely, he's an Englishman who moved to Wales in search of that "unspoilt landscape" that he apparently believes in. And, consequently, he's profoundly ignorant of Welsh history.
When the Tryweryn river was dammed to create a reservoir in 1965, 67 inhabitants of the village of Capel Celyn were forcibly removed from their homes and their village was drowned. This was indeed to provide water for the City of Liverpool. It's still a sore point today.
But Mr Massive Nitwit - or "Hammer", as he prefers to be known - clearly isn't a real Welshman or he would never have desecrated the memory of the Capel Celyn victims by comparing what happened to them with the imminent appearance of a few more turbines in Mid Wales. Quite frankly, the man is insane to make such an offensive and foolish comparison. Nobody - but nobody - will be displaced from their homes by the proposed turbines. No villages will be wiped off the map, no ancestors dug up from their graves to be buried elsewhere, and families who have lived in the same valley for untold generations will be dragged from their homes by force.
YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR TINY LITTLE MIND TO IMAGINE THAT THE PROPOSED WINDFARM OR WINDFARMS WOULD BE ANYTHING LIKE WHAT HAPPENED AT CAPEL CELYN!!!!!!!!!
This, though, is the thing with the nimby nutters, and especially those who have moved into somebody else's village. They have no sense of perspective whatsoever. A few wind turbines which will have absolutely no negative impact on business, tourism, the environment, property prices, health or anything else for that matter get compared with the Lights Going Out Across Europe and one of the greatest outrages committed in twentieth century Wales.
So, I'm sorry to tell you this, "Hammer", but you're a maniac.
You are wrong on every level. You have no evidence whatsoever to back up your extremist claims. They are based entirely on prejudice and insinuation. And you have NO RIGHT to drag the people of Capel Celyn into your witless and selfish cause. You are a Grade-A idiot who has almost certainly done more harm to his community than foot and mouth did. In a sane world, you would be removed from society for the good of all.
In Denmark last year, wind power accounted for 24% of all electricity production. You've probably been telling anyone who will listen to your idiotic dribblings that Denmark "gave up" on wind power years ago. But that isn't true, just like everything else you've said about wind power isn't true. So you're not just grossly insensitive and borderline certifiable - you're a Massive Liar as well!
Europe's bill for oil shot up by 100 billion euro over the last financial year. The French government has just released figures which reveal that nuclear power is much, much more expensive than anyone had previously admitted. Domestic energy bills rose dramatically as the global price of wholesale gas went up, and there are indications that the gas-exporting countries like Russia are beginning to shut down the pipelines again.
And you, "Hammer" - you hairy-eared, swivel-eyed, flatulent twit - you are trying to stop Britain from planning its way out this energy crisis because you don't want to see a turbine or a pylon!
Cretin.
They also like trolling the pages of green and pro-renewables websites looking for an excuse to throw a tantrum.
One pro-renewables website posted up a blog page giving supporters advice about writing to the local press. Naturally, this perfectly fair and reasonable piece attracted a nimby Dalek. And so his wildly irrational rant began:
Could you please also include in your letters the devastation that wind turbines cause to unspoilt landscapes and communities?
Now, let's just stop him there, because he's already kicked off with two massive nimby myths. The first is the myth of the "unspoilt" countryside. It's easy enough, if you live in a bubble of your own smugness, to fall for this myth. But a moment's reflection, and the least appreciation of history, will tell you that it's nonsense. Try finding any part of the British landscape that hasn't been altered by human beings - go on, try and find one. Or, put it this way: if the "unspoilt landscape" you're on about has got fields, hedges, livestock, drainage, roads, lanes, pylons, canals, ancient heritage sites and not an awful lot of deciduous woodland on it, then it is NOT unspoilt. It has been changed. By people.
The other myth is that wind turbines devastate communities. Even when those wind turbines don't even exist yet. Or, put it another way: a windfarm that doesn't even exist is blamed for "devastating" a community.
This is impossible, of course, and if your community has been devastated by something that doesn't actually exist, then you and your neighbours have lost your heads.
Windfarms do NOT devastate communities. That is a fact. What devastates communities is nimby idiots who launch angry, noisy and downright dishonest anti-windfarm campaigns. We saw this during the Lenchwick Scandal. The weirdos lie their heads off in order to whip up unnecessary fear and alarm and then come down very, very hard indeed on those who have the capacity for abstract thought. That is what ruins communities. Not a windfarm that doesn't exist yet.
Anyway, Nimby Idiot (who signs himself "Hammer" - it's odd that these passionate protectors of "unspoilt" landscapes and communities love to give themselves violent profile names and pictures: tells you something about what they're really like) - he continues:
Here in Mid Wales, we are threatened with hundreds of extra turbines, which the vast majority of the Monmouthshire population don't want.
Okay, first of all - the ludicrously emotive and unreasonable language. These people are not being "threatened" with hundreds of extra turbines. Partly because the local communities will benefit, financially and in other ways, from the turbines. If you think you're being "threatened" with turbines, then you've got a screw loose.
Secondly, are we sure that the "vast majority" of the local population don't want them? Nimbies are notoriously for grossly misrepresenting the level of opposition, sometimes wheeling in their local MP to lie about public opinion (as VVASP did at the Wychavon District Council Planning Meeting). In fact, time and time again we discover that the majority of local people are not opposed to the turbines. But the Daleks insist that, because they are opposed to them, then everybody else must be as well, and so they distort the figures accordingly. Besides which, if you set out to devastate your own community by spreading a load of alarmist lies about the proposed windfarm, then a few sheep will start bleating in chorus. If they had the facts, rather than nimby lies, to base their opinions on, things might be different.
And so he goes on -
In addition to the turbines, we are threatened [again!] with a spider's web of electricity pylons and a 19-acre sub station that are going to ruin either the Upper Severn or Vyrnwy Valleys.
A "spider's web" of electricity pylons would be something to see! We can't really imagine what such a thing is, but we're fairly confident that - like all the other pylons that have been in existence for almost 100 years - we'll soon learn to live with them.
Since the economy of Mid Wales is underpinned by tourism, you can imagine the impact that wind turbines and hundreds of pylons and high powered lines is going to have on employment here.
Yes, we can imagine that, actually. There will be no impact on employment at all, except that some local jobs will be created. This is yet another nimby myth in action - the myth that windfarms adversely impact on business and tourism. They don't, as anyone who's been to Scotland, Cornwall or even Mid Wales will be able to tell you. But note how facetiously this "Hammer" nincompoop smuggles in the idea that they might. He assumes that we will imagine a local economy devastated by the turbines. And that's all we can do, because that devastation exists, and will continue to exist, entirely in the nimby imagination.
Perhaps, after your supporters have erected all their turbines against the wishes of local people, the last one to leave our beautiful region would be kind enough to turn off the lights!
What a strange sentence. Most windfarm supporters will not be erecting all the turbines - we'll leave that to the developers and their expert contractors - and the whole point is that, by doing so, the lights won't go out! Is this addled dimwit suggesting that we should erect all our turbines in his "beautiful" region and then leave all the people there in darkness? What an idiot!
Of course, the real purpose of this insane sentence is to allude to the Nazi invasion of various parts of Europe in the 1930s. Mr Raving Looney here is hoping that we'll all make the connection: conscientious supporters of renewable energy = Nazis; misinformed and selfish locals = freedom-fighters; arrival of windfarm = World War II. Honestly, you couldn't make it up, could you? Except that this drooling pranny did.
We keep hearing disturbing noises from the Coalition Government that sometimes the opinions of local people have to be over-ruled in the national interests.
Yep. And libraries are being closed, people with disabilities targetted, the NHS is being privatised by stealth and public sector workers sacked. Get real.
The last time we heard a similar statement was when the Tryweryn valley was flooded to provide water for Liverpool. That part of Wales will never forgive the Government of the day for riding roughshod over their wishes. Neither will the people of Montgomeryshire.
Nice to know that the people of Montgomeryshire are still standing firm with the displaced villagers of Tryweryn after all these years. At a guess, though, we'd have to say that "Hammer", whoever he is, doesn't sound like a real local. More likely, he's an Englishman who moved to Wales in search of that "unspoilt landscape" that he apparently believes in. And, consequently, he's profoundly ignorant of Welsh history.
When the Tryweryn river was dammed to create a reservoir in 1965, 67 inhabitants of the village of Capel Celyn were forcibly removed from their homes and their village was drowned. This was indeed to provide water for the City of Liverpool. It's still a sore point today.
But Mr Massive Nitwit - or "Hammer", as he prefers to be known - clearly isn't a real Welshman or he would never have desecrated the memory of the Capel Celyn victims by comparing what happened to them with the imminent appearance of a few more turbines in Mid Wales. Quite frankly, the man is insane to make such an offensive and foolish comparison. Nobody - but nobody - will be displaced from their homes by the proposed turbines. No villages will be wiped off the map, no ancestors dug up from their graves to be buried elsewhere, and families who have lived in the same valley for untold generations will be dragged from their homes by force.
YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR TINY LITTLE MIND TO IMAGINE THAT THE PROPOSED WINDFARM OR WINDFARMS WOULD BE ANYTHING LIKE WHAT HAPPENED AT CAPEL CELYN!!!!!!!!!
This, though, is the thing with the nimby nutters, and especially those who have moved into somebody else's village. They have no sense of perspective whatsoever. A few wind turbines which will have absolutely no negative impact on business, tourism, the environment, property prices, health or anything else for that matter get compared with the Lights Going Out Across Europe and one of the greatest outrages committed in twentieth century Wales.
So, I'm sorry to tell you this, "Hammer", but you're a maniac.
You are wrong on every level. You have no evidence whatsoever to back up your extremist claims. They are based entirely on prejudice and insinuation. And you have NO RIGHT to drag the people of Capel Celyn into your witless and selfish cause. You are a Grade-A idiot who has almost certainly done more harm to his community than foot and mouth did. In a sane world, you would be removed from society for the good of all.
In Denmark last year, wind power accounted for 24% of all electricity production. You've probably been telling anyone who will listen to your idiotic dribblings that Denmark "gave up" on wind power years ago. But that isn't true, just like everything else you've said about wind power isn't true. So you're not just grossly insensitive and borderline certifiable - you're a Massive Liar as well!
Europe's bill for oil shot up by 100 billion euro over the last financial year. The French government has just released figures which reveal that nuclear power is much, much more expensive than anyone had previously admitted. Domestic energy bills rose dramatically as the global price of wholesale gas went up, and there are indications that the gas-exporting countries like Russia are beginning to shut down the pipelines again.
And you, "Hammer" - you hairy-eared, swivel-eyed, flatulent twit - you are trying to stop Britain from planning its way out this energy crisis because you don't want to see a turbine or a pylon!
Cretin.
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