Tuesday 30 June 2009

LET'S BE FRANK

Frank Hill is unrepentant.

As you may remember, Mr Hill is chair of the Worcestershire branch of CPRE. He has been fooled by the loons of VVASP into supporting their cause.

Even though this has led to the resignation of at least three local members of CPRE Worcestershire, Frank Hill insists that he's done the right thing. For a start, with 15 members in the Lenches (including three parish councils), he feels that he had to support the 'majority view' or risk further resignations.

Hmmnn ... do you detect something vaguely Iranian about that phrase 'the majority view'? After all, as we know, only in Loony Lench - sorry, the parish of Church Lench - was there a majority opposed to the windfarm, and even then it was a pretty slim majority (57%). In the other parishes, the majority of those consulted by their parish councils were NOT opposed to the turbines.

Typically, VVASP has misrepresented, as they always do, the extent of their grassroots support. What is more, it's one thing for Frank Hill to insist that the parish councils are opposed to the windfarm, but another to acknowledge that Church Lench Parish Council was bullied into resigning en masse so that a new bunch, committed to fighting ScottishPower's proposals, could take over - a low trick they tried, unsuccessfully, to repeat elsewhere.

See what I mean about Iranian-style democracy (or the kind that Mr Robert Mugabe believes in)? The majority of locals are NOT opposed to the windfarm.

In defending his misinformed decision, Frank Hill spouts the usual guff about windfarms. Yes, he's in favour of them, as long as they're not around here. By his own admission, we would need thousands of these turbines, up and down the land, for the government's renewable energy targets to be met - so his answer is, don't put any up in Worcestershire.

Either they're needed, which means we should have some, or they're not, which means there's no need for them anywhere. You can't have it both ways. The standard VVASP gobbledegook - i.e. pro-renewable energy, as long as it's somewhere else - is meaningless. It betrays the real motives behind VVASP's campaign. Selfishness. Ignorance. Property values.

Frank Hill's trump card is a masterpiece of VVASP-type nonsense. Even though the turbines don't work (yeah, right), the blade-tips can travel at 150 mph. This, Mr Hill insists, must be killing small birds. Okay, so the RSPB doesn't have a problem with windfarms any more, and in fact has called for a massive increase in the number of turbines and short shrift for the kind of self-centred zanies who oppose them, but Frank Hill knows better. Small birds may be dying in their millions, shredded mercilessly by these wildly spinning blades, and we'll never be sure because THERE'S NO EVIDENCE.

That's right. No evidence that wind turbines pulverise small birds. How sinister is that? It's a conspiracy, that's what it is. All these small birds vanishing without trace, and without anyone noticing! Something must be done!

Mr Hill can squirm as much as he likes. He can reach out in all directions to find some weasly justifications for his silly decision. He can kid himself that he's only reflecting the views of the people, and he can fantasise about his imaginary disappearing birds. But it makes no difference, in the end.

He has been conned by VVASP. And he's going to look pretty silly when all their lies are exposed as self-serving hogwash.

Monday 29 June 2009

HIDDEN AGENDA

Another local periodical has entered the debate about windfarms.

The Vale Magazine reaches some 60,000 readers across the Cotswolds and the Vale of Evesham. In their July 2009 issue, they published an article, entitled 'A Breath of Fresh Air', by 'Environmental Scientist' Dr John Sandalls. The subtitle was 'Is windpower fuelled by hot air and is nuclear the real deal?'

Dr Sandalls poured cold water all over the issue of wind-generated electricity, claiming that 'the costs of manufacture and erection are not insignificant' and that 'On grounds of reliability, wind scores no points at all.'

Could this Dr John Sandalls, 'Environmental Scientist', be in any way related to the John Sandalls who, in 2004, published 'Thirty-Six Years at the Atomic: My Time at AERE Harwell, 1958-1994'?

THAT John Sandalls is as passionate advocate of nuclear power ... just like the Dr John Sandalls who, in the article published in The Vale Magazine, argued that 'it is a pity that short-sighted political objectives and groundless fears over safety ever interrupted our original nuclear programme'.

It was precisely that argument that John Sandalls advanced in his book about working at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) Harwell.

You see, basically, Sandalls is an embittered man. He resents the fact that Harwell ceased to be a major centre of research into nuclear power.

And of course, being fanatically pro-nuclear, he has no time for the 'greens' and such 21st century energy solutions as windpower.

Like all scientists who are still stuck in the last century, Dr Sandalls steadfastly downplays the real threats inherent in nuclear power, such as the fact that no one - I repeat, NO ONE - has the foggiest idea of how to protect dangerous nuclear waste for very long.

On 15 April, the secretary of state for energy and climate change (Ed Miliband) released a document which contained a list of 11 sites which would 'welcome' new nuclear power plants. All of these sites are on the coast - which, if global warming leads to what pretty well every expert says it will, is hardly safe. Four of the proposed sites - Bradwell, Hinkley, Dungeness and Sizewell - are at risk of flooding (according to the Flood Hazard Research Centre at Middlesex University), and wasn't it Sizewell which recently managed to detect, by accident, a radioactive leak which had been going on for fifty years?

This is what Dr Sandalls wants (presumably because, otherwise, all his happy years at Harwell would have been a total waste of time) - more nuclear power stations, more threats to health and security, more damage to the environment and more hazardous waste which someone (God knows who) will have to safeguard for hundreds of thousands of years.

So the costs of windfarm manufacture and erection are 'not insignificant', hunh?

What about the costs of nuclear power stations and their waste products?

Anyway, that's all beside the point. What matters is that The Vale Magazine published the views of an 'Environmental Scientist' who doesn't give a crap about the environment. Getting an apologist for the nuclear industry to write about windpower is like getting someone from the BNP to write about immigration.

So - more fuel to the liars and myth-mongers of VVASP who, just like John Sandalls, will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world.

Tuesday 16 June 2009

OPEN GARDENS CLOSED MINDS

Well, at least they had a nice day for it.

A short while ago, simple little posters started appearing around our local villages. They advertised what might be thought of as a quintessentially English, rural, summertime pleasure: the opportunity to visit and explore some of the more adorable gardens in the area last Sunday.

Only if you looked VERY closely at these rather old-fashioned posters might you have noticed that all proceeds from this event were to go to the anti-windfarm protest group, Vale Villagers Against Scottish Power (VVASP).

As stated in one of the earlier postings on this blog, VVASP need to raise money. A lot of money. Good barristers don't come cheap, and if the anti-windfarm numpties are to hold up the planning process until - what, the cows come home? Someone discovers free energy? - they're going to need oodles of cash just to waste a large amount of time.

So events like the charmingly quaint 'Open Gardens' day are really just there to take money from people and put it towards a nonsensical and foolish delaying tactic.

I wonder how many people who went for a wander round somebody or other's garden realised that they had been lured into a political fundraiser.

Sadly, where the village of Church Lench is concerned, pretty well EVERYTHING has been taken over by the dull supporters of VVASP. It started, more or less, with the parish council. The shrieking plebs of VVASP caused so much trouble that the original parish council resigned en masse, allowing the bloody-minded nimbies to commandeer the parish council (they tried to do the same thing in Norton & Lenchwick, but even physical violence wouldn't work there).

Since then, barely any committee in Church Lench hasn't been the victim of a VVASP takeover. So now, any event in the village - fun runs, entertainments, annual occasions - is, in effect, a VVASP political rally. It's an (unofficial) fundraiser for a cause supported by braindead climate change deniers and self-centred 'I don't want a turbine where I might catch a glimpse of it' morons.

No wonder that some of the more sober residents of the relevant villages are sick of the VVASP and its despicable tactics. Nor that thoughtful individuals are beginning to think seriously about moving away. It's not the windfarm they're against - it's what they've discovered about their arrogant, aggressive, intolerant neighbours which has made them so unhappy about staying.

Not so long ago, these villages were genuinely friendly communities with a rich social life. Now, they're hate-filled, single-minded and obsessed with the phantoms they themselves have created. They've lied so much about the impact of wind turbines that they've started believing their own lies. The unscrupulous ring-leaders of the VVASP bullshit-machine have taken over pretty well every aspect of communal life in the villages.

Showing a total lack of persective, the VVASP has banged on and on about the proposed windfarm affecting the residents' quality of life and killing the Vale countryside. Both claims are ludicrous and intentionally misleading. It is the VVASP which is ruining the quality of life of the more balanced and intelligent villagers. And it is VVASP which is 'killing' the countryside, both by misrepresenting what the countryside actually is and in driving out anyone with a brain cell and an awareness of global issues.

Village life as we used to know it has finished. It's dead, killed by crazies who can't figure out a few basic facts, by liars who put their own narrow interests ahead of everything else, and by the kind of person who will invite you to have a look at their garden and then sting you for a contribution to an immoral and unjustifiable political campaign.

Bring on the turbines! They can't do anywhere near as much damage to the local area as VVASP have already done.

Thursday 11 June 2009

GETTING LEFT BEHIND

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is great. He's not just a TV chef. He's a campaigner. I genuinely believe he's at the forefront of our thinking about food. About responsible, ethical, healthy, wholesome and organic produce. About wasting nothing. About growing our own.

And last night, on his programme, he erected a wind turbine to help power his substantial family home and business in Dorset.

My last post was about windfarms becoming a part of the national consciousness. So, too, are turbines. Perhaps they don't yet have the impact - and what will soon be the iconic status - of windfarms, but let's face it, we're going to be seeing more of them.

Think about it: how long will it be before most, if not all of our homes and businesses are powering themselves using renewable energy sources? Not long, I suspect, given that oil's running out, so is gas (and global politics make gas an unreliable resource), coal is deadly and nuclear ... well, if you don't think about it, nuclear's great, but if you do think about it, it's possibly the world's worst nightmare. Which just leaves those lovely things: the sun, the wind, the waves.

So what if the protesters against the proposed Lenchwick Windfarm were to get their way (perish the thought)?

First of all, they'd have thrown the concerns of the next few generations back in their faces, as if to say - Go to hell! We've got the views from our gardens to think about! So don't come to us with your worries about climate change, global warming and the incipient energy crisis!

Secondly, they'll have made fools of themselves and, more importantly, those poor dumb clucks who were frightened or bullied into supporting their cause. Because little by little it will become clear just how many lies VVASP told about windfarms. And, really, who likes being lied to? Who's going to want to admit that they were fooled and coerced into believing a whole load of hogwash just so that a few nimbies could continue to live in the past?

Thirdly, they'll be remembered as traitors to their own people, and to the planet. Children in the future will be taught that these stupid, selfish, arrogant people actively stood in the way of progress, of clean energy and a sustainable future.

Fourthly, with any luck, they'll be the first to have their electricity cut off. After all, they didn't want the means of energy generation anywhere near them - even though windfarms are virtually silent, environmentally friendly and, to those with the eyes to see, a therapeutic inspiration. So, they didn't want to be part of the British Isles. They thought that somebody else should bear the responsibility. They thought they were different. And they should be deprived of the electricity they have consistently taken for granted.

The world is changing. VVASP and its gormless goon squads are refusing to change. But they won't be here for much longer. They want to enjoy their retirement in an area free from 'industrial' sights. Maybe they just bought their big house in the country and think that the countryside exists just for them, like a kind of wallpaper. But the first bunch will be dead before too long, and the second bunch will probably move away to infect another community.

We must make sure that their short-term interests do not determine a long-term issue. The rest of the world, from the USA to China, is embracing wind energy. And if we let the VVASP fools decide our future on the basis of their own ignorance and selfishness, we in the Vale of Evesham will be left behind.

Everyone else will have windfarms and turbines. And we'll be the last of the stupid ones, who couldn't see any farther than our own noses, who couldn't get our heads round the scientific facts, and who preferred to swallow lies and nonsense rather than grasp the opportunity we were offered.

So where do you want to be? At the forefront of the new age, like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall? Or skulking in the Dark Ages, like VVASP?

Monday 8 June 2009

ZEITGEIST

So when's the last time you saw a windfarm?

On the ads the Co-operative Group put out a little while ago?

Or perhaps on Twiggy's advert for Marks & Spencer?

Maybe you saw the windfarm on the BBC's "Hope Springs" last night?

The thing is, there's a fairly strong chance that you'll have seen one recently. And that's a good thing.

Windfarms are no longer hidden away in remote corners. They are becoming part of the culture. They symbolise something - a new approach to our electricity needs, a new sense of responsibility for the environment, a new kind of technology, which gives back more than it takes, a new age of thinking clean and thinking green.

This was also exemplified in the recent European elections. What very few commentators have bothered to notice is that the Green vote went up all across the UK. Europe will now have more Green MEPs, and if the trend continues, the UK will soon be voting more Greens into the European parliament.

(This is the same European parliament that VVASP wants to suspend all European windfarms, simply because they don't want one near them. Bastards.)

Now, Green politics aside, the fact that windfarms and turbines are becoming a part of the popular consciousness, a veritable symbol of environmental responsibility and the shape of things to come, can only help the present debate.

There are people in our local villages who fear change. Curiously, these people are not necessarily those whose families have lived in these villages for generations. No, rather it is the 'immigrants' from the cities who fear change, regardless of the fact that they themselves brought change to the villages by moving into them without first taking the trouble to understand what a community, or indeed the countryside, is.

The fear of change that these poor souls suffer from has led them into wild and irrational behaviour when confronted with the possibility of having an awe-inspiring, reassuring, state-of-the-art windfarm in their area.

But while they've been fuming and fulminating, lying and threatening, the world has moved on. Windfarms are increasingly recognised as a valuable part of the British landscape, as the means of clean energy production, and as a key aspect of life in the 21st century.

Being scared of them is just daft. Telling lies about them is crazy. Opposing them is plain anti-social. Trying to use Europe to stop them is a retrograde step of epic proportions.

They're here, and they're magnificent. And more and more people are recognising and embracing those facts.

Maybe one day, the weirdos of VVASP will wake up and smell the coffee. It'll be fun to see them trying to pretend that they were in favour of windfarms all along, when they finally realise how misguided, out-of-touch and reprehensible their dimwitted, misplaced opposition was.

Saturday 6 June 2009

AN EXAMPLE OF LENCHTHINK

This conversation was overheard a while ago:

MAN 1: This bloody windfarm - who wants it? It's just an energy company making profits, that's all. It's nothing but bloody profiteering.

MAN 2: Sorry - may I ask, are you a Conservative?

MAN 1: What?

MAN 2: Do you vote Conservative?

MAN 1: Yes.

MAN 2: You voted for Margaret Thatcher?

MAN 1: Yes.

MAN 2: So you were in favour of privatisation?

MAN 1: Yes.

MAN 2: You voted to let the utility companies make profits.

MAN 1: Yes.

MAN 2: And now you're complaining because that's just what they're doing.

(MAN 1 emits a strangled shriek and disappears in a puff of his own idiocy.)

Okay, so I made that last bit up. But the undiscovered genius I've identified here as MAN 1 demonstrates the intellectual level the protesters against Lenchwick Windfarm operate at.

No wonder their arguments against the windfarm are so fraudulent. They're incapable of thinking in anything but the shortest of terms. And it's all self-interest. All they care about is what they want now. They can't see the consequences of their own actions.

Arguing with people like this is essentially pointless. It's like arguing with sheep - it gets you nowhere. They're perfectly capable of believing two opposite, contradictory things at once*, and because they're obsessed with their own short-term interests they're continually making a hash of things. They miss the bigger picture, because it's all about them, and it's all about now.

We should feel sorry for dimwits like this. But, at the same time, we shouldn't - because VVASP's protest, with its lies and fabrications, its misinformation, its irresponsibility, its herd mentaility, is sustained by this kind of illogical nonsense.

If they were any brighter in the Lenches, VVASP probably wouldn't exist.

(* Apparently, VVASP are all in favour of renewable energy - just not where they can see it. That's classic Lenchthink, or 'bollocks', as it's known in the wider world.)

Friday 5 June 2009

THE NUCLEAR OPTION

What did the world look like ten thousand years ago? Any idea?

Not easy to imagine, is it? Very few people can describe what the view from your window would have been 10,000 years ago, and even then it's mostly guesswork.

How about a million years ago? Now, there's a challenge. Imagine what your local area looked like one million years ago. Can you do that?

Okay, let's try something different. What will the world look like one million years from now?

Oooh, that's cruel. Shall we try looking just 10,000 years into the future?

Makes your head hurt, doesn't it?

But it's important, because radioactive waste from nuclear power stations remains extremely dangerous for 10,000 years. Some isotopes are still a hazard for one million years!

In terms of nuclear waste management, experts admit that they are capable of planning one hundred years ahead.

So - every nuclear power station is generating incredibly dangerous waste products and we have no real idea of how to protect that hazardous waste. That stuff will still be horrendously dangerous when all our current civilisations have collapsed, when all known languages have ceased to be.

Addled idiots like VVASP seem to assume that the answer to our looming energy crisis is nuclear power.

That's right. They'd rather inflict a million years worth of danger on the planet than have a windfarm somewhere a bit near where they live.

A wind turbine can be erected, and dismantled, in roughly a day. Every scrap of energy involved in its production, transport and commissioning is recouped within its first year of operation. Which means that, for the remaining twenty-four years of its optimum working life, a wind turbine produces 'free electricity' with no harmful by-products or side-effects.

It's the cheapest energy going. The US and China have been investing heavily in this phenomenal resource. Wind power is the way forward - it's the future.

We don't even know how expensive nuclear power is. We don't know, because no one's yet had to deal with the problem of one million years worth of nuclear bio-hazard.

No one has yet been killed by a windfarm.

Do I need to mention Chernobyl?

The old ways of generating electricity are showing their age. Gas - do we really want to be dependent on Russia for our power? Oil - running out.

Coal - the recent legal ruling concerning the Kingsnorth protesters has ensured that, in the eyes of the law, coal-fuelled power stations are an environmental nightmare. 'Clean coal' exists - in theory. But it hasn't yet been tried out in practice, and it may prove to be impossible, or too expensive, to work.

Which leaves nuclear and renewables.

Leaving aside the hysterical, and utterly nonsensical remarks of VVASP's silliest spokesperson, that the Lenchwick Windfarm with 'kill the Vale countryside' (there have been few more stupid remarks in the debate than that one), one thing is for sure:-

Windfarms produce cheap, clean energy and leave no horrors in their wake.

And nuclear power?

Only a clear and present danger for anything up to a million years.

So which is the more sensible option, hunh?

Monday 1 June 2009

GENOCIDAL SELFISHNESS

"The scale of devastation is so great that it is hard to believe the truth behind it, or how it is possible that so many people remain ignorant of this crisis."

Thus spake Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change. Dr Pachauri was commenting on a report just published by the Global Humanitarian Forum, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan's thinktank. The report states that climate change is currently causing 300,000 deaths annually. Climate change is also causing economic losses amounting to £78bn per year.

Naturally, perhaps, when faced with disaster on an unimaginable scale, there are those who try to convince themselves that the problem does not exist. Alternatively, it is possible still to imagine that climate change is a problem for the future.

But those 300,000 deaths are happening now. According to Dr Pachauri, "Four billion people are vulnerable now and 500 million are now at extreme risk."

The Global Humanitarian Forum's report is based on information provided by the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, the UN, the Potsdam Institute, leading insurance companies and major charities, such as Oxfam. Dr Pachauri described it as "the most plausible possible estimate of the human impact of climate change today."

Three hundred thousand people dying, every year, as a direct result of climate change. Not some time in the future. Now. And that number is only going to rise.

And VVASP's response to this crisis?

As they announced in the Evesham Journal last week, the cosseted cretins who represent a minority view in the Lenches villages have joined a European consortium, the European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW), with the intention of forcing a Europe-wide moratorium on windfarm development.

According to VVASP, the Lenchwick Windfarm would "threaten residents' quality of life". Not necessarily true, of course - VVASP have been caught out repeatedly lying about windfarms - and even if it were true, it seems a small sacrifice to make in the face of 300,000 deaths caused annually by climate change.

Oh, but don't worry - 98% of those affected by climate change are in developing countries. So VVASP does not have to worry about them.

I think we all know that barely anybody in the Lenches had a problem with windfarms until very recently. I think we can safely say that, if they ever thought about them, most villagers thought they were a pretty good idea. Until a plan was revealed to develop one in their neighbourhood.

At that point, a small number of self-centred people started digging up any old lie, myth and rumour they could about windfarms. They went out of their way to mislead their neighbours about them. They forced parish councillors to resign so that they could take over local decision making. They thrust their sick and diseased propaganda through doors and they actively stifled anything in the way of discussion or debate.

The ONLY problem they have with windfarms is that they might be able to see a turbine from their garden. Everything else they've said about these things - all the lies about noise, inefficiency, wildlife, health and house prices - is just a blind.

These people feel that their little rural haven should be ringfenced, that somebody else should have the responsibility for producing their energy, that they are somehow exempt from the issue. They have a little bit of money and they believe that they are therefore different, special. They truly believe that they are entitled to campaign against clean, cheap, safe energy because it might affect them in a small way.

And as we have seen, their campaign tactics are despicable.

More despicable, however, is their latest move. So deranged are these people, so determined to shirk their responsibilities at this time of global crisis, that they will conspire with their fellow lunatics across Europe to try and stop any windfarms being built. Not because windfarms are bad. Because they don't want one near them.

300,000 people dying because of climate change. Four billion people vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Economic losses of £78bn caused by climate change. Now.

And the selfish bastards of VVASP want to stop all windfarms in Europe, because it would upset them to have to see a turbine.

Let's give VVASP and their campaign the word it deserves.

It is not enough to point out that they are misguided, deluded, and narrow-minded. Selfishness on this scale, and in the face of so many, many people around the world suffering right now, there is only one word to describe VVASP and their stupid, crazed, self-centred campaign.

That word is EVIL.