NIMBY DISHONESTY

When Harborough Council contacted nearly one hundred local residents to acknowledge receipt of their objections to the proposed 3-turbine Gartree Windfarm near Market Harborough, the council and the residents both had a surprise. Because those 100 or so residents had never registered an objection to the windfarm.

No - the local bunch of nimby liars and loonies had stolen their identities in order to bulk out the number of objections received by the local council.

These are the depths to which the crazy Middle Englanders will stoop to protect something that isn't theirs against something they don't understand.

So what about our own locally-produced Liars and Loonies? How low will they go?

Judging by reactions to yesterday's bombshell - the Advertising Standards Authority's ruling that VVASP's propaganda has been misleading, unsubstantiated and untruthful - they're perfectly happy to continue trying to pull the wool over people's eyes.

Oh, they're angry - of course they are. Someone has called their bluff and they don't like it. They certainly don't like being exposed as gullible, fraudulent or both.

In a radio interview, Mr VVasp himself burbled away. This is just a skirmish, he said (yep - the kind of skirmish which leaves you holed beneath the waterline). He also tried to give the impression that his nimby group had previously complained to the ASA about ScottishPower Renewables' literature and had won. So, as he put it, 'We're thinking of this as one-one.'

Well, VVASP have never successfully complained to anyone (except themselves) about SPR's literature. In a completely separate case, a complaint was made about a photomontage of wind turbines. SPR then changed the image. Nothing to do with Lenchwick Windfarm.

And certainly nothing to do with making crazy claims and lying to people.

Mr VVasp referred to the recent ASA ruling as concerning 'two trivial complaints'. The first was about VVASP's use of the word 'forever' - as in, the windfarm would 'change the landscape forever'.

Now, as a former scientist, Mr VVasp probably has a grasp of the notion of infinity. But not, it would seem, of 'forever', which is rather similar to infinity and evidently does not mean what VVASP propagandists seem to think it means. So their advert was clearly nonsense and the 'trivial' complaint was upheld.

So which was the other 'trivial' complaint - the one about VVASP telling people they were all going to go mad or the one about VVASP telling everyone that their houses were going to be worthless?

Mr VVasp chose not to be drawn. Probably because neither of those complaints could in any way be considered trivial by a sentient and intelligent human being.

He cited the two disreputable reports which they based their idiotic claims about mental health on - one ('published', said Mr VVasp; 'self-published' says the rest of the world) which has never been peer-reviewed, involved a tiny sample of agitators interviewed by phone, all of whom had previous medical conditions, and no control group. The other was commissioned by an anti-windfarm group and was dismissed by the ASA's investigators as not a very scientific report.

And then Mr VVasp insisted that his group had quoted 'verbatim' from the RICS 2007 study of windfarms and house prices. That is fairly true, in the sense that they had homed in on a handful of words which, when quoted out of context, were likely to raise alarm and ignored the rest of the report, which said something else altogether.

No, basically, VVASP have been caught out. They lied to themselves, they lied to each other and they lied to you.

If you haven't already read the full ASA ruling, check the blogpost below and click on the link.

If you have, never, ever let anyone forget that the VVASP can't tell the difference between Absolute Nonsense and Fact.

PS: for those of you who haven't yet seen the article in the Evesham Observer:

http://www.eveshamobserver.co.uk/news169788.html