HOW MUCH WILL VVASP COST US?

Money is about the only thing the nimbies understand. So it's pretty amazing to discover that their selfish and stupid opposition to a perfectly sane development will end up costing us all thousands, if not millions of pounds.

So far, the anti-windfarm protesters have helped themselves to £4,500 of public money. This came out of the precepts of six parish councils and is being misused by a "Windfarm Working Party" set up by the rabid nimbies of Church Lench Parish Council in order to ease the VVASP work load (VVASP members would rather YOU paid for their shady dealings than THEY had to).

So we're already £4,500 down.

Now, let's assume that Wychavon DC do the sensible, progressive, intelligent and proper thing and approve ScottishPower Renewables' plans for the Lenchwick Windfarm. VVASP will, as a kneejerk reaction, call for a judicial review. With any luck, they won't get one. But if they did, that would set the tax-payer back at the very least some £100,000.

You'll be paying that, my friends, just so that the mad members of VVASP can waste a bit more time (and a lot more of your money).

Now, worst comes to the worst, and VVASP somehow manage to get the windfarm stopped altogether. What will that cost us?

First of all, there are those annual payments from the developer to a community trust. These are based on the number of megawatts of electricity produced by the windfarm and tend to be upwards of £2,000 per megawatt. For twenty-five years. So if we take the lowest offer, and assume it will stay at that rate for the full twenty-five years, the local area will lose out on £575,000 - all thanks to the looney brigade of VVASP.

Oh, by the way - that money is for the community. Not VVASP's idea of the community (just themselves) but the full six parishes of the immediate area. So they will effectively be stealing from their neighbours, just as they basically stole your tax money via the parish councils.

AND that amount doesn't take into account the government's promise to "allow communities that host renewable energy projects to keep the additional business rates they generate." That's from the coaltion government's policy document. Anyone want to calculate 25 years worth of business rates generated by the Lenchwick turbines - and then add that to the huge and rising total of what VVASP want to deprive us all of?

Perhaps worst, though, is the fact that if the selfish, petty-minded nimbies get their way, they will have set back the necessary progress of wind power and renewable energy generation in the UK. Power cuts will follow within a very few years, matched by massive rising in energy bills. The government will lurch back towards unsustainable ways of generating energy.

And you and your children will end up paying God knows what. And the planet will end up paying even more.

So, that's what VVASP really are. Greedy grasping money-hogging fools who will happily cost those around them thousands and thousands of pounds - and all for no good reason.