Letter: Shropshire, windfarms and hypocrisy
Tuesday 11th October 2011, 5:59AM BST.
Letter: We must be soft in the head in Wales. While North Powys had 103 wind turbines about 150 feet in height at Llandinam in the mid-90s, followed by dozens more at Carno, Bryn Titley, Cefn Croes and elsewhere . . . Shropshire, just across Offa’s Dyke did not have a single wind turbine.
Now, through the idiotic, traitorous TAN 8 proposals of our lapdog quisling government, between 400 and 800 absolutely gigantic 400 to 450 feet high wind turbines are now proposed for that tranquil rural county.
Now, it seems that people in Shropshire, who have done nothing to prevent the desecration of Montgomery over the past 25 years, are getting upset by the pylon lines to carry the sporadic electricity from the Welsh hills to North West England.
Others are getting upset over ‘one or two large wind turbines to the west of Bridgnorth’. Diddums.
Well, all I’ll say to them is “Why have you not long protested about the hundreds of wind turbines in the adjoining county of Powys, which are supplying England, not Wales, with electricity?
You have sat back for years and allowed Wales to be desecrated without a word of protest – and now you are fussing over your first one or two wind turbines and the pylons to take the sporadic Welsh supply to your fellow English people. Sickening.
How about erecting 200 or 300 wind turbines, 400ft high, in Shropshire? Would Telford Friends of the Earth spokesman Robert Sanders (letters, September 6) support that many? Or is he only interested in one or two as a ‘windy’ tokenism and ‘green’ veneer?
Hypocrisy and Nimbyism rule in Shropshire.
LJ Jenkins
Cardigan
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Your last line is spot on.
I suggest we immeadiately build a few score wind turbines in Shropshire. I’d be quite happy to have them in view from my house.
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I think a few turbines is a small price to pay for the billions in welfare your country sponges off England.
Of course we could always let you try standing on your own two feet but where would your free prescriptions and subsidised university education be then eh?
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We were one country so the Welsh did not sponge one penny off the English. Unfortunately regionalism has been allowed to create a schism between the people of these islands. I hate to say it but it is time for an English Parliament to redress the balance.
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No thanks. Any English parliament would be horribly dominated by Southern tories. I’d rather have a regional assembly with the same powers as the Welsh one.
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In that case and by that argument I assume you would also reject a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh assembly because they are “horribly” dominated by Labour and nationalists ?
I am not a particular fan of an English parliament, but we cannot divide the nation of England into 10 or is it 11 different regions and keep the nations of Wales and Scotland intact.
If there is to be renationalisation in the UK both Scotland and Wales should also be subdivided otherwise you destroy England as a nation but retain the national integrity of both of the other parts.
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May well have sat back, however are you not going to do the same in the guise of you did not help us??? pot black and all that.
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It may not have occured to the Welsh people who constantly winge on about just about everything, that many English folk, including me, know we need these wind turbines! If my garden was big enough I would have one if it gave me electricity, and you can give me a mobile phone mast if it would give me a decent signal!
I say “bring it on”. I am all for using natural resources for energy.
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we can only hope you do not get a decent sized garden. A big ugly noisy windmill to save a few quid? are people that hard up? and a telephone mast so 90% of the population can talk drivel to a friend, how many times have i heard some idiot on a mobile saying “well im walking around sainsbury’s at the min bla bla bla bla” , what do people phone up about that cant wait until you meet or can do free from a land line?.The country will be full of hunch backs as most are huddled over the mobile texting again probably rubbish.
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So I assume that if someone you are on the phone to asks where you are, you just hang up?
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Ugly?? I think the have a certain elegance.
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I’m more than happy to have wind turbines constructed in Shropshire. We need to look at alternatives to coal as fossil fuel resources are peaking. If we don’t embrace wind, wave, biomass and other renewable forms of energy we will be left with no alternative but to consider nuclear power stations. If I had the choice of looking at a line of wind turbines or a nuclear power station I know which I would choose! Having said that as it is more feasible to install nuclear power stations on the coast I’m afraid Wales would be a good candidate for a location if we were forced down that route. Where they would bury all the radioactive waste though… who knows…
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Ditto. Why nuclear power is seen as green is a mystery to me. Wind turbine constituents can be mostly recycled but nuclear waste and the reactors that house them? No. It is a million times worse than the slag heaps. Our only future option will be to send the waste into space and then the cost (financial and environmental) of such an endevour and the fall out risk of an accident happening enroute is incalcuable.
Renewable all the way, wind, solar, water. I wish our government had the guts of Germany to follow a green ethos. Difference there is that they also try to create micro energy grids so that local energy feeds local needs.
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“Difference there is that they also try to create micro energy grids so that local energy feeds local needs.”
I think that is a particularly good point, when I looked into a backup system for my house I was told by two different contractors that micro grids were the way forward and would save a lot of power production costs.
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Two notable occasions that stick in my mind where protesters from Shropshire joined us in voicing their opinions about wind farms were the trip to protest in Cardiff to the Assembly Government and during the Powys County Council meeting in the Welshpool livestock market.
I was happy to see them and appreciated their presence. We should all be in this together, Welsh and English. As partners we can get rid of the blight of wind farms from both our countries.
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I live in Wales and love wind farms, but I have heard that they will murder us in our beds and the noise will scare away the pixies. Wind power…..Bring it on !!!
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Shropshire was never consulted about TAN 8 despite Carwyn Jones knowing that it would mean pylons etc across Shropshire, so lets be fair. As to Jonathans remark-I live 2km from a wind farm in Wales and its very noisy when it works. Its a continual droning thumping noise that can be heard in the house at night and in the garden in the day time. If the weather is windy this can go on for hours. So dont let idiots like Jonathan spread lies about wind farms-when they work they are very noisy.
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I wonder why anyone would actually admit to being in favour of wind farms, unless of course they stood to benefit financially from them or were not very well informed.
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What beats me is why anyone is in favour of nuclear. The waste pile is a ticking time bomb.
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Commercial wind generation is a big earner. FACT!: wind farm developers are in it for the money, not to save the planet.
A wind farm in Scotland was recently reported to be making its owners £800m profit over 25 years. Half of this will come directly from tax payer subsidies, the other half will be profit from the electricity generated.
This means that as consumers and tax payers (and in some form or other we all pay tax) we are paying twice for the electricty generated.
Don’t be fooled if coal, oil, gas or nuclear power had the same subsidies the financiers would be building them instead of wind turbines.
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Realism is slowly overtaking this Government.
The taxpayer cannot afford to enrich windfactory developers for an intermittent and tiny supply of electricity. Without huge subsidies it is an inefficient dead duck.
And dead turbines will litter our landscape just as they do already in Califirnia, Spain and Hawaii. Do some research before you join the BYBY’s.
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I don’t think so Peter, George Osborn voted for the climate change act along with all the other MP`s with the notable exception of just three Christopher Chope, Peter Lilley and Andrew Tyrie. The vote was 463 for, three against, 200 abstained including Cameron.
With that many in favour of the act there is little chance of a change in policy, I understand that Osborn is thinking in terms of tax breaks for large businesses to offset their extra expenditure on power.
Looks to me as if that will mean even higher bills and taxes for the ordinary family as we will be paying for the wind factory developers and we will be paying to prevent these large companies moving to areas that can offer lower power charges because they are not trying to save the planet.
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Lyn Jenkins! Stick to your farming and stop your whinging about what we are, or are not doing, in England! It’s ok to defend your principality but you are getting too anti-English.
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say yes to wind
we need more wind power
check out http://www.yes2wind.com for the facts
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I’ll tell you what.
All those in favour of these windmills, step up to the plate, and connect your homes to electricity supplies that are generated solely from wind power.
Then, during those countless Winter days of clear days and lights winds, and countless Summer days of anti-cyclonic gloom, and those countless days when it’ll be too gusty and dangerous for the ‘mills to operate, I can boil a kettle and gloat over a nice cup of tea under my Anglepoise lamp. Whilst all you windophiles stock up on Damart and candles.
Hey! At least you can feel smug about the 0.000000001% of global man-made CO2 you’ve all saved! Not to mention augmenting the economies of the overseas manufacturers of the turbines! You’d best gloss over the environmental damage being caused by the mining of the neodymium required for the turbines though.
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Why do all the shouty people think the plan is to satisfy 100% of national energy needs through wind turbines?
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Shouty?
Who is being shouty? I certainly wasn’t.
I was merely alluding to the clear inefficiencies of wind power as a form of electricity generation, and its perceived effect on reducing CO2 emissions.
If I wished to appear “shouty” I CAN ALWAYS DO THIS IF REQUIRED
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OK, I shall rephrase. Why does anyone think the plan is to satisfy 100% of national energy needs through wind turbines?
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there is nothing wrong with wind turbines, they are welcome here
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Is Mr Jenkins from Cardigan anywhere near the turbines he speaks about – no. Thus a strange attack on his neighbours across an old border – thank goodness bitter people are few and far between. Perhaps we have discovered another untapped source of hot air?
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Devolution?
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personally i really find wind turbines qutoe beautiful to look at they are hypnotic and make for wonderful photography
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Yeah, wind power… more beans please!
There are many variations in wind turbine design, and those being touted as the best, popping up all over the place, are useless. As has been said here already, the condtions for use are so narrow. Take a look on the Web at other designs. Even Solar power in the UK would produce more energy than these monstrosities. Also, bury the cables. Use the same system they employed in the Netherlands so the cables don’t overheat. There are many options, ban the pylons before they ruin the natural beauty of this country -England, Wales and Scotland too.
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Why all the fuss? Green energy is the future.
It makes me mad that politicians are getting all worked up about this when they should be fighting for people’s livelihoods against the cuts, not just scenery.
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The welsh would survive without handouts from the English eh?
I suggest everyone considers where the majority of the water for the midlands comes from?
Wales!!
I’m all for devolution and the Welsh Government taking control of our water from the mountains of North Wales (Which feeds the River Severn for all the geography less minded people out there).
Perhaps then we could lever a huge tax on the English for a water supply from Wales :o)
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Another unbalanced yelp. Do you intend to divert the River Severn to prevent it flowing from outside the Welsh border and out of the Bristol Channel? How people can get so passionate and angry over an imaginary border beats me. Are we all not British or must we hang on to which principality or county we born in? “I’m not British, I’m from Cornwall/Yorkshire/Wales” etc. Pathetic.
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