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.