THE BIG (NON) EVENT

A little while back, BBC Midlands Today ran an odd little piece which claimed that Harvington was the happiest place to live in - this out of the whole of the West Midlands.

Harvington isn't all that bad, actually. Somewhere between a village and a small town, it's relatively tranquil, has a shop, a post office, a school, a couple of pubs. But the real measure of a healthy community is, of course, its programme of activities, societies and events.

Well, today Harvington witnessed a great big non-event. A non-event on a massive scale. And we at Wind of Change would like to thank a couple of our regular correspondents for reporting back to us on what a sublime non-event it was.

Dr Evil had been emailing his naff nimby army to arrange a protest demonstration at Harvington crossroads. The usual tiresome posters had been tacked on to telegraph posts (why is it that these morons really do seem to think that they can disfigure property that doesn't belong to them?), a very silly sign had gone up in the shop window, and the bald-heads were all getting rather uppity. Why?

Because today and tomorrow were the days scheduled for the dummy-runs. ScottishPower Renewables were driving a long low-loader truck to the proposed windfarm site to demonstrate that, with a bit of help from the police, the Highways Agency, county council, etc., they could easily get their turbine parts to where they needed to be going.

Naturally, Dr Evil and his dreadful clones were determined to show their opposition to this. Harvington has failed to demonstrate much real support to the VVASP's laughable campaign, so there was a desperate attempt at rallying Norton and Harvington by the usual insane scare tactics.

How noisy will these lorries be? (Answer: ummm, not very)

How safe will our children be? (Answer: safer than usual, what with the police escort and all)

How much damage will the lorries do? (Answer: not much, if any)

How dirty will they be? (Answer: oh, come on - now you're clutching at straws!)

Anyway, maybe sixty retired individuals, busy-bodies, nutjobs and other jerks assembled under a cool, grey, overcast sky in their daft yellow waspy T-shirts, a few clutching their wretched placards.

Nothing happened.

A couple of old guys forced the roadsigns to point the wrong way. (This act of vandalism completely baffled one of our correspondents, who wondered whether they were hoping to hang some banner off the roadsigns, because if they thought they would be misdirecting the windfarm traffic then they clearly hadn't thought things through very much). Anyway, after a minute or two it was perhaps pointed out to them that the authorities might not see the funny side of their hoodlum behaviour and they put the roadsign right again.

An hour passed. Nothing happened.

Dr Evil paced about trying to look like he was in control of things.

Meanwhile, a fleet of 4x4s was cruising the lanes of the Lenches, trying to spot a 'monster' truck and obstructing the roads for more intelligent road users.

Back at Harvington crossroads, a couple of local police officers arrived, looking mildly bored.

Suddenly, the main road was blocked by a cop car. A police motorcyclist appeared - coming from the opposite direction everyone expected them to appear from. THE CONVOY WAS COMING DOWN THE HILL, not along the main road and up the hill!

Everything then happened very fast. A haulage truck came barreling along, two guys in its cab laughing away. Everybody stared - 'Is that it?'

The truck, with about a fifty-foot low-loader on the back, accompanied by police outriders and followed by several works wagons, gave a cheeky hoot as it arrived at the crossroads where the pitiful mass of clueless nimbies was gawping. And then it was gone, disappearing at an impressive speed in the direction of Norton.

The police had closed the road for maybe a minute. And the time it took the long truck to pass through the crossroads and the useless demo? Maybe 30 seconds.

The nimbies were too stunned even to 'boo'. Barely any of them managed to raise their placards. A trio of windfarm supporters were heard laughing - they even applauded the truckers' sense of humour when they beeped at the protesters. The idiots of VVASP had been completed wrongfooted.

As protests go, it was something less than an anti-climax. Officials had proven that, with a brilliantly slick police operation, a long load could be taken around the relevant route with no trouble at all. Not even from Dr Evil's small crowd of deluded nimbies.

And, as our correspondent says, the whole incident had the feeling of something changing. The nimbies were made to look foolish, hopelessly out-of-touch and rather irrelevant. They were tolerated by the police, laughed at by the truck-drivers, and they had wasted a great deal of time only to fail completely when it came to registering their protest. They might as well have turned up on completely the wrong day.

All that faffing about and it all ended up in a farce. So could this be the beginning of the end for VVASP and its crappy campaign?

For the sake of sanity, common sense and good community relations, let's hope so!