Saturday 25 February 2012

TRUE

Tell this to the Trump-funded idiots of CATS and every other self-serving nimby cretin.

"Renewable energy is the future: nuclear energy is the past"

Read all about it:

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/PageFiles/391751/Renewable%20Energy.pdf

Friday 24 February 2012

PREVENTION OF TOURISM

One of the leading charges made against windfarms by nimby hysterics is that they have a devastating impact on local tourism.

There's no actual evidence to support this claim, and the nimbies may not even believe it - they just want everyone else to believe it.

And so we find, up and down the country, demented groups of self-serving anti-windfarm campaigners banging on and on about the dire effects on tourism. It even happened in the great Lenchwick Windfarm Farce over a year ago.

Our minted friends over at Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm (previous winners of the Wind of Change Nimby Whopper Award for their bizarre claim that the lorries which transport wind turbine parts are "longer than an aircraft carrier") have long insisted that the installation of two community-owned wind turbines near Bridgnorth in Shropshire would destroy the local tourism industry. Standard nimby nonsense. Nothing unusual there.

But what's this? Ten miles down the road from Bridgnorth, there are plans to erect nine turbines near Shifnal. The local nimby busybody group is supported by right-wing Tory MP Bill Cash (whose son leads the Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm campaign) and has recently been sounding off with its usual crazy gibberish at a planning appeal hearing.

The Stop Turbine Action Group (STAG) boobies of Shifnal told the planning inspector that the nine-turbine windfarm would bring tens of thousands of tourists to the area. Naturally, this is a Bad Thing. Can you imagine? All those sightseers blocking the roads, buying stuff locally and getting in the way of the peasants!

One Bill Boon, "traffic witness" for the STAG group, reached his findings by studying "the experiences of four other windfarms". And, to his horror, he discovered that windfarms attract tourists in their droves.

So - at Bridgnorth (as elsewhere, apparently), a proposed windfarm will "devastate" the local tourism industry. Allegedly. While, ten miles down the road, a proposed windfarm would attract "tens of thousands" of tourists, making life unbearable. This latter claim is based on evidence gathered from other - presumably successful - windfarms.

Incredibly, some nutters are members of both Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm ("windfarms kill tourism") and STAG ("windfarms encourage too much tourism")!!!

Evidently, then, there are some local protesters who are making one claim at Bridgnorth and a completely different claim, diametrically opposed to the first claim, ten miles away at Shifnal!

Where it suits them to argue that windfarms are bad news for tourism, that's what they say (very loudly and dishonestly). When it suits them to argue the opposite, windfarms magically become promoters of a blossoming tourism industry (but only, of course, where this is seen as undesirable).

Only in the second instance do the unhinged nimbies actually produce anything approaching evidence to support their claim.

So - which is it? Do windfarms wreck tourism or create tourism?

All the evidence points to the latter. In which case, those witless nimbies (such as the cretins of CATS, now sponsored by Buffalo Bill Trump and his monstrous machinery of lies) who keep insisting that windfarms and tourism don't mix are clearly telling very big porkies.

One wonders at the kind of person who can make both claims at once - windfarms stifle/stimulate tourism - depending on which local campaign they're fighting at the time.

It's pretty clear that the fools of Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm simply do not believe in telling the truth, when they're quite happy to make the opposite claims a few miles down the road.

It's also interesting to note that a group of deranged nimbies has now blown the gaff on their "windfarms bad for tourism" claims. If, that is, they really did bother to study the "experiences of four other windfarms". Because, as the pompous oafs of STAG were so keen to point out to the planning inspector the other day -

WINDFARMS ARE EXTREMELY GOOD FOR TOURISM!!!

Thursday 23 February 2012

GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS

It is generally agreed that there is only one Planet Earth, so we'd better take care of it.

Sometimes, though, it would appear that there are two worlds on Planet Earth.

On the one hand, there is the world in which the solutions to some of our most pressing crises have been recognised and are being implemented. Thus, the United States weather office (NOAA) has recently announced that large-scale green energy systems can affordably replace fossil fuels as the world's primary energy source within the space of twenty years. The key word here is "affordably". If you're a nimby idiot, you'll tell anybody who'll listen that renewables don't work and cost the earth. People who know what they're on about, though, beg to differ.

Over three years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has collated 16 billion pieces of weather data. It then ran various programmes to determine the optimum sites for wind and solar farms in the United States and figured out that regional variations could easily be compensated for by means of a sensible grid. All those daft arguments against wind and solar power have started to crumble.

Good news, then, from the States. And good news too in the UK, where David Cameron was moved to reply to the insane letter sent to him by 101 Tory MPs, led by that fearsome crusader against the facts, Chris Heaton-Harris, which called on the prime minister to sell Britain downriver once and for all.

Cameron pointed out in his letter to the 101 Tory traitors and dimwits that there are "perfectly hard-headed reasons" for building more onshore windfarms. The PM added: "I am determined that we seize the economic opportunities in renewable supply chains as the global race for capital in low-carbon sectors intensifies."

Putting it plainly - not only are onshore windfarms an integral part of a "balanced UK electricity mix", but when the rest of the world is competing for capital investment to stride ahead with their renewables, which means jobs and lots of them, then it would be political suicide for the UK to duck out of the race just because a few right-wing lunatics don't approve of windfarms. We need the electricity that windfarms so ably produce, we need to reduce our carbon emissions, and we need to face up to reality. Harrumphing from the back-benches and throwing your support behind grotesquely selfish and dishonest nimby groups does Britain no favours at all. It's a betrayal of the national interest for the sake of the narrowest of ideological prejudices.

So, sometimes the world isn't so bad. But, as the Delingpoles and Heaton-Harrises of our once decent land continually prove, there is another world out there. One which cares nothing for the facts, the public good, the national interest, the needs of future generations and the planet. It's an alternative reality in which everything - but everything - is subject to personal greed, self-interest and the power of the lie.

Step forward Donald Trump, uber-nimby and fanatical right-wing bastard.

We've mentioned before that Trump, who has been building an unsightly and unnecessary "luxury" golf resort in Aberdeenshire, has got his knickers in a twist about a proposed offshore windfarm. He's thrown his toys out of the pram because the First Minister of Scotland isn't behaving like a proper little native and giving this tasteless American hoodlum everything he wants.

Now, Trump has thrown his not inconsiderable weight behind the depressingly bigoted anti-windfarm group known as CATS (Communities Against Turbines Scotland).

Quite funny that they call themselves CATS, by the way, seeing as domestic cats kill thousands of times as many birds as wind turbines do.

Anyway, CATS isn't based anywhere near the proposed Aberdeenshire offshore wind array, of course. No, the nasty nimby nutters who really are determined to destroy our nation's future now campaign a long way from home. Remember the argument that Lenchwick Windfarm shouldn't go ahead because the locals opposed it (even though most of the locals didn't oppose it, the rest didn't really know what a windfarm was, and many of the objections came from people who'd never even heard of the Lenches)? Well, there's a coda to that argument now. Windfarms shouldn't happen where (a) the locals don't want them and (b) where anybody else doesn't want them (see Callanish, Isle of Lewis).

So Eric "Jabba the Hutt" Pickles better be ready for this when his silly Localism Bill is introduced. Then it won't matter at all what the locals actually think. A few nutcases from somewhere else in the British Isles will believe that they have the power (and the right) to prevent a windfarm from being installed anywhere.

CATS is a Delingpole of an organisation. Guess what - they think nuclear is the answer (a sure sign of someone who really hasn't thought things through) and they quote those professional liars of the Renewable Energy Foundation. We can gather from this that CATS is not particularly interested in the truth - hence their claims, already and repeatedly disproven, that renewable "subsidies" are the cause of sharply rising fuel bills.

Donald "DO AS I SAY" Trump is giving CATS money, lawyers and anything else he can think of to fight the offshore windfarm that won't affect him at all. Yep, that's right: an American billionaire with weird hair is marching around our country telling us what we can and cannot do. He has dedicated himself to fighting a perfectly sane, safe, unthreatening and VITAL development because he doesn't want his gormless golfers to see something in the sea off the coast of a country he doesn't own. And he has decided that the self-serving delusionists of CATS are the people to do his dirty work for him.

Evidently, there are still people around for whom reality is a flexible concept. People for whom the future doesn't exist. People who care nothing for their country.

Alex Salmond simply cannot afford to let a super-rich American thug trumple all over him. Neither can Scotland. And neither can the UK.

So the crazy CATS will be getting their thirty pieces of silver - and then some.

That, as we all know, is the going rate for betrayal.

Monday 20 February 2012

GO TELL THE SPARTANS

Pop the corks! This is the 300th Wind of Change blogpost.

Yay!!

This blog has been running for nearly three years now. In that time, we have reported on the sickening tactics - the lies, intimidation, overthrow of local democracy, misappropriation of funds - routinely employed by extremist nimby groups like VVASP in the pursuit of their fanatical, selfish aims.

We have exposed the effects of such atrocious, mendacious and vicious campaigns on conscientious locals.

We have countered the insane and idiotic myths promulgated by anti-windfarm hysterics by researching and publishing the facts (windfarms are not noisy, they do not trash property prices, they do not make you ill ...)

We broke the news that the independent Advertising Standards Authority had judged VVASP's ludicrous claims - the basis of their entire despicable campaign - to be untruthful and unsubstantiated. We revealed the extent to which the hoodlums of VVASP, led by a desperately dishonest cabal, had misled local people, overtaken parish councils, set up a fraudulent "Windfarm Working Party", siphoned off public money and tricked the district council into hiring a biased noise consultant.

We were extremely proud to have this blog archived by the British Library, so that future generations can discover the depths to which their grandparents stooped just to prevent a wholly harmless, beneficial and necessary development from taking place.

300 blogposts. Makes us think of the Spartans at Thermopylae. Each post is a Spartan soldier, holding the "hot gates" against a filthy horde of self-serving liars and right-wing nutcases.

That, you see, is the problem. Only those on the extreme right keep trying to shout down those who care about the future of our society and our planet. Take the exceptionally irrational Delingpole, climate change denier extraordinaire. To him, "green" policies are really "red" policies. Rampant free-market capitalism, of the kind which has plunged the world into economic, social and environmental chaos, are threatened by far-sighted and sensible planning - the sort that gives us technologically-brilliant and aesthetically-pleasing wind turbines.

To the cretinous Delingpoles of this world, the good of the planet is bad for their bank accounts. And so they lie, and they lie, and they lie. And every tinpot little nimby out there gobbles up their lies with gormless gratitude. They don't want to see a windfarm, and so they love the Delingpole lies. Makes them feel less bad about their betrayal of everything and everyone.

Nimbies are consistent only in their treachery. In Lenchwick, they insisted that because a local minority - mostly those within sight of the proposed windfarm - had been bullied and misled into opposing it, the windfarm could not go ahead. And yet, on the Isle of Lewis, where a windfarm is proposed some eight kilometres away from the Callanish standing stones, the locals are not opposed - and so the windfarm must be stopped because people who don't live in the area don't want it. See the problem? They change the rules whenever it suits them, these subhuman nimby types.

And surely the Callanish issue puts paid to the monstrously silly "2 kilometre" rule demanded by nimby maniacs. Suddenly, eight kilometres is too close. The fact is that these weirdos don't want windfarms full stop - even though they're a low-cost, effective and elegant solution to an imminent crisis - for the usual Delingpole reasons. Renewables are "socialist". It's as simple, and as demented, as that.

Well, all in all the news isn't looking good, folks. While the Delingpoles of this world continue to lie their heads off about climate change and renewable energy, the real experts are sounding the alarm louder than ever. Read this and weep:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/20/climate-change-overconsumption

That's the real problem. These insane, self-centred, woefully dishonest and greedy anti-windfarm activists are a sideshow. They're the nutters who refuse to face up to reality.

But they're evil, and they're dangerous. Every nimby campaign is another nail in the Earth's coffin. They are the ones who will be held responsible for our failure to adjust to the realities of the 21st century.

We will fight them all the way. Already, 300 blogposts have exposed their shabby lies, their shallow selfishness, their hypocrisy, dishonesty and treachery.

This blog is a monument to their crass stupidity.

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

Friday 17 February 2012

LIES, DAMNED LIES AND DELINGPOLES

A while back, we awarded a special, non-existent award for the Nimby Whopper of the Week to the anti-windfarm activitists of the Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm campaign (a campaign organised by extremely wealthy individuals to combat a community-owned wind "farm" of two medium-sized turbines). This was as a result of our breathless admiration for their stunningly stupid claim that the lorries which deliver turbine parts are "longer than an aircraft carrier".

Funny, yes. Grossly untruthful, yes. Immoral terror tactics, yes. But nothing - repeat, nothing - to the unfettered lie machine that is James Delingpole.

Indeed, there are Nimby Lies. Insidious, stupid, self-serving, designed to frighten the children. Then, there are Spectacular Nimby Lies, like the "award-winning" rumours spread by the Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm group. And then there are Delingpoles.

A Delingpole is the new SI unit of nimby mendacity. When a lie is so huge, so eye-wateringly and crazily demented, that it defies the full scope of the English language to sum up its staggering dishonesty, that's a Delingpole.

Delingpole makes money by selling crap. Specifically, he sells climate change denial, and he does it on a huge scale. Naturally, one of his targets is those beautiful, clean, green, harmless, quiet and efficient devices known as wind turbines. They really get his goat. Because they're beautiful, clean, green, harmless, quiet and efficient. He really hates that.

And he's got a new book out. No prizes for guessing that his "book" is yet another mentalist rant against reality, peddling a whole flock of lies and myths to idiots.

Of course, given that Delingpole makes his living by lying his head off to anyone who'll listen - betraying his country and the planet in the process - he wants to publicise his latest outrageous assault on science and common sense. So he wrote an atrocious piece for the Daily Express. And what an atrocity it is. The Delingpole counter went right off the scale. It is a Super-Delingpole of deranged b*llsh*t masquerading as ... well, actually no, it's not masquerading as anything. The man is clearly insane.

He was spurred on by Simon Jenkins's ill-judged comments to what is in fact Delingpole's favourite newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. Jenkins, you may remember, abused his position as Chair of the National Trust to pretend that the said charity was turning against wind turbines. The said charity then had to correct its chairman's false claims, pointing out that its position on renewables remains the same - broadly in favour.

But, in the mad, mad world of the nimby, one man's lies are meat and drink to the next purveyor of lies. One feeds off another, and it all goes round in circles in a weird vortex of nonsense designed, by some magical process, to turn an obvious lie into some sort of "truth". Simon Jenkins said things he had no right to say - and which were blatantly wrong anyway - so Delingpole jumps on the bandwagon to repeat them. He has got a "book" to flog, remember.

Delingpole out-Delingpoled himself in the Express. These weren't just lies. They were Delingpole lies - lies so massive you can see them from space.

One lie: wind power "drives anyone who lives nearby mad with its strobing effects and low subsonic hum". How can a hum be "subsonic"? Does this maniac even understand the English language? He certainly knows nothing about windfarms, preferring to regurgitate foolish and disproven nimby myths than to risk a narrow brush with reality.

Another lie: wind power "trashes property values". Delingpole has no evidence whatever to support this monstrous claim, because it's a lie.

Another lie: wind power "costs between three and nine times the amount of conventional energy". He's making these figures up, of course, because it doesn't. And he fails to explain what he means by "conventional energy". If he means coal, oil, gas or nuclear, then he's clearly lying.

Yet another lie: wind power "slows economic growth". Again, no evidence is offered, because no such evidence exists. Across the world, wind power is growing (in Europe, installed wind energy capacity increased by 11% last year), and anyone who thinks that this is the cause of the global financial malaise is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. Delingpole, by the way, is honorary President for Life of cloud-cuckoo-land. The reality is that the wind industry is actually creating jobs at a time when other industries are shedding them. Oh, but, if you're a Delingpole, living in a topsy-turvy nimby wilderness of gibberish, that means that wind power "destroys jobs". Honestly, what a twat!

And then - surprise surprise - Delingpole quotes figures from the Renewable Energy Foundation, an organisation funded and staffed entirely by Delingpoles. Which simply tells us that Delingpole relies entirely on dishonest lobby groups for his falsified information.

As if that wasn't enough, Delingpole then leaps off the high board into the deep end of nimby paranoia. Apparently, according to his perverse fantasies, the wind industry employs an army of lobbyists, many of whom pose as ordinary citizens in order to write to their MPs in support of wind. This is madness, pure and simple, and it proves only that Delingpole has vanished so far up his own bottom that he can no longer tell day from night or left from right. Still, in his frothy-mouthed craziness, he argues that the "real people who have to live alongside these eyesores stand no chance against such well-orchestrated, lavishly funded and utterly cynical campaigns."

Delingpole likes the word "utterly". Not only are the principled and conscientious supporters of green energy "utterly cynical" - unlike, say, a Delingpole ranting his way through an overflowing trough of his own mendacity - but wind turbines are "utterly pointless monstrosities" ... "utterly pointless", that is, in the sense that they currently produce between 6 and 12% of our electricity, while in Denmark they're getting close to 25%. At the current rate, the UK's windfarm fleet will be as "utterly useless" as the infinitely more expensive and hazardous nuclear power industry by about 2015.

Much of this is just a warm-up, really, for Delingpole's major problem, which is his fanatical and "utterly" bonkers climate change scepticism. But that's what he makes his money from - pleasing the Fox News-watching Tea Party extremists of America and a few grizzled Australian pensioners by flogging them a cosy but "utterly" dishonesty misrepresentation of scientific fact.

The more wild-eyed anti-windfarm maniacs almost invariably turn out to be head-in-the-sand climate change deniers. And Delingpole is their poster-boy. He'd rather blame "watermelons" (those who are "green on the outside and red on the inside") for destroying the Earth than even think for a single moment of letting a word of truth cross his lips.

Unbelievably, a member of BLoW ("Back Local Windfarms") is still receiving nuisance letters from a truly bonkers person in the Lenches, more than a year after the thugs of VVASP bullied the local council into betraying the electorate. These letters, scrawled as if they were written in an asylum, come along every few weeks, usually accompanied by a clipping from the Express with their latest diatribe of nimby drivel.

We're willing to lay bets that the nimby nuisance of Church Lench will be posting our friend a clipping of Delingpole's massive Delingpole of anti-wind gibberish. And why not? If you're so soft in the head that you actually believe anything the Express publishes or Delingpole writes, then you're certainly silly enough to use it to harass somebody who's actually got a heart, a soul and a brain.

But there are liars, and there are damned liars, and then there are Delingpoles. And they're dangerous. Because they are quite, quite mad, and they're making a fortune out of stirring up the nasty nimbies and selling our children downriver. And that, folks, is treachery on an epic scale.

Wednesday 15 February 2012

THE MADNESS GOES ON

How do we know that the anti-windfarm fanatics are losing the argument?

Their lies get louder and stupider.

And so we kick off with our old friends, those scoundrels of the Renewable Energy Foundation (don't be fooled by the worthy-sounding name: they hate windfarms and really don't give a damn about renewable energy).

In their most recent press release, the running-dogs of REF have announced that, inspite of overwhelming public opposition, 70% of windfarm applications are getting approved. Naturally, this must stop.

Ha ha ha ha ha - ! How low can REF go? First of all, their claim that there is overwhelming public opposition to windfarms. Is there any evidence for this? When every poll and survey carried out reveals that a clear majority of UK residents actually support windfarms and even believe that the government should be subsidising them?

What REF presumably means is that, at the local level, the witless, self-centred nimby maniacs (who regularly trot out REF propaganda) all too often manage to whip up opposition by lying about windfarms and bullying anyone who expresses an independent opinion. But that's not an overwhelming majority. As we've pointed out elsewhere, nimby groups - the Lenches' despicable VVASP cabal of frauds and thugs being a good example - routinely exaggerate the level of local opposition to a windfarm. So, while nimby groups lie (to themselves and to everybody else) about a mythical "overwhelming majority", the genuine majority of British people, as demonstrated time and time again, are strongly in favour of windfarms.

Secondly, REF even lied about the percentage of windfarm planning applications which are successful. They did this by means of the standard nimby practice of massaging the figures. In fact, more like 42% of windfarm planning applications eventually receive approval, and the timespans involved are getting longer (see this DECC graph: https://restats.decc.gov.uk/app/pub/repd/tracking)

So, two lies for the price of one - not bad, even by REF's standards.

And, of course, the mealy-mouthed myth-mongers of REF keep insisting that wind turbines are "inefficient". It's a familiar claim, and it's b*llsh*t. Alan Whitehead MP has taken the trouble to investigate the relative "efficiencies" of various power generation sources. Amazingly, wind power comes out just behind gas in the efficiency stakes, and ahead of nuclear and coal. See here:

http://www.alansenergyblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/theres-inefficient-and-then-theres-really-inefficient

Bearing in mind the fact that wind power is now cheaper than nuclear, gas and coal, as well as being considerably safer and much, much cleaner, to discover that it's also more efficient than two of the others and almost as efficient as gas means that, well folks, it's a no-brainer. Wind wins, every time, and only a nimby deadhead with personality problems would disagree with that.

Oh, but some people don't like the look of wind turbines. One of these people is Sir Simon Jenkins, who just happens to be the chair of the National Trust.

Jenkins doesn't like windfarms at all, and he's made that perfectly apparent in the past. But he's gone a bit further, and has actually done something quite naughty. In an interview with the Daily Torygraph, he has claimed that the National Trust is now "deeply sceptical" about wind turbines (which Jenkins, in his almighty weirdness, thinks are a "public menace"). He also advanced the usual, phenomenally stupid and - as we have just seen - utterly WRONG claim that windfarms are inefficient.

What makes Jenkins' loopy interview with the anti-renewables Telegraph so odd is that the National Trust has previously made clear that it is broadly in favour of windfarms. And no sooner had Simon Jenkins blown off about wind turbines to the Torygraph, than the National Trust announced that its Chair was talking nonsense.

What the National Trust actually said was this: "our chairman has long-held views on wind that don't necessarily chime with our current views as an organisation on wind". And Jenkins' claims that the charity was coming round to his blinkered way of thinking? "No," says the National Trust, "our position hasn't changed on renewable energy."

Read all about it here:

http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2152561/national-trust-rejects-chairmans-anti-wind-power-comments

This all illustrates one of the fundamental problems of the wind power debate. The anti-wind nutters simply cannot be trusted. They are absolutely incapable of telling the truth. Jenkins, just because he doesn't like windfarms, lies about the stance of the nationwide charity he chairs and makes out that his own bigotry and foolish intolerance is shared by the rest of the organisation (of course, he spilled this gibberish to the Daily Telegraph which has a pretty impressive track record of publishing misleading rubbish and blatant lies about windfarms, presumably because its fogeyish readership lives on country estates where, if you're not earning nicely from turbines, you're likely to oppose them because they "ruin" "your" "view"). The charity then has to set the record straight by politely pointing out that its chair is a madman with truth issues.

At the same time, the REF (why isn't Simon Jenkins chair of that fake charity?) publishes a press release claiming - wrongly - that there is overwhelming public opposition to windfarms and - equally wrongly - that 7 out of 10 windfarms get planning permission.

What is this? Is this what Britain has become - a nation of liars and their lies? A country in which anyone who has a bee in his bonnet about windfarms can sound off to the right-wing press, spouting whatever nonsense pops into his mind, to the detriment of our nation's future?

The roll call of traitors grows longer every day. The wild-eyed nimbies out there just love it when the REF - founded by Noel Edmonds - unleashes another dose of anti-wind claptrap, or when someone like Simon Jenkins grossly misrepresents the facts. That, folks, is why it's taking longer and longer to get wind turbine applications approved - because of the demented gobbledegook that these fools are spreading.

Do we want the rest of the world to march ahead with renewables, sustainability and a low-carbon economy, while we sit around telling each other lies about renewables? Is that what we want? To be in hock to Russia for our relatively-inefficient, increasingly-expensive and not-very-carbon-neutral gas supplies?

These people are insane, and if the Daily Telegraph and the Blimps who read it had a trace of patriotism in their sclerotic arteries they would start telling the truth about windfarms. They're cheaper, cleaner, safer and just-as-if-not-more efficient that the other sources. And the overwhelming majority of Britons like them. Get over it.

Oh, and the Co-operative Group currently expects to exceed its target of £1bn invested in green energy projects by 2013. There's just so much demand out there for renewables. In the real world, that is. Not the bizarre alternative universe inhabited by the likes of Simon Jenkins, REF and the nimby nutters of Middle-brow England.

Thursday 9 February 2012

DISSECTING A NIMBY RANT

Nimbies never learn. They're like Daleks. They go round screeching out their nimby nonsense and insisting that absolutely everybody must - and even does - agree with them, regardless of the evidence. As we saw in the Lenchwick Fiasco, they are prepared to tolerate no opinion other than their own, and will go to terrifying lengths to set up their own smokescreen of lies and then make sure that nobody, repeat nobody, else gets a word in. The very notion of free and open debate terrifies them, because it's only by enforcing a monopoly of opinion that they can avoid being exposed as morons, liars and frauds.

They also like trolling the pages of green and pro-renewables websites looking for an excuse to throw a tantrum.

One pro-renewables website posted up a blog page giving supporters advice about writing to the local press. Naturally, this perfectly fair and reasonable piece attracted a nimby Dalek. And so his wildly irrational rant began:

Could you please also include in your letters the devastation that wind turbines cause to unspoilt landscapes and communities?

Now, let's just stop him there, because he's already kicked off with two massive nimby myths. The first is the myth of the "unspoilt" countryside. It's easy enough, if you live in a bubble of your own smugness, to fall for this myth. But a moment's reflection, and the least appreciation of history, will tell you that it's nonsense. Try finding any part of the British landscape that hasn't been altered by human beings - go on, try and find one. Or, put it this way: if the "unspoilt landscape" you're on about has got fields, hedges, livestock, drainage, roads, lanes, pylons, canals, ancient heritage sites and not an awful lot of deciduous woodland on it, then it is NOT unspoilt. It has been changed. By people.

The other myth is that wind turbines devastate communities. Even when those wind turbines don't even exist yet. Or, put it another way: a windfarm that doesn't even exist is blamed for "devastating" a community.

This is impossible, of course, and if your community has been devastated by something that doesn't actually exist, then you and your neighbours have lost your heads.

Windfarms do NOT devastate communities. That is a fact. What devastates communities is nimby idiots who launch angry, noisy and downright dishonest anti-windfarm campaigns. We saw this during the Lenchwick Scandal. The weirdos lie their heads off in order to whip up unnecessary fear and alarm and then come down very, very hard indeed on those who have the capacity for abstract thought. That is what ruins communities. Not a windfarm that doesn't exist yet.

Anyway, Nimby Idiot (who signs himself "Hammer" - it's odd that these passionate protectors of "unspoilt" landscapes and communities love to give themselves violent profile names and pictures: tells you something about what they're really like) - he continues:

Here in Mid Wales, we are threatened with hundreds of extra turbines, which the vast majority of the Monmouthshire population don't want.

Okay, first of all - the ludicrously emotive and unreasonable language. These people are not being "threatened" with hundreds of extra turbines. Partly because the local communities will benefit, financially and in other ways, from the turbines. If you think you're being "threatened" with turbines, then you've got a screw loose.

Secondly, are we sure that the "vast majority" of the local population don't want them? Nimbies are notoriously for grossly misrepresenting the level of opposition, sometimes wheeling in their local MP to lie about public opinion (as VVASP did at the Wychavon District Council Planning Meeting). In fact, time and time again we discover that the majority of local people are not opposed to the turbines. But the Daleks insist that, because they are opposed to them, then everybody else must be as well, and so they distort the figures accordingly. Besides which, if you set out to devastate your own community by spreading a load of alarmist lies about the proposed windfarm, then a few sheep will start bleating in chorus. If they had the facts, rather than nimby lies, to base their opinions on, things might be different.

And so he goes on -

In addition to the turbines, we are threatened [again!] with a spider's web of electricity pylons and a 19-acre sub station that are going to ruin either the Upper Severn or Vyrnwy Valleys.

A "spider's web" of electricity pylons would be something to see! We can't really imagine what such a thing is, but we're fairly confident that - like all the other pylons that have been in existence for almost 100 years - we'll soon learn to live with them.

Since the economy of Mid Wales is underpinned by tourism, you can imagine the impact that wind turbines and hundreds of pylons and high powered lines is going to have on employment here.

Yes, we can imagine that, actually. There will be no impact on employment at all, except that some local jobs will be created. This is yet another nimby myth in action - the myth that windfarms adversely impact on business and tourism. They don't, as anyone who's been to Scotland, Cornwall or even Mid Wales will be able to tell you. But note how facetiously this "Hammer" nincompoop smuggles in the idea that they might. He assumes that we will imagine a local economy devastated by the turbines. And that's all we can do, because that devastation exists, and will continue to exist, entirely in the nimby imagination.

Perhaps, after your supporters have erected all their turbines against the wishes of local people, the last one to leave our beautiful region would be kind enough to turn off the lights!

What a strange sentence. Most windfarm supporters will not be erecting all the turbines - we'll leave that to the developers and their expert contractors - and the whole point is that, by doing so, the lights won't go out! Is this addled dimwit suggesting that we should erect all our turbines in his "beautiful" region and then leave all the people there in darkness? What an idiot!

Of course, the real purpose of this insane sentence is to allude to the Nazi invasion of various parts of Europe in the 1930s. Mr Raving Looney here is hoping that we'll all make the connection: conscientious supporters of renewable energy = Nazis; misinformed and selfish locals = freedom-fighters; arrival of windfarm = World War II. Honestly, you couldn't make it up, could you? Except that this drooling pranny did.

We keep hearing disturbing noises from the Coalition Government that sometimes the opinions of local people have to be over-ruled in the national interests.

Yep. And libraries are being closed, people with disabilities targetted, the NHS is being privatised by stealth and public sector workers sacked. Get real.

The last time we heard a similar statement was when the Tryweryn valley was flooded to provide water for Liverpool. That part of Wales will never forgive the Government of the day for riding roughshod over their wishes. Neither will the people of Montgomeryshire.

Nice to know that the people of Montgomeryshire are still standing firm with the displaced villagers of Tryweryn after all these years. At a guess, though, we'd have to say that "Hammer", whoever he is, doesn't sound like a real local. More likely, he's an Englishman who moved to Wales in search of that "unspoilt landscape" that he apparently believes in. And, consequently, he's profoundly ignorant of Welsh history.

When the Tryweryn river was dammed to create a reservoir in 1965, 67 inhabitants of the village of Capel Celyn were forcibly removed from their homes and their village was drowned. This was indeed to provide water for the City of Liverpool. It's still a sore point today.

But Mr Massive Nitwit - or "Hammer", as he prefers to be known - clearly isn't a real Welshman or he would never have desecrated the memory of the Capel Celyn victims by comparing what happened to them with the imminent appearance of a few more turbines in Mid Wales. Quite frankly, the man is insane to make such an offensive and foolish comparison. Nobody - but nobody - will be displaced from their homes by the proposed turbines. No villages will be wiped off the map, no ancestors dug up from their graves to be buried elsewhere, and families who have lived in the same valley for untold generations will be dragged from their homes by force.

YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR TINY LITTLE MIND TO IMAGINE THAT THE PROPOSED WINDFARM OR WINDFARMS WOULD BE ANYTHING LIKE WHAT HAPPENED AT CAPEL CELYN!!!!!!!!!

This, though, is the thing with the nimby nutters, and especially those who have moved into somebody else's village. They have no sense of perspective whatsoever. A few wind turbines which will have absolutely no negative impact on business, tourism, the environment, property prices, health or anything else for that matter get compared with the Lights Going Out Across Europe and one of the greatest outrages committed in twentieth century Wales.

So, I'm sorry to tell you this, "Hammer", but you're a maniac.

You are wrong on every level. You have no evidence whatsoever to back up your extremist claims. They are based entirely on prejudice and insinuation. And you have NO RIGHT to drag the people of Capel Celyn into your witless and selfish cause. You are a Grade-A idiot who has almost certainly done more harm to his community than foot and mouth did. In a sane world, you would be removed from society for the good of all.

In Denmark last year, wind power accounted for 24% of all electricity production. You've probably been telling anyone who will listen to your idiotic dribblings that Denmark "gave up" on wind power years ago. But that isn't true, just like everything else you've said about wind power isn't true. So you're not just grossly insensitive and borderline certifiable - you're a Massive Liar as well!

Europe's bill for oil shot up by 100 billion euro over the last financial year. The French government has just released figures which reveal that nuclear power is much, much more expensive than anyone had previously admitted. Domestic energy bills rose dramatically as the global price of wholesale gas went up, and there are indications that the gas-exporting countries like Russia are beginning to shut down the pipelines again.

And you, "Hammer" - you hairy-eared, swivel-eyed, flatulent twit - you are trying to stop Britain from planning its way out this energy crisis because you don't want to see a turbine or a pylon!

Cretin.

Wednesday 8 February 2012

THE BAD, THE GOOD AND THE UGLY

... or, if you prefer: TRAITORS, TRIODOS and TRIPE.

First, the TRAITORS. Click on this link to find a list of the halfwits who signed the letter to David Cameron calling on the Prime Minister to shoot Britain in the foot:

http://www.yes2wind.com/news/names-of-mps-calling-for-onshore-wind-cut-backs

One way or another, all of these "people" are mad, bad and dangerous to know. They want to destroy a thriving and promising industry. They want your energy bills to soar. They have no interest in the environment or Britain's energy security. They are dupes and fools. And there's a chance that one or other of these idiots represents YOU in parliament. Maybe you should let that "person" know what you think.

Now, some good news, courtesy of TRIODOS. Triodos is an ethical bank. No, stop laughing at the back - there are such things, and the Holland-based Triodos is one of them. It only lends to businesses and charities delivering social and environmental benefits.

Last year, the bank's lending to organisations in the UK rose by a massive 36%. So, not only is Triodos a GOOD bank. It's doing what the BAD banks should be doing, and doing it exceptionally well. Its lending to renewable energy projects in the UK was up 25% last year, while social housing investments rose by 240%. All good stuff.

Triodos also launched a £15m share issue last year to increase its investment in onshore wind. The very thing that the Tory nutcases linked to above want to stop. Triodos expects to be supporting 100 megawatts of installed wind energy capacity by 2015.

So, regardless of the idiocy of certain rightwingers in the UK, the financial sector - that is, the part of that sector which actually works - is carrying on investing in wind power in the UK. Who, then, is really looking after your future, folks? 101 dippy parliamentarians with trench brain or a leading ethical bank?

Now for the TRIPE. This is how the Daily Mail invests anti-windfarm myths by misrepresenting scientific research:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/feb/07/wind-farms-climate-change-weather

If you've been keeping your eyes open for any length of time, you'll know by now that this sort of misrepresentation forms the basis for practically all anti-windfarm campaigns. A story is twisted, misreported and given a stupid but startling headline. That is then taken up by the climate sceptic/anti-renewables fringe and becomes a "fact". But it was never a "fact" in the first place. It's a lie dressed up as a news story.

So, that's today's bulletin. A list of Tory traitors, some good news about investments and wind power, and an example of how the right-wing lies to you about wind. Business as usual, you might say.

Tuesday 7 February 2012

ABUSE OF PRIVILEGE

The far-right wing of the Conservative Party has been revealing its absolute contempt for the environment.

But not the landscape. That's a different thing altogether. See, if you're wealthy enough to afford a country mansion, you can kid yourself that the landscape is yours. It belongs to you, and no one else can touch it. Whereas the environment, by definition, belongs to us all.

That's the difference. The environment is "Socialist" and therefore to be destroyed. The landscape, by way of contrast, can be made to fall into the "private property" bracket. So it must be protected at all costs for the few who can enjoy it. The rest of us have to make do with the environment.

For a classic illustration of this rampant selfishness and double standards, we need only look to Spear's Submission to the Government on Protecting Britain's Heritage, which is particularly obsessed with Landscape.

In case you don't know, Spear's is short for "Spear's Wealth Management Survey", which is proud to describe itself as "THE ESSENTIAL RESOURCE FOR HIGH NET WORTHS" and whose motto is "If You Can Afford It, You Can't Afford To Be Without It". So it's about money, yeah? Money, money, and lots and lots of money. Loadsamoney.

Now, not so very long ago (August 2011) these custodians of enormous personal wealth launched a campaign to "Save Britain's Historic Landscape". Save it from what, you might well ask. Well, windfarms, of course.

According to their press release, "Spear's Editor-in-Chief William Cash has compiled detailed evidence suggesting that the draft NPPF [national planning guidelines] does not give adequate protection to 'heritage assets'". Oh dear. Must try harder.

But what's this? William Cash is also the chair of the Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm campaign group. We've reported on this nimby group before, paying especial attention to their hilarious, ludicrous and eye-wateringly dishonest claims about the length of the trucks which deliver wind turbine parts ("longer than an aircraft carrier", they'd have you believe).

William Cash doesn't like the idea that the view from his stately home might - just might - include a glimpse of a couple of community-owned wind turbines.

That's community-owned (i.e. "Socialist") wind turbines which are there to benefit the environment ("Socialist"). As you've probably gathered, William Cash, Editor-in-Chief of Spear's Wealth Management Survey, isn't much of a Socialist. After all, with all that wealth to manage, you're going to want to own your own view, aren't you? Can't let the community put up a couple of wind turbines, can you?

William Cash has been ably assisted in his manic battle against the modest Bridgnorth Windfarm by his father, Bill Cash MP. Bill Cash, a right-wing Eurosceptic (and probably a "climate sceptic" too) was one of the signatories of that clueless and unpatriotic letter to David Cameron the other day.

So, father and son - Willy and Billy - are both fighting the bad fight against windfarms. Bill is abusing his position as a Member of Parliament to try and bugger up a community-owned renewable energy scheme on somebody else's patch. William is abusing his position as Editor-in-Chief of the "Essential Resource for High Net Worths" to interfere with the government's planning guidelines where windfarms are concerned.

What does this tell us? We already know that the Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm campaign seldom bothers itself with the facts. Or, to put it another way, like so many other carbon-copy nimby groups, they lie through their eye-teeth. Only the Bridgnorth bunch just happen to have a higher net worth than most of the others, so their lies are even more extreme than most (see earlier post about windfarm lies and local property values).

We now know that campaigning against Britain's energy future is a family affair. Son wastes his time on a campaign which has little to do with High Net Worths and everything to do with his own temporary pet peeve; Dad signs letters to David Cameron calling on the PM to kill off a thriving industry.

This at a time when the accountancy firm KPMG is refusing to release the findings of its report on green energy. An early draft was "leaked" to the Sunday Times and caused a furore. The Murdoch press loved it (they bury anything which shows how popular and successful windfarms are) and the BBC's Panorama broadcast a woefully one-sided programme based on it. Panorama has since admitted that it's programme was somewhat misleading, blaming recent rises in energy bills on the government's green policies, when it now recognises that bills rose becauses of wholesale gas prices. But KPMG are refusing to publish their finalised report. Why? Probably because the interrim report simply proved that KPMG were using the wrong figures. They made an unholy mess of things, and handed a propaganda coup to the swivel-eyed weirdos of the anti-renewables movement.

Last year, in the midst of a global recession, the wind energy sector installed more than 41 gigawatts of new capacity - that's a whopping 21% increase on 2010. Some seventy-five countries now have wind power as part of their energy mix, and the great advances are currently happening in Latin America, Asia, Africa and America. California now gets five per cent of its electricity from wind turbines. The US as a whole installed 7 gigawatts of wind power capacity last year; Canada surpassed 5GW and even Britain has just made it past 6GW. India installed 3GW, taking its total capacity beyond 16GW, while China streaks into the lead, installing 18GW last year to take its total to more than 62GW.

Wind is the Big One, folks. It's the future. Unless, of course, you're an obsessively selfish super-rich right-wing Toad of Toad Hall, like a certain Cash-by-Name-Cash-by-Nature. Then you'll abuse every privilege you have to try and ensure that the view from the servant's quarters is not in any way affected by a couple of community-owned turbines.

And if that's the kind of person you are, then your black, black soul will rot for eternity in the lowest pit of hell. Not much of a view there, you arrogant, ignorant piece of excrement.

Still, you'll be among friends.

Monday 6 February 2012

STOP PRESS: URGENT - PLEASE SIGN

Good news, folks.

If you agree with us that the letter signed by 101 (mostly Tory) MPs calling on David Cameron to scuttle the UK's successful and growing wind power industry was phenomenally stupid, you can sign this petition to the PM asking him to ignore the sheep on his own backbenches who put that piece of craven idiocy together in the first place:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/supportukonshorewindfarms/

So please, show a conscience and an awareness of the facts and sign this important petition. Let David Cameron know that those morons who pretend to be representing the people are only representing a tiny selfish minority - oh, and the lobbyists for Big Oil and New Nuclear, of course.

Now, we apologise for having to do this, but in order to get this noticed on search engines we're just going to have to write Cheryl Cole Mayan Prophecies 2012 Queen's Diamond Jubilee London Olympics RBS Bankers' Bonuses Occupy Movement Twilight Hollyoaks Babes ETSU-R-97 Cure for Cancer.

Okay, so now that we've got your attention, please click on the link above and SIGN.

GOVERNMENT SNAPS BACK

Out of touch. Ideologically blinkered. Irrationally opposed to the nation's best interests. And, in some cases, plain stupid.

That's the 101 dimwit MPs who wrote to David Cameron recently, calling on the Prime Minister drastically to reduce the "subsidies" to onshore windfarms ("subsidies" which do not actually involve the tax-payer and pale in comparison with the subsidies to nuclear and fossil fuels) and to make it easier for dangerously dishonest groups of local fanatics to stop vital low-carbon ecenomy infrastructure projects (windfarms) being built.

You can't get much stupider than that. What those human failures are calling for is a complete up-ending of democracy (most Britons, it has been proven time and time again, support wind power) and a world in which the lies of the nuclear and fossil fuel lobbyists are given more credence than empirical facts (renewables have had little real impact on domestic energy bills, and those who protest against such elegant and necessary structures as wind turbines as basically chronically selfish and incapable of honesty).

Look at it this way. Last year (2011), EU countries added a total of more than 6.9 gigawatts of installed wind capacity - an increase of 11 per cent on 2010, and enough to supply more than 6% of the EU's electricity demands. The United States also invested heavily in wind energy - although China went further. Indeed, in the States wind overtook nuclear. In France, meanwhile, the costs of nuclear are about to exceed those of wind energy. Thanks, in part, to the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, global renewable energy deals saw a massive 40% increase last year (source: PriceWaterhouseCooper). There simply is no argument - renewables are the way forward, and anyone who tries to pretend that they're not is deluded.

David Cameron has been in talks with offshore wind power companies to try and ensure that wind turbine parts are built in Britain. This is to overcome one of the nonsensical arguments against windfarms in Britain - that they are often owned by foreign concerns (this isn't something that usually worries the Tories, who happily sold off our utilities to foreign firms, so it's obviously yet another made-up reason to oppose windfarms when no good reasons to do so exist).

The DECC has also just announced that 155 community energy projects have been awarded a share of £5.1 million to support small-scale renewable energy and energy efficiency schemes.

So, it's comforting to know that the government has reacted both dismissively and angrily to the backbench morons who thought that Chris Huhne's departure from the DECC was their chance to betray the national interest in favour of those oil, coal, gas and nuclear lobbyists who've been lying to us for so long. The first response from the government to the letter signed by 101 right-wing nutcases was a statement that onshore wind power is "a cost-effective and valuable part of the diverse energy mix". Note that "cost-effective". Even by appealing to the narrowest of financial arguments, the madcap nimby nutters don't have a case.

RenewableUK - the voice of the renewables industry in Britain - issued a press release which tried, once again, to awaken these Tory quislings to a few basic facts:

http://www.bwea.com/media/news/articles/pr20120206.html

Nick Clegg also showed that he'd grown a pair by fighting back against the right-wing loonies trying to plunge Great Britain into the outer darkness. The "choice for the UK is simple," he has said: "wake up, or end up playing catch up. In today's world the savviest states understand that going for growth means going green. Low-carbon markets are the next frontier in the battle for global pre-eminence."

Clearly, though, the argument has boiled down to an ideological one. Or, to put it more clearly, an argument between bigots on the one side and science, rationalism, objectivity and common sense on the other. Looking at the list of MPs who signed that idiot letter to David Cameron we spot a number of crazies, racists, Europhobes, nutters and thickos - just the sort to swallow the propaganda of the fossil fuel and nuclear lobbies, by way of propagandist organisations like the Renewable Energy Foundation, and to think that because they don't like the look of something it must be "inefficient". Those people are pretty empty-headed, but that just means that there's more space in their heads for their own stupid slogans to go round and round and round.

On the other side of the argument are those who know what the UK needs, those who know the most cost-effective and efficient options, those who actually care about wildlife, the environment and our childrens' futures, those who have a genuine sense of the aesthetic and can understand a scientific report. Grown-ups, in other words.

The 101 Abominations who signed the Cretins Charter, addressed to David Cameron, are the public faces of The Enemy. Those who hate Britain enough to want to destroy jobs, growth and energy security. Those who would only tell the truth if you paid them enough to do it, and even then would probably get it wrong. They are the champions of the nimbies, and between them they could possibly muster 100 brain cells - just.

For once, though, the government is sticking with the facts ... and so the UK's renewables industry and our fine fleet of wind turbines will continue to grow and provide us with the clean, green energy we so desperately need.

Sunday 5 February 2012

TORIES ARE REVOLTING (AGAIN)

We were wrong.

A few posts back, we revealed that the MP for Redditch who did such a spectacular job of misleading the Wychavon District Council Planning Committee over the alleged level of local opposition to the proposed Lenchwick Windfarm (she was quoting figures she'd been given by a discredited protest group) had apparently realised something. In a piece she wrote for a Conservative Party blog she remarked, a propos of the High Speed Rail-Link, that vested interests sometimes supply false information in support of their cause. She had looked at one of the latest reports published by the anti-HS2 nimbies and quickly sussed that it was a pile of garbage put together by an anti-HS2 campaigner and someone who just hates trains but loves roads. Cleverly, Ms Lumley MP concluded that those who were against something were perhaps bending the truth a little and calling it a 'report'.

We thought she might have learnt the error of her ways. But we were wrong.

Her name has appeared alongside a hundred others - almost all Tory MPs - who have written to David Cameron. They want him to slash "subsidies" for onshore windfarms. They also want him to make it easier for small, noisy and fearsomely dishonest protest groups to prevent windfarms from being built where they might, just might, be able to see them.

Karen Lumley has evidently learned nothing. And probably never will. She is still clinging to the inaccurate nimby nonsense she had rammed down her throat by the morons of VVASP, more than a year ago. She hasn't bothered to ask herself whether the "reports" they quoted were as oafishly misleading as the one she criticised in her article about HS2 (which she supported). As far as she is concerned, it's all right for a high-speed rail link to be built across open countryside but not a windfarm.

Here's a measure of how stupid she, and her fellow Tory MPs who signed the letter to David Cameron, are. We reported on a mini-glut of "reports" issued by right-wing think-tank not so long ago which tried to rubbish the wind industry. Want to know how crap their figures were? Here's a good piece which explains why one of those anti-renewables reports - the one issued by Civitas - was so remarkably inaccurate:

http://fullfact.org/blog/figures_civitas_wind_power_report_res-3290

Still, pepped up by these woefully useless reports from anti-renewables "experts", the 101 Damnations of the Conservative Party decided to bend their Prime Minister's ear. This almost certainly has something to do with Chris Huhne's dramatic exit from the Cabinet last week. Huhne not only likes windfarms but he can see that the UK has no option - we continue to develop wind power or the lights go out. And that's even after the government lied to parliament in order to force through legislation for 10 new nuclear power stations. But the running dogs of the right are so glad to be rid of Huhne they're now trying to destroy Britain's wind power industry on totally bogus grounds.

How mad this all is! Okay, so certain right-wing newspapers have buried the results of their own polls, which have shown how popular wind power is (see earlier posts). And maybe the right-wing nutters of the Cameron letter (they include the looney anti-abortionist Nadine Dorries and Aidan Burley, who goes to parties with people dressed as Nazis) only ever hear from the more boorish of their constituents - the sort who've been making such daft claims about wind power as have been doing the rounds in Bridgnorth recently.

And maybe these 101 twerps actually believe that democracy is NOT what the majority wants, but only what a small and vociferous MINORITY wants - as happened in the Lenches. In other words, local people should be able to stop windfarms being built, even when the majority of those local people want the windfarm!!!

It's political incorrectness gone mad!

We've said it before, and we'll say it again, and we'll quote Green groups who have pointed out that campaigning against windfarms is SELFISH:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-16867355

And pandering to this idiotic selfishness is - well, okay, it's what a Tory MP does - but it's BAD FOR BRITAIN, you loons! The rest of the world is steaming ahead with windpower and you cretins want us to go backwards!!! Does appeasing the fascist fringe - like our Dr No and his evil companion Lurch - really matter so much to these drones that they will betray the national interest to do so?

Over and over again, we hear the same idiots bleating the same outdated and disproven gibberish - the claims that windfarms cause ill-health (a whole series of peer-reviewed scientific studies have now shown that there is absolutely no evidence for this wild claim) and that they are noisy (a claim you can only make if (a) you've never been anywhere near a windfarm or (b) you're a liar), that they slaughter wildlife (compared with cars, they barely touch 'em) and impact on house prices (again, not a shred of proof) - and braindead Tory MPs just can't see it, can they? They can't see that they've been lied to! They keep banging on about subsidies - what subsidies???

Why is it that Ms Lumley can tell when an anti-HS2 group is spreading misinformation but can't tell when an anti-windfarm group is spinning nonsensical myths that have been roundly and repeatedly debunked?

What have these Tories got against Britain? We have the best wind resources in Europe. But our elected representatives want to hurtle us back to the Dark Ages, while the rest of Europe - as well as the Americas, the Antipodes, India, China and Africa - charges ahead with clean, green, renewable energy.

And why do we have to keep hearing those same old lies - "inefficient", "subsidy-driven" - from people who really ought to know better. Whose job it is to know better!!

If you want to be able to look your grandchildren in the eye and tell them that you didn't sell their future for a view you don't own, write to your MP and insist that, for once in their miserable lives, they at least try to get their facts right.

Karen Lumley almost did, once. But then she gave up again.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

WIND TURBINE SYNDROME

It's one of the great idiocies of our time - a big fat lie deliberately spread by manic anti-wind crazies with the sole purpose of scaring and alarming their neighbours.

It's that magical, mystical thing known as "Wind Turbine Syndrome". And it doesn't exist.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health are just the latest official agencies to publish the detailed and considered results of proper research into this phantom issue. They commissioned a panel of independent experts to "identify any documented or potential health impacts of risks that may be associated with exposure to wind turbines, and, specifically, to facilitate discussion of wind turbines and public health based on scientific findings."

Get that - "based on scientific findings".

From the off, the Massachusetts study was basing its conclusions on science. Not the idiotic blather so beloved of the anti-wind numpties. Science. That's fact, data, empirical research, statistics ... boring stuff like that. Unlike inventing stupid scare stories, which isn't boring, but it's not very scientific either.

Well, once again, the experts studied the relevant data. And there is no such thing as "Wind Turbine Syndrome". It's a made-up myth, beloved of the nimbies (even those who happen to have a PhD in Physics, like the Herr Kommandant of the Out-of-Control VVASP protest group in the Lenches), because it sounds so bad, so scary. Even though it does not exist.

Stefan Gsanger, Secretary General of the World Wind Energy Association (WWEA), has said:

In most countries using wind power today, wind farms enjoy a very high degree of public support [we know that - when it is the real public that is being asked, and not just the nimby loudmouths and liars] and it is often rather the local population that wants more wind power and pushes politicians to support it as well. Unfortunately there are some places where misleading and wrong information is spread [you don't say!], especially on health impacts of wind turbines.

As well as Massachusetts, Australia has also accepted that the morons who keep banging on about "Wind Turbine Syndrome" are talking out of their rectums. The Australian Clean Energy Commission has flagged up a statement issued by the Climate and Health Alliance (a coalition representing such groups as the Royal Australian College of Physicians and the Australian Psychological Society) which stresses that wind power and other renewables are a safe alternative to fossil fuels. A Parliamentary inquiry found that there was no basis to claims that wind turbines give rise to adverse health impacts. So another proper investigation rubbishes all that nimby "Wind Turbine Syndrome" baloney!

It will be interesting to see how long the desperately stupid, outrageously irresponsible, reprehensibly wicked and downright dishonest claims made by selfish anti-windfarm groups about "Wind Turbine Syndrome" can continue. There's plenty of good solid research out there these days which indicates that it's an entirely fabricated concern. To be fair, you'd have to be pretty bonkers and soft in the head to have believed it in the first place. But disgraceful nimby publicity - like that over which VVASP was censured by the Advertising Standards Authority on the grounds that it was a pack of lies which could not be substantiated - will no doubt continue to flog the "WTS" dead horse.

One tip for those who find themselves up against this sort of mindless nimby nonsense: look out for the person who keeps going on and on about turbine "noise" and the purported effects on health. There's a strong chance that that person - whoever it is - is the real problem. They often exist to lie and bully in order to get their way, and they're ready and willing to frighten their so-called friends and neighbours with bogus studies and Daily Mail-style garbage.

Those people are dangerous. It's not wind turbines that make people ill. It's the people who try to make you believe that they do - they're the ones who are so sick that they want everybody else to be sick as they are.