VICTIMOLOGY

The world of the nimby is an upside-down one.

They claim to be trying to "save" our "green and pleasant" land from the "curse" of windfarms. This is not to say that they are trying to protect the environment in any way, but rather that they are seeking to preserve the "landscape" - i.e., the view from the end of their driveways. And yet, every responsible agency recognises that the real threat to our environment, which includes the rural landscape, is posed by global warming and the attendant problems of climate change, to which windfarms are part of the solution.

In other words, rather like the American general who famously believed that it was necessary to destroy Vietnamese villages in order to save them, the nimby fringe is seeking to "save" the countryside by destroying it.

Much the same can be said of the rural communities into which most of these nimby loudmouths have recently moved. In order to "save" their communities (from windfarms which have a proven track record of benefiting local communities), they are willing to destroy those very communities by setting neighbour against neighbour, spreading unnecessary fear and confusion and driving down the local property market with their obscene and hysterical placards.

But perhaps nowhere is the paranoia of nimbydom, with all its logical inconsistencies, more apparent than in the determination of the nimbies to cast themselves as the victims.

Victims of what, you might well ask? Well, usually they try to present themselves as the victims of some terrible conspiracy. This involves energy companies (including the small, eco-friendly ones and the co-operatives), national government and the EU. Oh, and probably those parts of the media which do not constantly broadcast a shrill nimby message of inaccurate propaganda. And anyone else who disagrees with them (like the UN and the RSPB).

This myth of victimhood is remarkable for a number of reasons. Look at any nimby campaign - and the behaviour of VVASP (Vale Villages Against Scottish Power) in the Lenches is a typical, if somewhat extreme example - and you'll soon notice that the real aggressors are the nimbies themselves. They are the ones publishing lies with the sole intent of misleading and scaring other people. They are the ones bullying their neighbours into conformity with the "consensus" or silence if they happen to know what they're talking about. They are the ones holding noisy demonstrations, making false claims and misrepresenting the facts.

It could be argued that adopting the role of "victim" is all part of the inherent dishonesty of their campaigning tactics. They want people to form the impression that a small bunch of peace-loving villagers are being crushed under foot by powerful, nebulous and unaccountable forces. It's all nonsense, of course, but you could be forgiven for thinking that this is all part of the anti-progress, anti-common sense, anti-everything game.

But it's not as simple as that. The neo-conservative ideology that came in with Thatcher and Reagan and just refuses to go away excels in the paranoid artform of victimology. In the parallel universe inhabited by these reactionary fools, the aggressor is always the victim. There are, for example, those on the British right who like to believe that Britain is the only country currently doing anything to curb CO2 emissions by forcing non-existent subsidies down the throats of energy companies in order to crowd the landscape with windfarms that "don't work". It takes an enormous leap of faith and a blithe willingness to ignore all the reliable evidence to believe any of that. But that's just the point. In this weird age created by neo-conservative loonies, faith or opinion count for a great deal more than hard fact and actual evidence.

Indeed, the very word "fact" has been up-ended by the nimbies and their right-wing ideologues. Take the VVASP campaign again - it relied entirely on opinions which it claimed were "FACTS". The real facts - objective, demonstrable facts - were shouted down. What one deranged lunatic chose to believe, or simply wanted everyone else to believe, became the new FACT. Anything else, such as evidence, data and the personal testimonies of those who knew better, was descried as some sort of propaganda.

The reality is that the creation of an upside-down world in which the aggressors are the victims, opinions become FACTS and real facts are dismissed as proganda is essential to the nimby mindset. By and large, they are rather privileged people (of course they are: they've been able to afford to move into desirable rural areas, where many of them keep their second homes, which they visit only at the weekends, and by doing so they price the real local people out of the market). Quite how this degree of privilege (which, of course, they insist is solely the result of "hard work") equates with victimhood is hard to determine. Especially when they go on to victimise their new neighbours by imposing their own form of nimby martial law on the area.

The weird thing, though, is that these people actually do think of themselves as victims. Forget the fact that almost everyone else is suffering much more than they are, or that their acts of belligerence, intolerance and aggression create yet more suffering, and that their insistence on fighting anything which might affect the view from the upstairs windows of their second home will have grave consequences for the next generation ... no, all that matters to these selfish, self-important nimby types is that THEY are the REAL victims.

Sadder still, those communities which have ended up hosting windfarms have almost invariably accepted that they were wrong about such nimby myths as "noise" and the government's guidelines - ETSU-R-97 - being "out-of-date" and "unfit for purpose". They very quickly realise that real operational windfarms (unlike the mad dreams of the nimbies) are actually quite enjoyable. They bring tranquility to an area, enhance the landscape, and prove to be a financial boon to the immediate neighbourhood (all of these statements have been made by Britons living in close proximity to windfarms). Kids, in particular, love them. All the nimby lies turn out to have been nothing but lies - self-serving lies designed to prevent necessary, desirable and beneficial change.

Ultimately, this proves that one of the biggest nimby lies of them all is that anti-windfarm protesters are "victims". How can you be the victim of something that will bring real benefits to your local area while doing no quantifiable harm to anyone or anything?

How can you claim to be trying to "protect" the countryside (where you bought your second home a year or two ago) from something that will do more to protect the real environment than anything you will ever do yourself?

The answer to these questions can only be that telling lies, misrepresenting the facts and posing as something you are quite definitely not are all second nature to the nimby class in this country.

And yet we're letting these delusional, hypocritical, vicious and aggressive liars dictate our energy and climate change policies in the UK.

No wonder the rest of the world is advancing while we're pretty much staying put. Seems the nimbies are not just false victims - they're genuine traitors, too.