WHO REALLY CARES

I was talking today to a genuine local, born and bred in the area, of good farming stock.

In other words, not one of those nimbies who made a bit of money and moved to the countryside, but a real nth-generation local.

This particular person was hugely in favour of the windfarm. For the sake of future generations.

This same person has seen, in recent years, a massive influx of new people - those who've bought their little home in the country, but who have no idea at all about how the countryside works.

These are people who think that the countryside is just scenery. They resent farmers, with their dirt and machinery and noisy animals. They complain when the farming community gets on with the work that they and their forefathers have been doing since the year dot.

These maniacs - for there can be no other word for them - genuinely seem to think that the countryside belongs to them. It doesn't seem to occur to them ever that the countryside is a working environment, or that food has to be cultivated. Simply because they could afford to buy a house in a pretty rural area, they think that all farming should stop, that the land should lie idle, not doing anything, being pretty and peaceful and thoroughly unproductive ...

BECAUSE THAT'S THE IMAGE THEY HAVE OF THE COUNTRYSIDE.

Of course, these same immigrants are campaigning to stop the Lenchwick Windfarm. It doesn't fit in with their rather crazy idea of what happens in the country.

It's been a tragedy, watching this rural area change as more and more people move out to the country from the cities and try to change what the countryside is to suit their ignorant ideas.

And it's telling that so many genuine locals - longterm inhabitants, and the farming community - support the windfarm.

It also makes you wonder who really does care about the countryside. The immigrants, who want to stop farming and any other productive activity which spoils their idea of what the countryside should be? Or the natives, who know that if the land isn't working, then there isn't really a point to it?

When the lunatic nimbies of VVASP make stupid claims like the windfarm will 'kill the countryside', what are they really saying?

They don't actually mean that the windfarm will kill the countryside, because you'd have to be absolutely off your rocker to believe that.

What they mean is, the windfarm will spoil their silly idea of the countryside as a little green haven exclusively for the pleasure of people like them.

The genuine locals know for sure that the windfarm will not kill the countryside. It'll provide some income for local farmers and landowners, without preventing them from pursuing their regular farming activities around the turbines. It'll also encourage tourism - elsewhere in the country, windfarms have proven to be tourist attractions. And, of course, it'll mean that the land is being used for what it's there for - producing stuff (in this case, clean, green, renewable energy).

But the immigrants hate all that. They want their dimwit notion of THEIR countryside, a dead, silent, empty place for their own exclusive use, to prevail. They don't want others enjoying it, and they certainly don't want the traditional custodians of the countryside to make a living from it.

It is the nimby brigade, the cretinous nookies of VVASP and their selfish counterparts across the country, who are doing their utmost to kill the countryside.

The windfarm will only breathe life into a rural scene which is being systematically ruined by the morons who oppose windfarms.

Who knows best, then? The newcomers, or the genuine locals?