WHAT MAKES A NIMBY TICK?

"Upper class people are more likely to behave selfishly, studies suggest" - that was a Guardian headline from earlier this week.

The report stated that a "raft of studies into unethical behaviour across the social classes has delivered a withering verdict on the upper echelons of society." Psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, had been observing people's behaviour and announced that "Privileged people behaved consistently worse than others in a range of situations, with a greater tendency to lie, cheat ... and endorse unethical behaviour". The researchers concluded that self-interest may be "a more fundamental motive among society's elite".

No kidding. But let's first deal with the "class" issue. For example, Donald "Forrest" Trump exhibits very little in the way of class, but his crazed opposition to an offshore windfarm in Scotland (he thinks it'll spoil his "luxury" golf resort, which some reports suggest he can't afford to build anyway) is symptomatic of the kind of crass, selfish and immoral behaviour identified by the California researchers.

Basically, most anti-windfarm campaigners are relatively privileged. They've managed to buy themselves houses in the country. And when a windfarm is proposed in their locale, even though it will do them no harm whatsoever, either physically or financially, they decide to fight it. Why? Because it'll affect the view (which they don't own) - or, rather, it will impinge on their deluded rural myth. And so they resort to the unethical behaviour that is apparently pretty common among the privileged. They lie, they cheat, they bully and they misappropriate public funds.

They won't tolerate anyone's opinion but their own. Thus, supporters of wind energy are not allowed to comment on the demented anti-windfarm websites. But the dribbling opponents of wind energy believe that they have the right to spew their mindless bilge over everybody else's webpages.

Evidence for this trend has emerged lately on the 38 Degrees website. The internet campaign group invited suggestions from its members for new campaigns, and one such suggestion was a positive, pro-windfarm campaign. Naturally, the maniacal nimby brigade out there got to hear about this, and so a welter of demented, opinionated and factually inaccurate comments have suddenly appeared on the 38 Degrees website.

They won't allow others an opinion, these fascists of the anti-wind fringe, but they insist on everybody hearing theirs. How very VVASP of them!

The fact remains, however, that the vast majority of anti-windfarm campaigners are lying, two-faced bullies indulging in the vices of the "privileged" in order to "protect" something that doesn't belong to them from something that will do no harm.

This sort of insanity is costing Britain dear. Whether it's a tasteless American hoodlum trying to dictate Scotland's energy policy or the family team of Cash & Son spreading contradictory lies about windfarms in Shropshire, the outcome is much the same. Many ordinary Britons are becoming confused. The clear majority still support wind power, but irrational fears and gross misunderstandings are growing because of the constant bombardment of nimby propaganda. And that's harming Britain's economy.

Just shows how "patriotic" these evil nimbies are, with their self-serving claims to be defending the "unspoilt landscape" (whatever that might be). The truth is they are undermining Britain's future energy security, inward investment, job creation and the survival of those very eco-systems which these dribbling nimbies say they want to protect.

Lord Turner put it very clearly, just the other day. You can debate whether windfarms are "ugly" or not, but to make foolish and unscientific claims (like "they don't work" or "they are too intermittent") is "just a failure to read the facts."

We've been saying this for a long time. And Adair Turner is now agreeing with us. Too many idiots out there are spouting "rubbish" about wind energy and "believing only what they want to believe". Put it simply - and we saw this happen with VVASP in the Lenches - they make up their minds before they find out the facts, and then they only seek out those "facts" which support their prejudices.

The outcome - claims about windfarms affecting health, which are based on a couple of low-grade, unscientific studies, and a refusal to acknowledge the fact that those studies have been completely disproved and discounted by real scientists doing their jobs properly. Or claims about windfarms affecting the housing market, which are based entirely on guesswork and a willingness to quote half a sentence from an academic study out of context, while refusing to admit that the said study found no correlation at all between windfarms and house prices.

Or even the entirely stupid claim that windfarms are only built in order to harvest the massive government subsidies available for wind energy. First of all, those massive government subsidies don't exist. Or perhaps we should say, they don't exist for wind (which receives a modest levy from the profits of the energy companies, and nothing directly from the tax-payer), although they do exist - in abundance - for the fossil fuel industries.

Gas, for example, which was the real cause of the huge hikes in domestic energy bills recently, got about £3bn last year in government subsidies, mostly in the form of VAT reductions. Oil got £500 million, and coal £72 million.

Over the same period, all forms of renewable energy in the UK received £1.4 bn of support from the energy companies. Wind - onshore and offshore - accounted for £700 million of that, none of which came directly from the tax-payer.

The tax-payer, then, is subsidising gas (twice, in the form of tax breaks and rising energy bills) to the tune of more than FOUR TIMES what the entire wind energy industry in this country receives in order to help create a level playing field.

And yet, the nimby nutters and those deluded 101 Tory backbenchers who wrote to David Cameron recently, insist that the so-called "subsidies" to renewables are the cause of all our woes. Not the considerably larger actual subsidies to gas, which really is causing fuel poverty. No: poor old clean, reliable, friendly, safe and cheap renewables. But then, the drooling frauds who signed that silly letter to Cameron couldn't spot the truth if you smacked them in the face with it. They are typical of the lunatic nimby fringe in this country - grotesquely deluded and utterly dishonest.

And bad for Britain. There's a huge amount of investment piling up, ready to help us on our way towards the low-carbon economy to which our government is committed. But a lot of that investment is getting cold feet, largely because of the idiot brigade, like Cameron's 101 dimwitted backbenchers, who would rather shout lies about wind power than support their country.

So the government has been forced to start polishing up its green credentials and announcing support for wind power (although, being tainted with nimbyism, they tend to prefer the more expensive option of offshore wind). This is a belated but welcome development. The nimby liars, from the right-wing press to the rigged parish councils, have been allowed to dominate the "debate". Partly, this is because those self-important hoodlums automatically seek to dominate every debate before shutting it down altogether. But it is also partly because the better-behaved, more democratic and ethical pro-renewables majority don't indulge in the sort of lying-and-thuggery bonanza that is second nature to the nimby morons.

The thing is, now we know. We know why the anti-wind nimbies tell so many lies, troll their way through other people's websites, victimise those who disagree with them, and then tell even more lies. It's in their nature. They've got something they don't want anyone else to have - a country view - and they will stoop to unimaginable depths of deviousness and dishonesty to protect it, even though it's not under threat.

Or rather, it is - but not from windfarms. They're the solution.

If only these demented, self-serving nimby idiots would grasp that fact. But they don't do facts, do they? Liars and cheats seldom do.