IN SUBURBIA

Has anyone seen our esteemed Member of Parliament Peter Luff lately?

You remember Peter - the nookies loved him. They decorated the place with lots more of their nasty little signs whenever he was around. Aeolus thinks that he might have had a bit more to do with their phoney "2km" campaign than he ever let on. And, of course, he stood up in the House of Commons and said, "2 kilometres. Nothing closer. Tory voters. Daily Mail. 2 kilometres. Er - that's it."

But it feels as though Pete's been keeping his head down of late. Could it be that he caught the backlash from the Sensible People for siding with the tin-pot dictators of Nimbia? Perhaps he realised that his campaign was a non-starter inspired by a bunch of hysterics.

Or it could be because most of the nookies are no longer his constituents. Boundary changes mean that Church Lench is now part of Jacqui Smith's Redditch constituency. So, as far as Luff is concerned, they can all bog off - what use are they to him any more?

At the moment, the Tories will say anything to try and get your vote. In power, they'd be faced with reality and any daft "2km" type ideas would quickly be ditched as nonsensical. Jacqui Smith, meanwhile, probably has other things on her mind - like some real problems that need addressing - and it seems unlikely that she'll be bothered by a rather strange bunch jumping up and down in a remote corner of her largely urban seat.

For their part, we can be pretty sure that Big Chief Nookie and his mates really hate the fact that Smith is now their MP and they are considered part of Redditch. They didn't move out to the country just to become part of Redditch for crying out loud!! But, actually, the boundary change makes an awful lot of sense.

If you look closely at the VVASP and its nimby campaign, you'll notice that it is dominated by newcomers to the area.

If you talk to the old guard - the real sons of the soil whose roots go down so deep in the Lenches that they've practically been Grade II listed - you'll find that they're not especially bothered by the prospect of the turbines. Partly because they can't for the life of them see how they could be any harm to anybody. And partly because the newcomers have already made a mess of life in the villages and deserve everything they get.

By moving out into the country with some rather strange preconceptions about what the country is, what it's like and what it does, the nimbies set themselves up for a fall. They thought that the country was picture postcard views and uninterrupted silence. Which it isn't. But they have fought to get their quaint, unrealistic views and abnormal silence, because that's what they foolishly spent their money on - a myth of country life.

What they did, though, was they brought their suburban attitudes out to the country and planted them there. Real country people don't see a problem with a few wind turbines - it's money for the area and they do no harm. Only phoney country people - suburbanites who have transplanted themselves to a country area - have a problem with the turbines because THEY DON'T FIT IN WITH THEIR NARROW-MINDED SUBURBAN IDEAS OF WHAT THE COUNTRY SHOULD LOOK LIKE.

So it's rather appropriate that they should have become part of Redditch, if only for parliamentary purposes. They belong in the suburbs. They certainly shouldn't be screwing up the countryside anymore.