LET'S HAVE MORE OF THAT!!

Something rather odd going on.

"Wind of Change" understands that Mr Jeremy Vine was discussing the plans for the new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK on his BBC Radio 2 lunchtime programme. Our sources inform us that Mr Vine received a number of phonecalls from people living in proximity to the planned reactors.

Overall, everybody seemed rather enthusiastic about the new power stations. Fukushima hadn't bothered them? Oh no - you see, the thing about nuclear is that it's clean!

That's right. 'Clean'. Nuclear is the new renewable.

Meanwhile, any mention of windfarms in the media or on the 'net sets off a mini-Fukushima of its own. Windfarms, it seems, are the new nuclear.

Read a right-wing newspaper or read up online and you'd be forgiven for thinking that windfarms are pretty toxic. They are awful, inexcusable, utterly worthless eyesores that ruin your health. They stop people sleeping at nights, produce absolutely no electricity (except when they produce too much), they catch fire, fall over, frighten the horses and massacre bats by blowing their lungs to pieces.

By one recent estimate, snarled by someone on a website, wind energy is 3 - 15 times as expensive as nuclear. Yes, somebody actually made that claim. Because wind turbines are made out of precious metals and cost money. Nuclear, of course, is practically free.

Unless you count half a million years of hazardous waste. And the massive subsidies. And presumably the uranium doesn't come cheap.

But it's odd, isn't it? Even people who claim to be living near proposed nuclear power stations just can't get enough of them (nuclear's so clean, you see? It's like the new renewable) while anyone mentions windfarms and - whoosh! - there's an army of 'experts' out there ready to pounce.

The world, dear friends, has turned upside down.

This, it turns out, is a rather English thing. Scotland has decided on no more nuclear power stations. Fukushima went slightly pop, there was a meltdown and we're still not quite sure how bad the problem is. In Germany, this prompted a government decision to listen to the public and wind down the whole nuclear power thing. Switzerland came to a similar decision and Italy voted in a referendum to put a stop to their nuclear power industry.

A serious drought and rampant wildfires in the southern United States have caused a few jitters. The Los Alamos nuclear power facility is surrounded by wildfires and many people have been evacuated from the region.

Today, we hear that a nuclear power station in Scotland has had to close down because jellyfish have clogged up its water intake (without water, a nuclear power station is basically the world's biggest dirty bomb waiting to go of: think of your car engine running out of water and overheating, then think of the Apocalypse - that's the idea).

But the thing about nuclear is that it's so reliable. Which is why Britain's newest power station spent most of last year generating absolutely nothing. Nada.

When nuclear power stations suddenly go off-grid - happens quite a lot - then the Grid really has to deal with a sudden loss of electricity input. And then the buggers can be off-line for months.

At least the wind is fairly predictable, and windfarms produce electricity most of the time. And we don't all have to run for the hells in terror if a fire breaks out nearby. And if one does go pop, 80,000 people don't have to move away, possibly forever.

Bringing a nuclear power station back online a few months ago caused a sudden rush in the Grid's input and it a few turbines had to stop turning for a while to compensate for the overload. What happened? The right-wing press tried to make out that it was all the turbines' fault!! That was the occasion when they went from producing 'nothing' to producing 'too much' in one fell swoop. But if you think about it, it was actually the nuclear power station that went straight from producing nothing to producing too much. The wind turbines were just carrying on as normal. So who gets the blame?

There is a serious propaganda war going on out there at the moment. A huge number of lies are being spread about windpower. An enormous stinking great landfill of lies.

At the same time, there's a great deal of subtle and not-so subtle pro-nuclear lobbying going on. Can this really be unconnected to the anti-windfarm gobbledegook that is seemingly everywhere at the moment.

The nuclear industry is in this to win - there's a lot of money at stake here. There's also a completely fake and phoney line being spun out there that wind power relies entirely on government subsidies. Without all those huge and tasty subsidies being thrown about by HMG no one would even think of putting up a wind turbine. It's not true. But there is one industry which has always relied on MASSIVE government subsidies and is eagerly hoping for more. The nuclear industry.

It's so clean, you see? Nuclear, that is. Except that there's nothing much cleaner than the wind (though not around in Fukushima at the moment), and barely any waste at all at the end of the day - a concrete plinth, if that. Instead, say, of an environment of life-threatening danger which will last longer than any human civilisation. Funny - our local raving nimbies claimed that a windfarm of five turbines would KILL THE COUNTRYSIDE and CHANGE THE LANDSCAPE FOR EVER. A windfarm couldn't do that if it tried. A nuclear reactor could.

Sudden shutdowns. Crippling expense. Everlasting lethal waste. Radioactive leaks. Half a million years. Plutonium. Weapons. Terrorism. Natural catastrophe. Jellyfish. Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Leukemia. Meltdown. Shortages. Yeah, let's have lots more of that.

People who campaign against windfarms are absolute tossers.

THREE CHEERS FOR FINTRY!!!

There are times when one can get a little weary of hearing all the familiar, nonsensical anti-windfarm blather from self-appointed experts who take their so-called "facts" from nimby groups and the grotesquely misnamed Renewable Energy Foundation.

And then there are those moments when the clouds part and a golden ray of truth shines down.

One of those moments is mentioned here:-

http://www.greenenergynet.com/blog/community-energy-film-wind-change-released

Basically, those wonderfully far-sighted, community-minded people in Fintry have made a video about all the brilliant things they've been able to do because they welcomed their local windfarm and even arranged for one of the turbines to be owned by the community itself.

And the title they've come up with for their video is just superb. Best title ever. We're sure you'll agree.

The sad thing is that anti-windfarm videos spread round nimby groups like a particularly nasty virus, whereas a fantastic pro-windfarm video - based on the experiences of those who actually know what they're talking about - is unlikely to be seen by the majority of people whose heads have been messed with by groups like VVASP and REF. Which really doesn't help matters very much.

But still, always good to know that some real information, and not just the usual nimby lies, is out there.

Meanwhile, here's a two-minute video you might appreciate, if only to prove that, unlike our anti-wind friends, supporters of wind power have a sense of humour:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mTLO2F_ERY

Enjoy!!

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

is eternal vigilance, or so we're told. It's also a matter of understanding what we mean by freedom. In the wrong circumstances, one person's "freedom" is another's enslavement, in which case it isn't freedom at all.

We currently face an epic crisis in this country. It's not just the looming "perfect storm" of peak oil, climate change and ever-decreasing natural resources. It's the crisis of democracy.

In the BBC's "Windfarm Wars" documentary, protesters against the Den Brook Windfarm plans met the news that their legal appeal had failed with the suggestion that democracy had somehow been overruled, and "people power" had counted for nothing.

Of course, that phoney argument depends on a very narrow interpretation of the word "democracy". Such a flexible notion of what democracy might be is typical of the nimby movement. VVASP, for example, proclaimed a triumph for "democracy" when planning permission was refused for the proposed Lenchwick Windfarm. And yet various surveys have shown that the majority of Worcestershire residents want windfarms. So Wychavon's rejection of the windfarm plans was in reality an undemocratic triumph for a very small number of biased, bigoted and brainwashed protesters.

Even at the local level, VVASP had to "reinterpret" the outcome of local polls in order to claim a majority of opinion on their side. Parish council polls showed that a clear minority of local residents were prepared to express opposition to the windfarm plans. The practised liars of VVASP managed to convert the results into an "overwhelming majority" of opposition, and because the new MP for Redditch is so craven and dim it was VVASP's doctored and grossly inaccurate figures that were read out at the planning meeting.

The Den Brook Windfarm saga is even more alarming. There, one man is effectively standing in the way of progress, the common good, the nation's need and the will of the vast majority. Mike Hulme's continued attempts to stall the development have developed into a fanatical obsession. Egged on by the propagandists of the Renewable Energy Foundation (motto: "What's Renewables Got To Do With It?"), Mr Hulme has repeatedly proven that democracy can be totally overturned by a handful of single-minded obsessives.

In such an atmosphere, lies become currency. Real freedom has no need to tell lies. The artificial, right-wing "freedom" of the nimby movement is based on and sustained by lies. It cannot therefore be freedom, except in the narrowest definition of the word. And the hypocritical "freedom" desired by such selfish people is, in reality, the destruction of Britain's best interests.

Elsewhere, democracy is working rather well. Germany, responding to the democratic will of the people, is winding down its nuclear industry. Italy looks set to follow suit - once again, the love of right-wing politicians for the nuclear nightmare has not been shared by the majority of voters.

But in Britain, where a dangerously out-of-control right-wing press continually makes up stupid stories about windfarms, and nutty rural immigrants try their hardest to believe these obviously stupid stories, democracy hangs in the balance.

The majority of Britons want renewables, and windfarms score very highly in most surveys. But a tiny minority, fed on misleading and inaccurate propaganda, don't want them. Which means that the UK is lagging behind (or, at least, England is - Scotland has been infinitely more sensible in this matter).

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. It behoves every single one of us to keep a watchful lookout for the sort of lies regularly published by the Murdoch press and the Daily Heil. As the "Windfarm Wars" documentary proved, if just one man relaxes his guard and begins to believe the lies spun by groups like REF, the outcome is a disaster for true democracy, and the entire country is effectively held to ransom by fanatics.

Freedom includes energy security. For future generations, it will also mean freedom from the worst ravages of climate change.

Which is why anti-windfarm nutcases and their cheerleaders in the fascist press must be recognised as the enemies of freedom. The view from their spare bedroom window is all that matters to these maniacs. And to protect their precious views, all of us must surrender our freedoms. We must accept a twisted form of democracy in which the minority dictates. We must fall for every myth and lie about windpower going, even when the stories don't make sense. We must ignore our consciences, along with scientific evidence and the testimonies of thousands who know what windfarms really are, and campaign against the greater good on behalf of a tiny fringe and their warped fixations.

Basically, we must do as we're told by a crazy bunch of liars, fools and frauds.

Is that what we really want?

THE FAIL STRIKES AGAIN

A lifetime ago, that august periodical known as the Daily Mail openly declared its admiration for a certain German Chancellor who went on to murder millions, simply because they were Jewish, black, gay, gypsies or disapproved somewhat of his fondness for invading other people's countries.

Treachery seems to run through the sclerotic arteries of the Daily Heil. That's why it regularly pays thirty pieces of silver to a deranged and slavering mutt known as Richard Littlejohn (we think the surname is really a nickname), so that he can unleash his peculiar brand of right-wing drivel on the British public from his home in Florida.

Given the immense problems we face - climate change, peak oil, energy security, etc, etc - it must be considered an act of treason not just to oppose sensible and urgent renewable developments but to shriek gormless lies about them just to keep the nimby readership of the Heil in full tut-tut mode. Which makes Littledick one of the biggest traitors of them all.

His barking rant in today's hate-Mail is typical. First of all, he wants to blame the rising costs of gas and electricity to the consumer entirely on the renewables industry. Forget wholesale prices and global shortages in natural resources, or the fact that Japan, embarrassed over its nuclear catastrophe, is now competing for natural gas imports - let's just pretend shall we that the real problem is windfarms. That's right. Don't attack the problem - blame the solution!

To begin with, this article questions whether Littlehampton and his pack of mongrel journalists are even right about the scale of the price increases:

http://fullfact.org/factchecks/energy_bills_prices_climate_change_taxes-2758

Now, we don't expect Littlebrain to get his facts right. After all, why break the habit of a lifetime? And, of course, his fatuous 'opinion' was instantly flagged up by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a group of nutters, led by Nigel Lawson, which exists to deny climate change, rather as the Renewable Energy Foundation exists to promote the use of fossil fuels.

Even so, Littlehope's grotesque excuse for a journalistic article does what all the right-wing papers do: trots out every false fact and disproven myth it can. Reading that sort of gibberish is very much like being at a nimby meeting, or one of VVASP's notorious rallies. Science and sense go out of the window. Lies are the currency.

Of course Littleman trots out the usual hogwash about windfarms never actually generating electricity (this usually comes in the same breath as the one about them being built only to generate subsidies, but since the Renewables Obligation Certificates are only awarded on the basis of the amount of electricity generated that argument doesn't really stand up). And then he gets all hot under the collar because some windfarm owners were paid money earlier this year to shut down their turbines.

This, said Littlewilly, was because it was an 'especially gusty night' - the windfarms 'were producing too much electricity and there was no capacity to store it.' In other words, in the mad, mad world of Littletwat and his barking believers, windfarms don't produce electricity, except on the one occasion when they produced too much.

You couldn't make it up, could you? Well, actually you could. Or rather, if you were Richard Littlecapacityforrationalthought, you did.

The problem was not that it was an 'especially gusty night' on 5/6 April 2011. The problem was that a thermo-nuclear power plant was being brought online after a rather typical period of outage (the myth that nuclear is reliable simply doesn't stand up, either).

It was not an 'especially gusty night', but it had rained heavily in Scotland, so that the hydroelectric facilities were all working at full pelt. Now, Scotland is a net exporter of electricity (all those windfarms, see?), but that night the main power lines to England went down.

Put simply, Scotland had more electricity on hand than it knew what to do with, couldn't sell it to England because the lines had gone down, and couldn't power down the nuclear reactors because that's a huge palaver.

The simplest, easiest and safest solution was to shut down a few turbines till the problem was over. As ever, the turbines proved to be more reliable than other sources (as with Japan - a nuclear meltdown, but the turbines stayed working as usual). Obviously, having gone to the trouble of installing the turbines, the windfarm owners were due compensation for the electricity that they would not be producing while everyone else flapped about like Keystone Kops.

What Littlewit and his fellow morons in Heil-land and elsewhere keep trying to hide is the fact that, once again, wind turbines saved the day.

But then, with an idiot like Littlejohn, working for a paper of traitors, what do you really expect?

THE PRIMROSE PATH

With good news often comes bad. And so, closely following Germany's announcement that nuclear power is simply too dangerous to continue with, we now hear from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 reached a higher level than at any other time in history.

The global economic crisis had brought a slight dip in carbon emissions, but emissions increased globally by 5% last year, making it unlikely that governments will hit their internationally-agreed targets for reductions in emissions.

As Private Frazer would have said, "We're all doomed! Doomed!"

Of course, we are all responsible for humanity's failure to control its historic levels of greenhouse gas emissions. The situation was aptly summarised by one of the youngsters in the Lenches who, having listened too much to the wayward nonsense spouted by VVASP, argued that the government should be encouraging us to reduce energy consumption. And so it should. And so it has been. For years. The fact that a local teenager was unaware of this indicates the scale of the problem. We all know we should be reducing our demands, and yet few of us can be bothered to do so. We expect the government to tell us these things - and then completely ignore the messages. Worse, we whine, whinge and moan about the government telling us what to do, and then pretend that they never told us in the first place.

We stand at an interesting moment in time. Future generations will be entitled to wonder how he responded to the growing evidence of a monumental crisis. Did we react reasonably and responsibly, in a forward-thinking and enlightened way? Or did we stick our fingers in our ears and go "La, la, la, la, I can't hear you"?

More to the point, when practical, attractive, sensible and beneficial solutions were proposed, did we embrace them or did we tell loud lies about them, plastering placards over anything that doesn't move and organising campaigns of disgraceful dishonesty?

Did we think about those who are to come, or did we get trapped in our own narrow vision? Did we let our petty prejudices and privileges dictate the shape of the future?

VVASP did - and dozens of evil groups just like them. They all regurgitate the same mindless propaganda, they all quote the same dodgy sources, and they all stand in the way of progress that is not only desirable, it is urgently-needed and ultimately inevitable.

Returning to the BBC's "Windfarm Wars". As Roger pointed out in a comment to yesterday's post, the figure at the centre of the anti-Den Brook windfarm movement is losing the sympathy that might have been extended towards him earlier in the series.

His case is far from unique. When a windfarm development is first proposed, there will be those who overreact with a display of kneejerk nimbyism. It's got nothing to do with a windfarm as such - it's just that these people are fanatically selfish, self-centred, and live in a strange world, believing that things should never change (not that they've now got what they want).

Others will be slower to leap onto the nimby bandwagon. We saw that locally with the Lenchwick Windfarm proposals. Some in the area weren't particularly bothered - until something or someone got to them.

This demonstrates the insidious nature of nimby protests. They'll find your weak spot and exploit it. It might be the value of your property. Regardless of the fact that the evidence is quite clear - houses near windfarms tend to go up in value quicker than those elsewhere - the evil-minded bastards of your local nimby group will lie to you, telling you that your property will be worth nothing when the windfarm goes up.

Noise is perhaps a bigger issue. Even the worst-worst case scenario proposed by unbalanced noise "experts" (mentioning no names) would be no worse than installing a modern domestic fridge-freezer unit at the bottom of the garden of the nearest property to the windfarm and then standing in your bedroom listening for the 'noise'. But the nimbies are liars, one and all, and they'll tell you that it will be "deafening".

We now know that Mike - the "Windfarm Wars" most confused character - was being manipulated by the fraudulent operatives of REF. He was worried about noise. He could have approached people who actually live near windfarms - not just the only couple ever to have claimed to have been forced out of their home by the proximity of the windfarm (their parents remained in the house, they seem to be spending an awful lot of time there themselves, and they reckoned they could "hear" the windfarm when it wasn't even operational - make of that what you will).

Up and down the country, communities have grown to love their local windfarms. Did the bewildered Mike go to visit any of these communities? No. He went where REF told him to go, and therefore got an astonishingly warped idea of what windfarms are. The first couple he spent time with didn't even have a wind turbine anywhere near their house - how was that visit meant to clear up his concerns?

Isn't it better to visit windfarms which do exist, and to talk to as many people nearby as possible, than to go to places where there aren't any windfarms yet because a jumped-up bunch of mindless nimbies have deployed every shocking tactic they can come up with to avoid any change to "their" view.

(Interesting moment when Mike said he wanted to strangle the windfarm developer when she pointed out to him, quite rightly, that he didn't own the view. But then, nimbies always respond to genuine facts with demented outrage and speckles of sputum.)

Mike is symptomatic of what happens when sick nimby propaganda goes unopposed. A fundamentally sound and sensible individual goes a bit insane and starts believing whatever the frauds and fools want him to believe.

He will, sadly, become one of history's enemies of the people. He preferred lies and hearsay to facts and the future.

Carbon emissions are rising. And it's people like him - and the dangerously irresponsible maniacs of the nimby movement - who are most to blame. They did everything in their power to oppose the solution. Because it might spoil their view, or because they might catch the occasional sound of a turbine if they happened to venture a little closer to the source.

We must make sure that future generations are aware of this. There were some of us who tried to leave the world a better, cleaner, safer place. And then there were the acronyms: VVASP, REF, and all the other enemies of mankind. To them, the "view" they did not own was more important than everything and everybody else. It was worth betraying your neighbours, your children and your grandchildren for.

Let that never be forgotten.

HOPE

There are times when we here at Wind of Change struggle to keep up with the lies, fanaticism and chronic inconsistency of the anti-windpower movement.

Take Frieda Hughes, famous only for being the daughter of a poet laureate, and her fatuous piece in one of the Murdoch rags the other week. Quoting a couple of ignorant workmen who visited her home, Hughes was happy to conclude that windfarms don't really work and are only there as subsidy-magnets erected by huge corporations.

The subsidy argument is probably one of the most tiresome of those advanced by the witless drones of the nimby lobby. That they continue to do so just goes to show that they are either incapable or unwilling to get their heads round the basic facts of the Renewables Obligation Certificates.

Unlike nuclear, which has always received colossal subsidies from governments (why don't the nimbies complain about that???), the renewables industry only receives subsidies on the amounts of renewable electricity that are actually generated.

The nimbies - being fundamentally fraudulent and dishonest - like to pretend that the government is throwing cash at electricity companies to put up turbines where they won't generate electricity. That is an argument of stupendous mindlessness, because turbines which don't generate electricity don't receive subsidies.

Let's be honest, hunh? Any electricity firm that was only interested in government subsidies would not bother with renewables, which tend to be delayed by red-faced nimby liars for as long as the courts will allow. No - they'd go nuclear, where the real subsidies are.

But twits like Frieda Hughes refuse to recognise this. And so do all the other swivel-eyed nimbies who voted for Thatcher and the privatisation of the utilities and who now go all frothy-mouthed and weird at the thought of privatised electricity companies making money.

ARE THESE PEOPLE COMPLETELY INSANE?

Yes.

Frieda Hughes also claims to have "reams" of information which "proves" that windfarms don't work. Surprisingly, she ignored all that in order to quote some bloke who did a bit of work at her house. Less surprisingly, this mass of misleading information comes from those propagandists who call themselves the Renewable Energy Foundation.

The BBC documentary "Windfarm Wars" recently let on that one poor chap who didn't quite understand the noise issue relating to turbines was elbowed into taking legal action by the REF. And then, lo and behold, the same bewildered individual met a couple who had resorted to the usual phoney arguments in order to oppose a couple of turbines in Norfolk. And guess what? After years of nimby campaigning, one half of the said couple had become a director of REF!!!

So when nitwits like Frieda Hughes quote the Renewable Energy Foundation as a "reliable" source of information they conveniently overlook the fact that REF was set up by, funded by and continues to employ passionate (i.e. self-serving) anti-windfarm goons!

Another usual suspect featured in the BBC documentary was self-styled acoustics expert, Mike Stigwood. He spends most of his time getting money from moronic nimby groups to try a stop windfarms which might be visible from some directions, and he has pioneered one or two unorthodox ways of quantifying the noise which windfarms don't make.

Sadly, Wychavon District Council were tricked by our local nimby nutters into hiring Mike Stigwood, with the result that wholly inaccurate claims were made about noise, much to the satisfaction of the loonies in VVASP and very much to the detriment of everyone's best interests.

For a brief moment, then, the BBC "Windfarm Wars" documentary showed the greatest obstacles towards an intelligent, harmless and sustainable energy future in England - a handful of warped nimbies and their pet noise "expert".

So it is with no small pleasure and delight that we report on the latest news from Germany. Currently, about 23% of Germany's electricity is produced by non-renewable, massively unreliable and breathtakingly dangerous nuclear power stations.

All of those nuclear power stations - ALL of them - will be phased out in Germany by 2022. The Germans have finally recognised that we have a collective responsibility to wise up and not create enormous everlasting timebombs of hazardous waste. Click here for more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13592208

Looks like Germany will be going renewable. Just like Scotland, which has pledged to be 100% renewable by 2020.

So where does that leave Little England? Probably all grovelling about in the REF dirt with Frieda Hughes and the rest of the bottom-feeders.

WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

Now here's an interesting conundrum for our elected representatives to figure out.

The results of the Worcestershire Viewpoint Survey (November 2010) have just been published. They include a whole section on renewables.

Click here to see the full report (section 6.9, starting on page 45, is the part we're on about):

http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/cms/pdf/110301%20Worcestershire%20Viewpoint%20November%202010%20Analysis.pdf

With one notable and well-informed exception, the district councillors responsible for making planning decisions in Wychavon lined up to pour out mounds of nonsensical bilge regarding the proposed Lenchwick Windfarm back in January. The debate was so unenlightened you could have been forgiven for wondering what century you were in. The councillors had allowed themselves to be swayed by the vile, outrageous propaganda and thuggery of VVASP into making a host of stupid anti-windfarm comments.

What the Worcestershire Viewpoint survey shows, however, is that the majority of people in the county are very much IN FAVOUR of windfarms and other large-scale renewable energy developments.

In fact, a staggering 28% of Worcestershire residents seem to "STRONGLY SUPPORT" the development of windfarms in the county. That's right: 28% expressing "STRONG SUPPORT".

As opposed to a measly 8% who are "STRONGLY OPPOSED".

Moving towards the centre ground, no less than 33% - a third of Worcestershire residents - merely "SUPPORT" the development of windfarms here. Just 10% "OPPOSE" such developments.

16% of residents don't really care either way and 5% don't know what they think.

So, let's put all that into context:

An incredible SIXTY-ONE PER CENT (61%) of people in Worcestershire either support or strongly support the development of large-scale windfarms in the county.

A pathetic EIGHTEEN PER CENT (18%) are opposed (just 8% being 'strongly' opposed).

There are even more people (21%) who either don't know or don't care than there are against.

Shouldn't these figures give the antediluvian and oh-so-easily-manipulated district councillors of Wychavon something to think about? Do they really, truly, honestly believe that they were serving the interests of their constitutents, their district, their county and future generations by barking out all the amazing drivel they'd been told to say by the frauds of VVASP?

Or might they begin to wonder whether the fact that the clear majority of people in Worcestershire want to see windfarms generating clean, green energy in their county means that councillors should stop listening to demented, self-serving nimbies and do what the majority of their voters want, for a change?

After all, democracy doesn't exist just to be bent to the will of a few, VVASP-style. It exists for everyone. It bases its decisions on what the majority wants. And the majority in Worcestershire wants windfarms.

Interestingly, 54% of those surveyed also wanted local public services to "Provide guidance on the benefits and impacts of renewable energy". Which is precisely what Wychavon District Council failed to do. They were too busy reading crazy emails from VVASP and avoiding their responsibilities.

Maybe now they'll think again.