AGE OF STUPID - UPDATE

A while back we reported on the film The Age of Stupid, starring the excellent and much-lamented Pete Postlethwaite.

The film is a genuine wake-up call. Set in 2050 or thereabouts, it wonders why, when we knew all about the dangers of man-made climate change, we did so little to ameliorate matters.

(Part of the reason, of course, is that short-term economic interests and political ideologues did everything in their power to stop us doing anything to prepare for a sustainable future - hence the prevalence of fanatical nimby groups, the lobbyists who posed as members of the public to rant on green websites and genuinely useless MPs who actually preferred nimby lies to scientific fact. Heigh-ho.)

We pointed out that the deluded nimbies opposing a windfarm development in Bedfordshire, as featured in the film, looked and talked rather like our own lunatic nimbies in Worcestershire. Having lied to themselves, each other and everyone else, over and over again, these nasty nimbies succeeded in stopping the proposed Airfield Windfarm. Then one of them - a woman whose grasp of reality matched that of certain people in our immediate area - insisted that they were all doing everything they could to support renewables.

Yes, just like VVASP. All in favour of renewables. But NOT HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That simpering airhead became one of the unlikely stars of The Age of Stupid. Indeed, if YouTube were a dictionary, there would probably be a clip of her demonstrating what 'Stupid' is. She epitomised the calculating dishonesty and absolute absence of logic which pervades the anti-windfarm movement.

Well, here's the good news. Piers, the windfarm developer who had struggled against the Bedforshire nimby nitwits, who had received threatening phonecalls from supposedly decent people, who had been trounced by a bunch of liars, may yet have his day.

At the request of the Secretary of State, the High Court has quashed the planning inspector's decision to refuse permission for the Airfield Windfarm. The Secretary of State pointed out that the planning inspector had failed to take into account the fact that the five residents who would have been closest to the windfarm were all in favour of the development.

Looking back, then, a rent-a-mob of nimby fools and fanatics held up a valuable, vital development, partly by swapping the usual idiot stories about windfarms with each other, and their leader then issued the usual PR crap about being all in favour of renewables while celebrating the defeat of the Airfield Windfarm application ... but the windfarm may yet go ahead because the adverse decision was patently the wrong one!

Let's hope that, having seen themselves as they really are (in The Age of Stupid), those nasty nimbies will want to keep their heads down from now on. If only Team Stupid had filmed some of our nasty Lenchwick nimbies frothing at the mouth, lying their heads off and bullying anyone with a conscience - then they too might have been revealed as the public enemies they so patently are.

Fingers crossed, then, that the Airfield Windfarm will finally get the go-ahead, having been thwarted by nimby nutters for far too long.

And fingers crossed, too, for another project being developed by the same wind energy company (Nuon Renewables). This is the majestic Pen y Cymoedd windfarm, an amazing 250-megawatt project which will be the largest windfarm in England and Wales, injecting £1 billion into the local economy, with an additional £1.8 million being made available annually to a local community fund. Plus a £3 million habitat restoration project and a £300,000 mountain bike trail.

That's the sort of grandscale thinking we so desperately need in this country right now. Otherwise, if selfish nimbies continue to oppose every development (High-Speed Rail Link, Hartlebury Incinerator, Lenchwick Windfarm) we might as well give up and go back to the Stone Age, because our European neighbours are already way ahead of us on all these counts.

Still, two of the local councils involved in the Pen y Cymoedd windfarm project have already given the go-ahead. So not every local authority is as backward-looking, misinformed and thoroughly Age of Stupid as Wychavon.

There is hope for us yet.