BRITISH WIND FIGHTS BACK

Anyone who has lived through the nightmare of a nimby anti-wind campaign will know how quickly it gets out of hand. But then, if history has taught us anything it's that whenever people resort to lies - and especially the Big Lie - it always ends in tears.

Nimbies resort to lies from the outset because it's the only way they can hope to sway the public. If they restricted themselves to the established facts, their campaigns would get nowhere. Burton Wold (two posts below) is a golden, shining example of this: because the local residents know full well that there is nothing to fear, and everything to look forward to, from having a well-managed windfarm nearby, there have been no objections whatsoever to two extensions to the site, and Kettering District Council has sagely (and happily) granted planning permission to allow Burton Wold to become a windfarm of 22 utility-scale turbines.

(While we're on the subject - nimby idiots, who only steal ideas from each other, routinely refer to large turbines as "industrial". That is a fanatical misuse of language. There's nothing especially "industrial" about them, unless you are prepared to accept that they work - the actual meaning of "industrial" - and generate substantial amounts of electricity, some of which will be used by industry, which is a Good Thing. But no, large turbines are only "industrial" in the same that mindless nimbies want to misrepresent what they look and sound like. The proper term is "utility-scale", because each windfarm is an infrastructure project which generates considerable quantities of electricity for and on behalf of a utility. Next time you hear a nutty nimby calling them "industrial", tell him or her to get a life.)

Sadly, though, the nimby menace, once initiated, quickly leads to hysteria. It might be started by individuals who are insane - egotistical and psychopathic in their eagerness to use outrageous lies in order to cause panic and alarm - but it quickly transfers to ordinary people, some of whom become hysterical. They start saying really stupid things, like windfarms are the reason why bee populations in the US and the UK have been declining over the past 25 years. Of course, no one bothers to explain why those bee populations were declining before windfarms really got started, and why they're declining in areas where there are no windfarms. And recently published research shows that the worrying decline is actually down to the use of pesticides.

So, once again, windfarms get the blame for something that has got nothing at all to do with them, simply because some poor deluded souls have been whipped up into a frenzy of foolish hysteria by their vicious nimby friends.

Well, at long last, British Wind is fighting back. The nimby menace has got to be stopped. It is out of control (because it started out by telling lies, and that always leads to trouble) and is causing no end of harm, both to Britain's short-, medium- and long-term interests and to the lives of people who otherwise would not believe that they are suffering as a result of windfarms.

www.british-wind.co.uk has been established to set the record straight. This is particularly important where politicians are concerned, because some of them (especially on the Conservative backbenches) are not what we would call "thinkers" and they're as easily deluded by self-serving nimby claptrap as the most nervous of residents. When MPs and councillors start spewing out the same ridiculous myths about wind power as their nimby puppet-masters do, then we know we've got a problem. It could make all the difference between energy security and a low-carbon economy on the one hand, and more expensive, more polluting, imported fossil fuels and nuclear hazards on the other. So there's everything to fight for.

British Wind are quite rightly putting the patriotic aspect of wind power to the fore. Fighting a proposed windfarm development purely on the grounds that you think it might affect the view from the end of your driveway (and then spreading as many lies about wind power as you can to make it look like you've actually got an argument) is a profoundly unpatriotic thing to do. It is also sickeningly anti-social - just think, for a moment, of the harm you are doing to your community and your neighbours by lying to them incessantly about something that will actually no them a great deal of good.

So British Wind have compiled a useful checklist of the more common nimby myths, along with answers to some Frequently Asked Questions:

http://www.british-wind.co.uk/wind_myths.html

And before some rampaging, wild-eyed nimby fifth columnist starts bleating that the information has been provided by the wind industry, let's just point out that it makes much more sense hearing from the experts - people who actually know what they're talking about - than to get all your so-called "FACTS" from discredited sources and proven liars, like the nimbies do.

As a nation, we need to fight the nimby ideologues who, for the sake of their own self-importance, would happily drag us all back to the Dark Ages. We need to counter all their pathetic and unsubstantiated gibberish with genuine, proven, scientific facts. We need to stop them inflicting yet more damage on their neighbours and the British economy.

We need to stand up to the bullies and show the liars up for what they are: nimby maniacs without a shred of credibility or honesty, dedicated to harming their neighbours, their country and the planet we all live on, for no reason other than prejudice, intolerance and selfishness.

Good luck to British Wind! And please do visit their website.