STROUD SUPPORTS WINDFARM!!

If ever there was a headline guaranteed to cause apoplexy among the membership of VVASP, it must be that one!

However, it actually relates to an NOP opinion poll. Residents near Stroud in Gloucestershire were invited to express their opinions about a proposed windfarm for Berkeley Vale. The results are very interesting indeed - you can find them here:

http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/news/stroud-supports-berkeley-vale-wind-park-shows-nop-poll

Of course, the Lenchwick area has never properly been polled. We know that three Parish Councils surveyed their residents in March 2009. This led to accusations from VVASP at the time that the Parish Councils hadn't given the protest group enough chance to misinform the public about windfarms (four months of evil propaganda clearly wasn't sufficient, in VVASP's warped view, to mislead the community). VVASP very quickly managed to dispose of one of the Parish Councils concerned and attempted to get rid of one of the others, too.

But the polls revealed that the majority of local residents weren't opposed to the plans - many of them couldn't be bothered to respond. That gave VVASP the opportunity to disenfranchise a substantial number of local residents and grossly to misrepresent the outcome. According to VVASP, 82% of Church Lench parish was against the windfarm. According to mathematics, just 57% of households expressed opposition.

Even more amazing, in Harvington - where the Parish Council instantly set itself up as a manic nimby group - a mere 31% of household raised their voices against. That's right - 31%! So, of course, their parish councillors threw public money at VVASP, because democracy means nothing, does it?

Anyway, what the opinion poll in the Stroud area reveals is what is repeated in polls nationally. The majority of people support windfarms.

And as the link above indicates, a crazed minority make all the fuss against them. Some local councillors fall into the trap of assuming that the noisy nimbies represent the majority. In that way, the demented opponents of wind power hold the UK back and cost us all a great deal of money.

Let us hope that the councillors of Wychavon have the wisdom and common sense to recognise that VVASP represent only themselves - and that the majority, around Lenchwick as elsewhere, supports wind energy, but tends to do so rather quietly.