THE SMOKING GUN

Late last year, the devious and dishonest fanatics of VVASP sent calendars of the Lenches to District Councillors. These calendars were entitled 'Lovely Lenches' or 'Magical Midsomer' or whatever their fevered brains had come up with. Ten-to-one the images of the Luscious Lenches did not all consist of an empty field - so presumably most of the photos they showed would look exactly the same after the windfarm is erected.

The Wychavon councillors did the right thing. They entered these unsolicited 'gifts' in the register of Members' Interests and then binned them.

Not content with trying to bribe the jury, it now appears that Dr No's nimby mafia might have been trying to nobble those responsible for ensuring that the Lenchwick Windfarm planning application gets a fair trial.

Step forward those friendly freedom-fighters of BLoW. After many months spent trying to wring some information out of the bogus Windfarm Working Party concerning what the pompous, rabid, self-important nookies of Lench have been doing with our money, the good folk at BLoW have released an interim report. And it does not make for comfortable reading.

First of all, it seems pretty clear and incontrovertible that the Windfarm Working Party was set up by an undeniably biased Parish Council with the sole purpose of using the local parish councils (and, in particular, their money) to fight the proposed windfarm. As the report makes abundantly clear, the deranged nookies had no democratic mandate to do this, and it would appear that (as usual) they lied till they were blue in the face in order to get their hands on tax-payers' money. And then - gosh, shock horror!! - they didn't use that money in the way they had said they were going to!!

Now, all that is bad enough. Also bad is the fact that so many people in this part of the world seem to think that the Freedom of Information Act 2000 can be safely ignored, or that it doesn't apply to them, or that they are in someway above having to account to the public for their misuse of public money.

But at the end of the BLoW report comes a section added at a late stage in the process. And this is where things get interesting.

The Windfarm Working Party had planned to co-fund, along with their buddies in VVASP, a Noise Measurement Survey. The only payment ever made by the WWP towards this Noise Measurement Survey was in October 2009. Then, in December 2009, an officer at Wychavon District Council decided to hire an external noise consultant purely on the basis that he doesn't approve of windfarms and he has repeatedly criticised the government's planning guidelines on windfarms and noise.

With that particular expert lined up, the report observes, there was simply no need for VVASP and its Windfarm Working Party to fund a Noise Measurement Survey. They could sit back and relax, secure in the knowledge that a report would come into Wychavon which criticised the Environmental Impact Statement on all counts. The WWP was free to blow all its (i.e. your) money on paying a solicitor to object, and object, and object again, and again, to the windfarm plans.

The report ends on a cliffhanger. The results of a Freedom of Information request to Wychavon District Council are awaited with anticipation. And then, who knows, the full story might come out, and the following questions might be answered:

1) Why did Wychavon choose to retain a noise expert who is somewhat notorious in the industry for making money out of anti-windfarm groups and opposing every aspect of an Environmental Impact Statement as if by rote?

2) Why, after that decision was taken at Wychavon, did the Windfarm Working Party decide not to bother organising a Noise Measurement Survey of its own?

3) Which council officers and councillors met with the Windfarm Working Party during the period for which the WWP is refusing to make public the notes of its meetings?

4) When was Mike Stigwood's name first mentioned in connection with the Lenchwick Windfarm?

5) Why has Wychavon made no effort to date to ensure that Parish Councils in the area are being run properly and are not being hijacked by nimbies so that they can spend your money on their crazy campaign?

So we wait. With baited breath.

But thanks heavens for BLoW - they might just be the only thing standing between us and a complete breakdown of local democracy.