TORY SURREALISM

There was a debate in the House of Commons the other day. The Department for Energy and Climate Change was answering questions from the house.

After a few questions about things like biomass and deep geothermals - other renewables which don't tend to get too many people all that hot under the collar - came the inevitable question from a Tory backbencher.

What could the government do to limit the impact of windfarms on communities?

Well, you can bet your life that the Nottinghamshire backbencher concerned hasn't visited many of the communities which already have windfarms in their immediate vicinity. If she had, it's unlikely that the question would have come out the way it did.

More likely, the MP had spent an inordinate amount of time listening to the whingers of a typical VVASP-style nimby group.

The reply to the question from the Secretary of State was interesting. He suggested that the government should be informing communities as to the impact of windfarms. Listening carefully, what he seemed to be saying is that communities need to wise up to the positive advantages and benefits of having windfarms nearby.

So - two completely different views, here: one from a Tory backbencher, the other from a Lib Dem Secretary of State. The first would insist that windfarms have a terrible negative impact on communities. The latter would appear to have been hinting at the pronounced positive impact that windfarms can have on communities. Now, is that weird, or is that weird?

The key to the issue is information. If you've visited windfarms and talked to those who live near them, the chances are you'll have been quite taken aback by the happiness with which locals describe their turbines. There are few examples of local objections to the extension of existing windfarms, because the locals have been pleasantly surprised by the quietness and grace of the turbines and can't see a problem with having a few more. In some instances, you hear glowing praise for the windfarm. Local communities tend to be rather proud of their windfarm, grateful for the inward investment it has brought, delighted that it has put them 'on the map', and scornful of those petty-minded morons who tell loud lies about them.

Why, we are entitled to wonder, didn't the Tory backbencher - or any of her misinformed cohorts - take the trouble to find this out? Why did they swallow the nimby garbage whole without bothering to undertake even a modicum of research?

Why insist that windfarms have an appalling impact on communities when there simply isn't any objective evidence out there to prove your point? When, in reality, the opposite is the case: the staunchest proponents of wind power tend to be those who live in close proximity to windfarms.

Unfortunately, this issue raises wider questions about the standard of our representatives. These people are responsible for deciding how we are governed. And yet they can't even be bothered to dig up the facts of the matter! The return of Peter Luff's gormless Bill requiring an exclusion zone around windfarms coaxed a fascinating research paper out of the House of Commons Library, which made it perfectly clear that, if you look at the evidence, windfarms tend to be rather good news for locals. So we have MPs bleating and blathering about 'impacts' on communities when they simply don't know what they're on about and certainly don't give a damn about such niceties as evidence or facts.

How much else don't they know about and can't be bothered to research? How many other decisions are made on the basis of such catastrophic ignorance?

You have a Tory Party which, for the most part, is perfectly happy to regurgitate any anti-windfarm nonsense that the Daily Mail or Telegraph feel like spouting, and which cosies up to nimby groups instead of representing the majority of its constituents. This is the party of prejudice over principle, of superstition over science, of protesters over the people.

And then you have a coalition government which has signed up to a burgeoning market in renewables, with a Secretary of State who is committed to increasing the number of windfarms operating in the UK.

The nation is currently third from bottom in the European league table of renewable energy generation. If the nutty nimbies and their pet politicos had their way, we'd be right at the bottom. And when the lights go out, the last people they'll blame will be themselves.

It is difficult to recall anything comparable in the past - a 'debate' in which one side routinely peddles fictions without any grounding in fact and continues to spout silly stories long after they've been disproved. Even more bizarre is the simplicity with which these lunatic (but depressingly persistent) claims can be debunked. It's oh so easy to find out about wind power, its efficacy, its cleanliness and its positive effects on those communities which already boast a windfarm.

But you could say that it's even easier to trot out the tired old garbage without ever bothering to check your facts. Easier to repeat the lies than to find out the truth. And safer, too, if you happen to be surrounded by deluded nimbies.

Let's hope, then, that the government can let communities know about the positive advantages of wind power. Before the empty-headed dupes of its own backbenches bring the UK's energy future crashing down just to please a bigoted and desperately misguided fringe.