INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

There have been some astonishingly cretinous statements overheard in the Lenches in recent months. Things like:

"Sound travels outwards, so wind turbines get noisier the further away you are."

"The turbines will blow all the blossom off the trees."

"The planned development will kill the Vale countryside" (probably 'forever')

"I take no notice of building regulations so I don't see why the parish council should stick to the guidelines."

And, most recently -

"All this ASA business was just over one word."

The purveyors of all these dimwitted remarks were once intelligent people, many of them with qualifications. Now one almost feels like launching an appeal on their behalf.

So what happened? What on earth could have caused this mass degeneration of faculties?

Alien spacecraft landed (no they didn't), ate our brains (no they didn't) and reduced our property prices by up to 54% (no they didn't).

They also didn't kill all our wildlife (especially trout and bees), make a sound like a ghost train approaching, always approaching, never arriving, or cast gigantic shadows over unlikely distances.

Those who were infected by these non-existent space creatures weren't always easy to spot. They looked pretty much the same as always. Only two things gave them away. They tended to put up little yellow signs saying "NO to air!" and "Keep me 2 kilometres away from everything!" And when they opened their mouths, out came a sound that could hurt your brain.

But if it wasn't some sort of alien invasion that caused all this horror, what might it have been?

Could it have been VVASP, the protest group that is to informed debate what Hitler was to equal opportunities?

Had they been listening to the self-serving merchants of nimby nonsense?

You bet they had! Fools.