HOW TO DESTROY DEMOCRACY

After yesterday's merriment it is time to turn our attention back to the Windfarm Working Party.

The clerk to the soi-disant Working Party - who also happens to be clerk to Church Lench and Harvington parish councils, even though she doesn't actually live in any of the villages affected by the windfarm proposals - is continuing to insist that the Working Party is (or was) a private body and not therefore subject to the scrutiny to which a public body would be.

This is, of course, a smokescreen. The Working Party was set up by the new-look, single-issue Church Lench Parish Council, which also administered the Working Party's funding. It was chaired by the chair of Church Lench PC, a fanatical nimby, and created solely to control the surrounding parish councils. Its membership consisted entirely of local parish councillors, who also provided the funding from their parish council precepts. It was established to ensure that the six parish councils all sang from the Church Lench hymn sheet and, regardless of public opinion, used public money to fund a biased solicitor's letter which was then tendered by the parish councils as their 'objections' to the windfarm plans.

In other words, everything about the Windfarm Working Party was public. But to make sure that nobody could look too closely at what the Working Party was up to, the decision was taken to pretend that it was private. That way, no 'minutes' needed to be taken, and those that were did not need to be made public.

Looking at the notes that were taken, it is clear that the WWP was determined to find fault with the proposed windfarm, whatever the reality of the situation. Suggestions that the WWP consulted environmentalist groups like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth were entirely ignored. The Working Party had no more interest in windfarms than the majority of the VVASP membership - rather, they wanted to believe in monsters so that they could object to them.

The real issue now, as previously explained, is: what exactly did the Windfarm Working Party instruct the solicitor at Parkinson Wright to do on 'our' behalf?

There can be only one real answer to this question, which is: to find any fault they could in the planning application.

Of course, had the Windfarm Working Party really been interested in researching and pooling information about REAL working windfarms, we might have expected a different outcome. Only the most biased, prejudiced and determinedly dishonest of individuals could visit modern working windfarms and come away thinking that they're dangerous. Such was the approach taken by the VVASP High Command, who seem to have insisted that no villagers other than themselves should visit a windfarm so that they can come back from their field trip spouting no end of nonsense about them.

But the Windfarm Working Party - or, at least, the Church Lench contingent, which was the driving force behind the WWP - had no intention of finding out about windfarms, other than in the sense of 'how do you fight them?' (why you should want to fight them was apparently clear to the nimbies but not to anyone who knows much about windfarms). The very existence of the fake Working Party was a blatant challenge to local democracy. The chair even told a local newspaper last year that nobody locally had expressed support for the proposed windfarm, which was a lie.

VVASP have maintained this lie throughout, along with the parallel lie that they have a 'clear majority' of local opinion on their side. This front could only be maintained by terrifying the neighbourhood with extremely silly anti-windfarm stories, terrorising residents into joining the cause (or being ostracised) and victimising anyone who did express support for the windfarm development.

This, in short, has been VVASP's tactic. Deny anyone who disagrees with them an opinion and then claim that nobody disagrees with them.

Evidently, though, the Windfarm Working Party knew that its disingenuous and undemocratic activities would be controversial because it fostered the illusion of being a 'private' entity unconstrained by the rules governing public bodies. So that anyone who feels the need to know what these people have been doing with our money faces an uphill struggle, even though the money wasted on a fairly rubbish solicitor's letter was our money, and even though the parish councils acted with a near-total disregard for the feelings of their parishioners.

The point, as ever in this dispute, is clear - you are allowed an opinion if it happens to coincide with that of Dr Evil (who will write out your opinion for you, if you like) and his nimby mates. But if your opinion differs at all from theirs, you are not allowed an opinion. You have not expressed support for a perfectly sane, sensible, harmless and beneficial development. You don't really exist. And if you continue to voice your opinion, well, woe betide you and yours.

Well, huh, sorry guys, but there are some very intelligent and enlightened people in the area who don't agree with your backwards, illogical, misinformed quote-opinions-unquote and who will hold you to account for the lies you have told and the public money you have wasted.

And you will reveal what brief was given to the solicitor, so that our views could be completely ignored in favour of those of the demented nimbies of Church Lench. You will, even though you are doing everything in your power to avoid doing so. And when you have been forced into doing the right thing for once, Wind of Change will be here, ready to break the news.

You can't hide behind your 'private' figleaf forever.