THERE ARE COMMUNITIES ...

... and then there are REAL communities.

One way of telling them apart is to look at how the react to the issue of renewables.

A REAL community will want some of that for themselves. Take Fintry in Stirlingshire. A windfarm developer wanted to install a windfarm near the village. Did the locals go berserk, start telling each other silly stories, plaster the area with unsightly placards and object, object, object, object about it?

No. They arranged to have one turbine all for themselves. So the windfarm gets built, and one of its turbines provides an income for the Fintry Development Trust. This, in turn, has been ploughed back into the village - insulating homes, for example - so that everyone is benefitting massively from their far-sighted, forward-thinking and intelligent decision.

Now THAT's a community.

The other sort of "community" tends to be dominated by a few right-wing nutjobs. They tell lies. They want to be Hon. President, Secretary and Chair for Life of every pointless little committee going. To them, the village is their own personal fiefdom. Very often, they relocated there in search of some mythical rural idyll. They either bought an expensive house or built one there. And the moment anybody suggests a renewable energy project ...

KA-BOOM!!!!!!!

These people go mental. They stir up the "community" into opposing a totally sensible, harmless and beneficial development by spreading insane lies about it. They threaten, bully and terrorise their neighbours into doing as they're told, toeing the party line and going every bit as mental as they are. They undermine local democracy, take over parish councils and cosy up to district councillors on the golf course. They move heaven and earth - often illegally, always immorally - in order to get their way. They are a cancer in our society.

They are the Nimby Nutters of Olde England.

Thankfully, there are still some real communities out there. The number of community-owned co-operative renewable energy projects is growing, even in these straitened times. Read all about it:

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/1192092/the_communities_taking_renewable_energy_into_their_own_hands.html

You see, folks, that's what REAL communities are like. They don't allow themselves to be trampled over by nutcases. They don't fall for the grotesque lies spun by a few local bigheads. They don't go crazy over something that's perfectly safe and desirable just because the self-appointed Mr Big in the village tells them to. They see a golden opportunity and they go for it.

But here's the thing. How can it be that a windfarm will "kill the landscape forever", drive down property prices by anything up to 54%, destroy the local economy and prevent anybody from ever getting a good night's sleep in one village, while in another village a windfarm brings only benefits (economic, social, environmental, etc.)? How can that be?

How could the useless members of Wychavon District Council's planning committee fall for the moronic lies spread by Dr Evil and his godawful cronies in VVASP - and be prepared to regurgitate those obvious lies in the council chamber - when there are GENUINE communities in this nation of ours who have figured out how good renewables are and who know that the banalities spread by manic nimbies are just self-serving claptrap?

Doesn't it suggest that there is really nothing wrong at all about renewables - and that includes windfarms - unless you happen to be a nimby fascist with delusions of grandeur?

And that if you really do care for your community, you'll be getting a co-operative renewable project up-and-running for your village as soon as you can?

But if you have nothing but contempt for your community, you'll campaign on a platform of lies and intimidation against any renewable project that you just might be able to see because that's the kind of person you are?

Yep - that's exactly what all these community-owned renewables projects suggest. That renewables are great for the community. And nimby nutters aren't.