Money is about the only thing the nimbies understand. So it's pretty amazing to discover that their selfish and stupid opposition to a perfectly sane development will end up costing us all thousands, if not millions of pounds.
So far, the anti-windfarm protesters have helped themselves to £4,500 of public money. This came out of the precepts of six parish councils and is being misused by a "Windfarm Working Party" set up by the rabid nimbies of Church Lench Parish Council in order to ease the VVASP work load (VVASP members would rather YOU paid for their shady dealings than THEY had to).
So we're already £4,500 down.
Now, let's assume that Wychavon DC do the sensible, progressive, intelligent and proper thing and approve ScottishPower Renewables' plans for the Lenchwick Windfarm. VVASP will, as a kneejerk reaction, call for a judicial review. With any luck, they won't get one. But if they did, that would set the tax-payer back at the very least some £100,000.
You'll be paying that, my friends, just so that the mad members of VVASP can waste a bit more time (and a lot more of your money).
Now, worst comes to the worst, and VVASP somehow manage to get the windfarm stopped altogether. What will that cost us?
First of all, there are those annual payments from the developer to a community trust. These are based on the number of megawatts of electricity produced by the windfarm and tend to be upwards of £2,000 per megawatt. For twenty-five years. So if we take the lowest offer, and assume it will stay at that rate for the full twenty-five years, the local area will lose out on £575,000 - all thanks to the looney brigade of VVASP.
Oh, by the way - that money is for the community. Not VVASP's idea of the community (just themselves) but the full six parishes of the immediate area. So they will effectively be stealing from their neighbours, just as they basically stole your tax money via the parish councils.
AND that amount doesn't take into account the government's promise to "allow communities that host renewable energy projects to keep the additional business rates they generate." That's from the coaltion government's policy document. Anyone want to calculate 25 years worth of business rates generated by the Lenchwick turbines - and then add that to the huge and rising total of what VVASP want to deprive us all of?
Perhaps worst, though, is the fact that if the selfish, petty-minded nimbies get their way, they will have set back the necessary progress of wind power and renewable energy generation in the UK. Power cuts will follow within a very few years, matched by massive rising in energy bills. The government will lurch back towards unsustainable ways of generating energy.
And you and your children will end up paying God knows what. And the planet will end up paying even more.
So, that's what VVASP really are. Greedy grasping money-hogging fools who will happily cost those around them thousands and thousands of pounds - and all for no good reason.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
KILLING THE COUNTRYSIDE
One of the most terrifying aspects of the vicious nimby campaign being carried out by VVASP (Vale Villains Against Sane Practices) is what it reveals about the newcomers' attitudes to the countryside.
Back in 1962, Rachel Carson published a massively influential book entitled "Silent Spring". It's credited with helping to launch the environmental movement.
Carson had noticed how unnaturally quiet rural areas were becoming as a result of the widespread use of agricultural chemicals like DDT. Basically, human beings were killing off the world's wildlife in droves.
Horrifying, I'm sure you'll agree.
Ah, no - not to the nasty nimbies. They LOVE the idea of a completely silent countryside. It's what they moved here for, goddammit!
They grew up with some daft idea of what the countryside is. Real country dwellers recognise it as a working landscape, a kind of vast green factory, whose job it is to feed us.
But the weeny-brains who insisted on invading our villages and planting their hideous new-build homes in our midst don't realise this.
They hate farmers (ugly yokels). They hate farm machinery (ugly, dirty). They hate farm animals (dirty, noisy). They hate rural activities (coarse, noisy, populist) - unless of course we're counting those middle-class exclusive things that incomers want to do. They don't much care for church bells (noisy). Or children (noisy). Or anything, really (noisy, ugly, dirty).
Which means that they yearn for the Silent Spring that the rest of us - the sane, the caring - so deplore. They want a dead landscape, swept clean of life: a picture postcard that never changes, in which no work is ever carried out, and from which no one - but no one - benefits other than themselves.
Theirs is a crazy, deluded, utterly selfish, false image of country life - and that's what they're trying to impose on the rest of us.
So when the chief dingbat of the VVASP (Vain Victims of Anti-Scientific Propaganda) declares that the proposed windfarm will "kill the Vale countryside", you'd think that the nimbies would cheer their dark little hearts out. Killing the countryside is what they're all about. Privatising it, shooshing it, making it an exclusive playground for the middle-classes, but NO NOISE WHATSOEVER. NO SOUND, NO LIFE, NO ACTIVITY AT ANY COST!!!
It is they who are killing the countryside with their ignorance, their stuffiness, their paranoid foolishness, their unreasonable arrogance, their hatred and their lies.
The windfarm will bring life to the area.
That's what the nookies really can't stand.
Back in 1962, Rachel Carson published a massively influential book entitled "Silent Spring". It's credited with helping to launch the environmental movement.
Carson had noticed how unnaturally quiet rural areas were becoming as a result of the widespread use of agricultural chemicals like DDT. Basically, human beings were killing off the world's wildlife in droves.
Horrifying, I'm sure you'll agree.
Ah, no - not to the nasty nimbies. They LOVE the idea of a completely silent countryside. It's what they moved here for, goddammit!
They grew up with some daft idea of what the countryside is. Real country dwellers recognise it as a working landscape, a kind of vast green factory, whose job it is to feed us.
But the weeny-brains who insisted on invading our villages and planting their hideous new-build homes in our midst don't realise this.
They hate farmers (ugly yokels). They hate farm machinery (ugly, dirty). They hate farm animals (dirty, noisy). They hate rural activities (coarse, noisy, populist) - unless of course we're counting those middle-class exclusive things that incomers want to do. They don't much care for church bells (noisy). Or children (noisy). Or anything, really (noisy, ugly, dirty).
Which means that they yearn for the Silent Spring that the rest of us - the sane, the caring - so deplore. They want a dead landscape, swept clean of life: a picture postcard that never changes, in which no work is ever carried out, and from which no one - but no one - benefits other than themselves.
Theirs is a crazy, deluded, utterly selfish, false image of country life - and that's what they're trying to impose on the rest of us.
So when the chief dingbat of the VVASP (Vain Victims of Anti-Scientific Propaganda) declares that the proposed windfarm will "kill the Vale countryside", you'd think that the nimbies would cheer their dark little hearts out. Killing the countryside is what they're all about. Privatising it, shooshing it, making it an exclusive playground for the middle-classes, but NO NOISE WHATSOEVER. NO SOUND, NO LIFE, NO ACTIVITY AT ANY COST!!!
It is they who are killing the countryside with their ignorance, their stuffiness, their paranoid foolishness, their unreasonable arrogance, their hatred and their lies.
The windfarm will bring life to the area.
That's what the nookies really can't stand.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
NIMBY DOUBLE STANDARDS
Okay, guys - the public consultation period for the Lenchwick Windfarm planning application ends on 31 July 2010.
That means we have six weeks in which to get as many people as possible to support the plans.
The nimby "Windfarm Working Party" asked Wychavon District Council to extend the consultation period, but Wychavon said no. 31 July it is, then.
Hang on ... Did you hear that right? The "Windfarm Working Party" - which, as some of you will recall, is the VVASP pretending to be parish councillors and spending YOUR tax-payers' money on their shabby little campaign - wanted more time. To do what?
When the newly-constituted, totally anti-windfarm Church Lench Parish Council set up its bogus "Windfarm Working Party" it said it was to gather and share information between the six local parish councils.
What that really meant was it was an exercise in taking parish council money (your money) under what could be considered false pretences and using it to bolster VVASP's disingenuous efforts while spreading propaganda around the parishes.
Now, when the windfarm plans are available for public consultation, the "Windfarm Working Party" reveals what it really is. They are channelling YOUR money into the pockets of professional consultants in the hope of finding a reason or two to object to the plans. Now they're saying that they and their consultants won't have time to spend all your money or to find an adequate reason to object.
This isn't information gathering and sharing, of course. It's a dishonest use of your money for biased political purposes and a complete dereliction of the duty of parish councils to approach planning applications impartially. A FAIL on all democratic levels, then.
Funny, though - at a time when nimby groups left, right and centre are cock-a-hoop because a Telegraph journalist published a very misleading article about windfarms being little more than a subsidy scam, our local nimbies are misusing public money in their own interests.
The Telegraph article plays to the right-wing of the Tory party - people who simply refuse to understand the case for renewables on ideological grounds. Of course, the nookies of VVASP and their gormless clones elsewhere love this pointless article (and, naturally, the Telegraph completely fails to explain why other countries, like China and the oil state of Texas, are investing so heavily in wind power).
But what the nookies are saying is - it's all right for them to ponce public funds for their crazy purposes, but it's not all right for the UK's vital move towards sustainability to receive a bit of government support.
Typical nimbies, eh? One rule for them ...
(Anyway, details next time on sending in your comments in support of Lenchwick Windfarm to Wychavon District Council. Keep tuned in!)
That means we have six weeks in which to get as many people as possible to support the plans.
The nimby "Windfarm Working Party" asked Wychavon District Council to extend the consultation period, but Wychavon said no. 31 July it is, then.
Hang on ... Did you hear that right? The "Windfarm Working Party" - which, as some of you will recall, is the VVASP pretending to be parish councillors and spending YOUR tax-payers' money on their shabby little campaign - wanted more time. To do what?
When the newly-constituted, totally anti-windfarm Church Lench Parish Council set up its bogus "Windfarm Working Party" it said it was to gather and share information between the six local parish councils.
What that really meant was it was an exercise in taking parish council money (your money) under what could be considered false pretences and using it to bolster VVASP's disingenuous efforts while spreading propaganda around the parishes.
Now, when the windfarm plans are available for public consultation, the "Windfarm Working Party" reveals what it really is. They are channelling YOUR money into the pockets of professional consultants in the hope of finding a reason or two to object to the plans. Now they're saying that they and their consultants won't have time to spend all your money or to find an adequate reason to object.
This isn't information gathering and sharing, of course. It's a dishonest use of your money for biased political purposes and a complete dereliction of the duty of parish councils to approach planning applications impartially. A FAIL on all democratic levels, then.
Funny, though - at a time when nimby groups left, right and centre are cock-a-hoop because a Telegraph journalist published a very misleading article about windfarms being little more than a subsidy scam, our local nimbies are misusing public money in their own interests.
The Telegraph article plays to the right-wing of the Tory party - people who simply refuse to understand the case for renewables on ideological grounds. Of course, the nookies of VVASP and their gormless clones elsewhere love this pointless article (and, naturally, the Telegraph completely fails to explain why other countries, like China and the oil state of Texas, are investing so heavily in wind power).
But what the nookies are saying is - it's all right for them to ponce public funds for their crazy purposes, but it's not all right for the UK's vital move towards sustainability to receive a bit of government support.
Typical nimbies, eh? One rule for them ...
(Anyway, details next time on sending in your comments in support of Lenchwick Windfarm to Wychavon District Council. Keep tuned in!)
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN
When the Empire Windrushbrought immigrants from the West Indies to Britain in the late '40s, those new arrivals weren't dispersed equally across the UK. Many areas didn't get to see a black face for a good long while.
Naturally, perhaps, people were concerned. They had no experience of black people. But they'd heard some terrible things.
They'd open a newspaper, and what would they find - some horrifying scare story about immigrants.
They'd go down the pub and the local bore would tell them some ridiculous tale about the ghastly way the immigrants lived.
Their racist friends would pass on no end of rumours aimed solely at frightening and worrying them about the consequences of having black people in the neighbourhood.
Such are the problems of ignorance. You get newspapers selling ridiculous stories just to upset and infuriate the readers (the Daily Mail and the Telegraph in particular do this).
You get tap room bores and misinformed neighbours rabbiting the latest daft gossip about the issue.
And you end up with people believing no end of nonsense.
Which is where we are at with wind farms. There aren't enough of them in the country yet, and they're spread out a little too much, so that most people in the UK aren't really familiar with them at all. And that's sadly a gift to the irresponsible troublemakers in our midst. The VVASP types, who have no care for honesty or decency, but would rather spin lies, tell tall tales and try to terrify their neighbours FOR NO GOOD REASON.
They're just like the ignorant racists of old, reading their right-wing rubbish and spreading their stupid stories.
One day, we'll recognise those types for what they really are.
Very, very stupid, bigoted, arrogant, dangerously misinformed purveyors of filthy lies.
Naturally, perhaps, people were concerned. They had no experience of black people. But they'd heard some terrible things.
They'd open a newspaper, and what would they find - some horrifying scare story about immigrants.
They'd go down the pub and the local bore would tell them some ridiculous tale about the ghastly way the immigrants lived.
Their racist friends would pass on no end of rumours aimed solely at frightening and worrying them about the consequences of having black people in the neighbourhood.
Such are the problems of ignorance. You get newspapers selling ridiculous stories just to upset and infuriate the readers (the Daily Mail and the Telegraph in particular do this).
You get tap room bores and misinformed neighbours rabbiting the latest daft gossip about the issue.
And you end up with people believing no end of nonsense.
Which is where we are at with wind farms. There aren't enough of them in the country yet, and they're spread out a little too much, so that most people in the UK aren't really familiar with them at all. And that's sadly a gift to the irresponsible troublemakers in our midst. The VVASP types, who have no care for honesty or decency, but would rather spin lies, tell tall tales and try to terrify their neighbours FOR NO GOOD REASON.
They're just like the ignorant racists of old, reading their right-wing rubbish and spreading their stupid stories.
One day, we'll recognise those types for what they really are.
Very, very stupid, bigoted, arrogant, dangerously misinformed purveyors of filthy lies.
Monday, June 14, 2010
AND WE'RE OFF - !!!
Yes, folks - it's true. ScottishPower Renewables' planning application for a five-turbine windfarm near Bishampton Bank in Worcestershire is in! It's there on the Wychavon District Council website.
Okay, now we'll wait a little while to see how the nimbies react. They've been a bit quieter ever since they were ruled against by the Advertising Standards Authority on the grounds that they had been telling porky pies about the windfarm. We can, however, expect some spectacular dishonesty from them in the weeks to come.
The real race will be to get comments to the planning committee - both for (those who give a damn about renewables, the environment, the planet, the future) and against (those who think about themselves and ... well, that's it, really). They will be getting friends and relatives from far and wide to write in to Wychavon with some irrelevant, inaccurate or just totally misinformed point to make.
We must get as many people as we can to write in or show their support for this eminently sensible and thoroughly harmless development online.
Details on how to do this will appear shortly. We're still examing the plans, and would suggest that anyone supporting the windfarm has a quick look at what the plans actually say. This is because the majority of the objectors won't have the foggiest what it is they're actually objecting to (meanwhile, of course, VVASP High Command will have gathered its consultants and solicitors together to try to find loopholes in the plans, but then they're weird).
Till then, anyone who has a Facebook account might care to visit this page:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Support-Lenchwick-Windfarm/134616516555756?ref=ts
And don't forget the BLoW website:
http://www.backlocalwindfarms.co.uk
It is time for good people to stand by their beliefs in the face of rampant selfishness, arrogance and lunacy. "Wind of Change" will keep you updated. Morally, though, we have already won. Now let's defeat the madcap opposition and look forward to the arrival of our very own turbines.
Exciting times, yes?
Okay, now we'll wait a little while to see how the nimbies react. They've been a bit quieter ever since they were ruled against by the Advertising Standards Authority on the grounds that they had been telling porky pies about the windfarm. We can, however, expect some spectacular dishonesty from them in the weeks to come.
The real race will be to get comments to the planning committee - both for (those who give a damn about renewables, the environment, the planet, the future) and against (those who think about themselves and ... well, that's it, really). They will be getting friends and relatives from far and wide to write in to Wychavon with some irrelevant, inaccurate or just totally misinformed point to make.
We must get as many people as we can to write in or show their support for this eminently sensible and thoroughly harmless development online.
Details on how to do this will appear shortly. We're still examing the plans, and would suggest that anyone supporting the windfarm has a quick look at what the plans actually say. This is because the majority of the objectors won't have the foggiest what it is they're actually objecting to (meanwhile, of course, VVASP High Command will have gathered its consultants and solicitors together to try to find loopholes in the plans, but then they're weird).
Till then, anyone who has a Facebook account might care to visit this page:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Support-Lenchwick-Windfarm/134616516555756?ref=ts
And don't forget the BLoW website:
http://www.backlocalwindfarms.co.uk
It is time for good people to stand by their beliefs in the face of rampant selfishness, arrogance and lunacy. "Wind of Change" will keep you updated. Morally, though, we have already won. Now let's defeat the madcap opposition and look forward to the arrival of our very own turbines.
Exciting times, yes?
Friday, June 11, 2010
A MIND A-BOGGLE
To the joy, no doubt, of her constituents in built-up Redditch, newly-elected Tory MP Karen Lumley is wasting her time with the nimby nutters of VVASP.
Of course, this is what the red-faced nookies had been waiting for - they were praying for a Tory government months ago, on the grounds that Tory politicians would take pity on them and say, "Oh, no, of course they can't go putting nasty big wind turbines within a mile or so of your nice middle-class homes! Let me have a word in a few ears and they can plomp them down somewhere nearer the plebs - how's that, old boy?"
But then, there's the real world.
Kazza Lumley, novice parliamentarian for a largely urban seat, prefers to hang out with evil-minded city-dwellers who've decamped to the countryside and now think they know what's best for the country than to spend too much time worrying about the energy needs of a place like Redditch.
Even weirder, she thinks the VVASP knuckleheads have got a "strong case" for opposing the proposed Lenchwick Windfarm on the grounds that one or two houses will be, well, more than half a kilometre away from these silent structures.
Of course, it's evident that she has swallowed the VVASP BS whole. Has she done any research whatsoever into the issue?
Ha! What do you think?
Has she let Mr Misleader of the VVASP and his ghastly cronies fill her head with nonsense about turbines?
Damn right she has!
What could constitute a "strong case" for turbines being "too close" when they're more than half a kilometre away from the nearest buildings? Only the usual demented claims of the nimbies - those things they've been saying for months, which have turned out, again and again, to be utterly and totally inaccurate and untruthful. The claims which were rejected by the independent Advertising Standards Authority. And so on ...
In other words, only if you believe the lies peddled by VVASP could you possibly imagine that they have a "strong case". If you've spent any time looking into what wind turbines are, and what wind farms do, then you'll know for a fact that VVASP are a bunch of dishonest nimby cretins with no interest in anything at all but their own petty-minded outlooks.
The natural friends of the Tories, in other words. But with energy posing such a pressing and increasingly urgent problem, can the new government - and their noobie backbenchers, drunk on power already - afford to ignore the pertinent facts?
This isn't about a tiny handful of weirdos who moved into a country village a few months back.
This is about the future of the UK's energy supply and the planet.
So, for God's sake, Lumley - GET A GRIP!! Do your homework!! The rest of us have figured out what a bunch of lying toads VVASP are - why haven't you? You've only been an MP for five minutes - don't blow it this early on, for all our sakes!
(BLoW - 'Back Local Windfarms' - have meanwhile pointed out how shortsighted of Karen Lumley it is to jump on this particular nimby bandwagon, especially when it's patently obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about. So, good for BLoW! At last there's a voice of reason in this debate, and the mad, bad nookies of Lench aren't spilling their awful bilge all over the place without a sensible response from the caring element in the community. Karen Lumley MP - take note!)
Of course, this is what the red-faced nookies had been waiting for - they were praying for a Tory government months ago, on the grounds that Tory politicians would take pity on them and say, "Oh, no, of course they can't go putting nasty big wind turbines within a mile or so of your nice middle-class homes! Let me have a word in a few ears and they can plomp them down somewhere nearer the plebs - how's that, old boy?"
But then, there's the real world.
Kazza Lumley, novice parliamentarian for a largely urban seat, prefers to hang out with evil-minded city-dwellers who've decamped to the countryside and now think they know what's best for the country than to spend too much time worrying about the energy needs of a place like Redditch.
Even weirder, she thinks the VVASP knuckleheads have got a "strong case" for opposing the proposed Lenchwick Windfarm on the grounds that one or two houses will be, well, more than half a kilometre away from these silent structures.
Of course, it's evident that she has swallowed the VVASP BS whole. Has she done any research whatsoever into the issue?
Ha! What do you think?
Has she let Mr Misleader of the VVASP and his ghastly cronies fill her head with nonsense about turbines?
Damn right she has!
What could constitute a "strong case" for turbines being "too close" when they're more than half a kilometre away from the nearest buildings? Only the usual demented claims of the nimbies - those things they've been saying for months, which have turned out, again and again, to be utterly and totally inaccurate and untruthful. The claims which were rejected by the independent Advertising Standards Authority. And so on ...
In other words, only if you believe the lies peddled by VVASP could you possibly imagine that they have a "strong case". If you've spent any time looking into what wind turbines are, and what wind farms do, then you'll know for a fact that VVASP are a bunch of dishonest nimby cretins with no interest in anything at all but their own petty-minded outlooks.
The natural friends of the Tories, in other words. But with energy posing such a pressing and increasingly urgent problem, can the new government - and their noobie backbenchers, drunk on power already - afford to ignore the pertinent facts?
This isn't about a tiny handful of weirdos who moved into a country village a few months back.
This is about the future of the UK's energy supply and the planet.
So, for God's sake, Lumley - GET A GRIP!! Do your homework!! The rest of us have figured out what a bunch of lying toads VVASP are - why haven't you? You've only been an MP for five minutes - don't blow it this early on, for all our sakes!
(BLoW - 'Back Local Windfarms' - have meanwhile pointed out how shortsighted of Karen Lumley it is to jump on this particular nimby bandwagon, especially when it's patently obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about. So, good for BLoW! At last there's a voice of reason in this debate, and the mad, bad nookies of Lench aren't spilling their awful bilge all over the place without a sensible response from the caring element in the community. Karen Lumley MP - take note!)
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
WIND TURBINE SOUND AND HEALTH EFFECTS
For those of you who are too intelligent and grown-up to fall for the nimby lies about windfarms being noisy or causing ill-health, this link might be useful:
http://www.awea.org/newsroom/releases/AWEA_CanWEA_SoundWhitePaper_12-11-09.pdf
This scientific report examines the evidence regarding wind turbine noise and health and takes a proper look at the so-called research done by anti-windfarm campaigners like the VVASP's favourite, Dr Nina Pierpoint.
It's the sort of thing that the VVASP fuhrer really ought to have read because then he might have thought twice before spreading his moronic stories around the Lenches.
Maybe we should try and get Karen Lumley MP to read it. What are the chances, eh?
http://www.awea.org/newsroom/releases/AWEA_CanWEA_SoundWhitePaper_12-11-09.pdf
This scientific report examines the evidence regarding wind turbine noise and health and takes a proper look at the so-called research done by anti-windfarm campaigners like the VVASP's favourite, Dr Nina Pierpoint.
It's the sort of thing that the VVASP fuhrer really ought to have read because then he might have thought twice before spreading his moronic stories around the Lenches.
Maybe we should try and get Karen Lumley MP to read it. What are the chances, eh?
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