STAYING OUT OF TOUCH

That bundle of contradictions and dodgy information known as 'VVASP NEWS' has come through our door.

So, what's the latest from La-La Land?

Well, you'll be pleased to hear that their Open Gardens day raised £466 for the anti-windfarm fighting fund, so well done anyone who thought they were just visiting a garden and not contributing to a time-wasting political cause. Then again, £466 would probably pay for about twenty minutes of a barrister's time, so there's a long way to go yet.

Also, apparently, windfarms are no longer a terrible problem. Vale Villagers Against Scottish Power have launched their latest campaign for the summer. Entitled 'Keep Your Distance', the campaign offers local dupes the chance to put all new hideous placards up and even to wear T-shirts emblazoned with the words '2km OK'.

VVASP insist that they campaign for 'the right technology in the right environment'. Now, apparently, the 'right environment' is two kilometres away.

They're on a hiding to nothing. The '2 kilometre' minimum is an arbitrary distance, based on the myth that, in Scotland, all windfarms must be kept at least two kilometres from the nearest dwelling. Like all the VVASP's anti-windfarm myths, this one was exploded a long time ago. But, apparently, two kilometres away is 'OK'.

This is a new development, probably triggered by the fact that people in the Lenches have had chance to see a map, acquired by dubious means, which shows the likely sites of the turbines. Most of the Lenches lot will have realised, then, that the turbines are unlikely to affect them. VVASP, knowing that they have to find some grounds to hold up the process, are launching their '2km OK' campaign because ... well, because there isn't really anything else they can campaign about.

But they're still pushing the wholly mythical 'noisy windfarms' nonsense. A report is quoted, written by a 'Practising GP', which indicates that wind turbines generate noise and affect health.

As usual, though, their information is selective and misleading.

NPower opened their Bears Down windfarm near Padstow in Cornwall in 2001 to 96% local approval (http://www.npowerrenewables.com/bearsdown/results.asp). Three years later, Dr Amanda Harry, a GP based in Plymouth, polled fourteen locals and discovered that the windfarm had affected their 'quality of life'.

If that sample seems rather too small to be scientific, it should be pointed out that those locals all lived in a caravan park, comprising fourteen static caravans, which is situated just 500 metres from the turbines. Disgruntled, disaffected, not really a part of the local community and considerably closer to the turbines than anyone else - or anyone in the Lenches will be - the fourteen caravanners were only too happy to whinge to an interfering GP.

Because Dr Harry's not-very-scientific-or-conclusive report was quoted in the Telegraph in 2007, VVASP are able to pretend that her conclusions are based on 'years' of study.

Ha! The usual bullshit. The British Wind Energy Association has pointed out, repeatedly, that 'noisy' windfarms are a myth and that there's no actual evidence of any kind to back up Dr Harry's claims.

Which is a pattern repeated wherever a small minority of people in the vicinity of a working windfarm complain about noise, even when they can neither see nor hear the turbines. There's no evidence, no scientific measurements, nothing but a small group of people grumbling.

In an earlier blog, I pointed out that people are perfectly capable of convincing themselves of all sorts of strange things. This is what makes VVASP's continued attempts to convince local residents that windfarms are noisy so unbelievably sick and irresponsible - because some people are able to BELIEVE that they can hear them, whether they actually can or not.

If you accept the evidence - from scientists, local residents and your own eyes and ears - you'll know that windfarms are not noisy. If you believe the craven bullshitters of VVASP and their like, you'll think that windfarms are noisy. The first lot will not hear them. The second lot might think that they can.

VVASP are strenuously striving to ruin your quality of life by making you believe in something which doesn't exist!!!

Of course, the real issue is whether the propagandists of VVASP actually do believe their own nonsense, or are they intelligent enough to know that it's nonsense but still want to foist it on their friends and neighbours for political reasons.

But Dr Amanda Harry's 'report' is of no use or value, scientifically. We could all go and find fourteen people who don't like a nearby windfarm and blatantly ignore the vast majority of local residents who are happy with them.

The pity is that VVASP are so chronically incapable of being straight about this.

Oh, and anyone caught wearing a T-shirt with '2km OK - KEEP YOUR DISTANCE' on it is obviously asking for normal people to keep two kilometres away from them. Those of us who know the kind of people behind the VVASP campaign will acknowledge that two kilometres is the minimal distance we would want to be from any of them.