LUDDITES

At any time of major change there will be those desperately trying to turn back the clock. It happened at the dawn of the industrial era and it's happening now, as we move into a post-industrial future.

Those who opposed the development of machinery were sometimes called Luddites. Today, the Luddites are those who loudly oppose developments which, while doing little if any harm, will benefit many, not just now but well into the future.

It could be argued that the original Luddites were trying to protect their jobs and livelihoods. Not so today's bunch. They're only trying to protect certain vague privileges. As last night's first episode of the BBC documentary series "Windfarm Wars" made clear.

Basically, certain people who move into country areas genuinely do seem to believe that they have bought the whole valley. Those who've always lived there don't seem to object to sensitive and sensible renewables developments.

Last night's programme was like a big case of deja vu for anyone who has had to put up with the yobbish behaviour of anti-windfarm protesters. Of course, the battle for the Den Brook Wind Farm went on for about seven years, and the protesters there were in some ways making things up as they went along (i.e., creating placards which read: 'Save Den Brook Valley' - but from what, and for whom?)

The difference in Lenchwick is that our local hoodlums only had to google what other disreputable nimby groups had said. So, in return for no actual research, VVASP had a clutch of ready-made dishonest arguments with which to mislead themselves, each other and the local council.

The council's deliberations in the Den Brook case were also tiresomely familiar. Today, we know a little better, of course - the UN's International Panel on Climate Change, for example, has declared that the entire world could be powered by renewables; Germany and Japan have gone off the nuclear dream and Scotland's aiming for 100% renewables by the end of this decade. But back in the early years of the Den Brook campaign it was still possible, apparently, for dimwits to convince themselves that wind turbines don't really produce electricity.

And then there was the noise issue - that idiotic canard: the one that irresponsible groups like VVASP, which are really only platforms for the self-interested, self-righteous and self-important to sound off from; the lousy, discredited argument that twits like to keep repeating on the grounds that, while it may not be true, if you say it often enough a few fatheads will believe you.

The sillier arguments haven't yet appeared in the Den Brook debacle. Next week, apparently, a woman will be heard shrieking that wind turbines pose a danger to children, although she is incapable of explaining how. VVASP took a more sly and despicable approach by merely hinting that the Lenchwick Windfarm might, in some unlikely and unscientific way, cause problems for the local primary school.

But then, most of VVASP's ratfink claims were either entirely bogus or simply unfounded "hints" that it might all turn out to be terrible. A sort of, "It'll be too late once the turbines are up, so better to alarm ourselves and everybody else with unrealistic scenarios than to consider the science, the reality, and the pressing need for these things."

The idiocy of these moronic anti-windfarm campaigns is that nobody wins. Okay, a bunch of selfish fools might get to postpone a vital, healthy and rewarding development for a few years - although in the process they are forced to lie to everybody and completely destroy their local community because what they want is more important than what everybody else needs.

So they use every atrocious Tory-party tactic to make sure that no one benefits, at least until common sense prevails, but that usually comes only after years of viciousness, dishonesty and pathological foolishness, and an awful lot of money being wasted, just so that these enemies of the people get to bask in their own sense of self-importance.

At the risk of spoiling the ending, we can tell you that Den Brook Wind Farm got the final go-ahead last year, after yet another craven attempt to stop it was rejected by the High Court. So - seven years of lies got the protesters nowhere. But they did manage to delay a project which, while doing no harm, would power at least half of the homes in the district, as well as yielding over £30,000 per annum for a community fund and giving a local farmer a much-needed additional income.

We could say, then, that in the end, everyone (or almost everyone) won. Only the pompous, hard-faced and utterly untrustworthy blackguards of the anti-windfarm protest lost out, although in reality they lost nothing but their reputations. But the cost overall was huge - and let's be clear: none of the arguments advanced by the antis had any substance, so all that time and money wasted was wasted for no good reason whatsoever.

Let's hope the same will one day be said of Lenchwick. After a long, anti-social, dishonest and despicable campaign, the leaders of VVASP will see their reputations in tatters. They lied, and they will be held to account for that. But everybody else will finally get to enjoy the benefits of a windfarm.

And roll on next week's episode. It's high time the nation as a whole got to see how sick and how silly anti-windfarm protests tend to be.