In the real world, unnecessary aggressiveness coupled with bizarre, irrational and fantastical claims can be enough to get you sectioned under the terms of the Mental Health Act.
In the looking-glass world of nimbydom, it's called "protecting the countryside". Not protecting it for everybody, you understand - protecting it for the few who have bought a home (or a second, or a third home) in it.
A co-operative is proposing a community-owned wind development of two medium-scale turbines about three miles from the town of Bridgnorth in Shropshire. We've previously reported on the insanity of the claims being made by the anti-group (which has already learnt to repeat the nimby mantra of being "in favour" of renewables as long as nobody can see them). The gloriously mendacious "Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm" group announced that the trucks which carry wind turbine parts are "longer than an aircraft carrier". This is a very silly claim to make, not least of all because the turbine parts themselves are considerably shorter than any aircraft carrier. Someone, we are meant to suppose, is making lorries which are massively longer than is actually necessary.
But Wind of Change has now been informed that the liars of Bridgnorth have gone even further in their deep-rooted dishonesty. Not only will the turbine trucks be unrealistically long, but they will be trundling along the lanes around Bridgnorth for years on end and "most of the roundabouts in the area will have to be removed" to accommodate these apocalyptic convoys (which do not, in fact, exist).
That's just the start. Apparently, according to the Bridgnorth nimbies, wind turbines sound like a) a lawn-mower (they refuse to divulge whether this is a Flymo or a Qualcast); b) a chainsaw; or c) a helicopter taking off. Extraordinary, really, when you consider that no one has ever managed to record a turbine sounding like any of those things.
As usual, these innocent, community-owned turbines will ruin tourism in the area - just as other turbines have manifestly failed to destroy tourism elsewhere. They will lead to an increase in agricultural accidents and - horror of horrors! - provide an income for the farmer (which is "immoral", apparently). They will burst into flame and shower the populace with ice (?!?). Most terrifying of all, the electricity generated by these turbines might be used by people who don't even live in Bridgnorth!!
It's the end of the world as we know it.
Oh, and according to the raft of lies which is the protest group's website, wind turbines reduce local house prices by 40%. This is less than the insane claim made by VVASP in Worcestershire, that windfarms reduce local house prices by 54% - a claim they could only arrive at by deliberately misrepresenting the results of an RICS-sponsored study. Like all other studies, that report found no evidence of windfarms impacting adversely on house prices. It's yet another nimby myth that they do. Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm claim to have got their 40% figure from someone in Scotland (presumably, the same person who claimed that wind turbines sound like an aircraft taking off). Unfortunately, whoever this unidentified Scottish person was, they quite clearly don't live anywhere near a wind turbine or, indeed, planet Earth.
Overall, the maniacal nimbies of Bridgnorth really do seem intent on setting a new benchmark for nimby dishonesty. This is an interesting development. As if there haven't been enough mindless nimby myths spouted in recent years - with the connivance of right-wing newspapers that exist solely to frighten the middle-class with phantom bogeys - Bridgnorth has decided to invent a few more. More elaborate, more ludicrous ... and yet, nimbies being what they are, more perversely "believable". As our correspondent (who is neither for nor against the proposed turbines) has told us: "The word hypocrites keeps popping into my head for some reason."
Co-operatives, in the main, do not engage in anti-social activities. We pointed this out after the VVASP High Command visited a windfarm in Cambridgeshire and came back telling all sorts of silly stories about it. The windfarm was on land owned by the Co-Operative Group - Britain's largest owner of farmland - and the farm in question was awarded a Farmer's Weekly award in that very year, with a special commendation for the "beauty" of the farm.
But in the mad, mad, oh so very mad world of the nimby, a "co-operative" is presumably some sort of conspiracy dedicated to destroying the countryside, tourism, the property market and several roundabouts.
Our correspondent from Shropshire has pointed out to us that the hardcore of the Bridgnorth nimby loons actually live in the sort of houses "that could grace the cover of 'Country Life'" and makes the suggestion that the term NIMBY might be altered to "Not Near My Elizabethan Moated Mansion" (NNMEMM - it sounds a bit like the sort of noise a nimby makes when you challenge one of their absurd claims, but otherwise it doesn't really roll off the tongue).
Could this be the reason why Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm have gone further than anybody else to misrepresent wind turbines, mislead their neighbours and ride roughshod over such basic concepts as the truth and common decency? As our person in Shropshire has put it in respect of their "epic" nimbyism: "If Carlsberg made nimbyism, this would be it." Theirs is a sort of gold-standard nimbyism - more boorishly nimby than any other nimbies - and their extraordinary example has led us to formulating what we call the Wind of Change First Law of Nimbyism.
The purported hazards of a wind turbine are directly proportional to the average cost of houses in the area.
None of these hazards are real, of course, as anyone who has actually looked into the subject will know. They are invented hazards, fake bugaboos dreamt up by the weird minds of the nimbies and broadcast far and wide as if they had some credibility. But the point is this: the more expensive the housing is in an area where a turbine or two are proposed, the more vicious and dishonest will be the anti campaign.
Hence the Wind of Change First Law of Nimbyism. It certainly helps to explain why, when windfarms all over the country (and the rest of the world) have been getting on with generating lots and lots of clean, green, cheap energy at no risk to the surrounding population, places like Bridgnorth are being coerced into believing that they will suffer in ways that almost defy imagination.
It's got nothing whatever to do with the turbines. It has got everything to do with the evil mindset of the grasping, intolerant, demented types who have infested our countryside with their petty-minded selfishness and congenital thuggery.
Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm are proof of the First Law of Nimbyism. The more expensive their houses, the more extreme the lies they will tell about windfarms, and the more aggressively they will defend something they don't own against something they don't understand.
That's their dirty little secret.
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