2024 Election thread

I didn't write 'one argument'.

Not building them continues to harm a considerably larger number of people due to prolonging higher energy prices. Spoiling a view is an entirely subjective opinion. The scarcity is due to land ownership, not lack of uplands - they make up about 22% of the UK by land area. I don't understand why disturbing the ecology of small areas of upland is bad but disturbing much larger areas of coastal waters is OK.

This is more about energy security, which yes is going to be about price whenever Russia invades another country or something, but I'd have thought we'd be in the realms of government price capping emergency measures for that to be relevant. Otherwise, it's just electricity and the price of other electricity isn't it?

Okay, so build them in the sea.

I’m struggling with the leap from Labour lifting an embargo on onshore wind to turbines being chucked up all over the place with no consideration of their impact in accordance with planning policy. The fact they are covered by DCO and reviewed by the SoS doesn’t make the process less rigorous than giving the decision making to a bunch of local busybodies (sorry, Councillors).

Government price capping costs us all money. Which is why it's nothing more than a very expensive stop gap.

FA may have a point, I'm beginning to really sympathise with how annoying an incessant background whining might be.

I was actually quite in favour before experiencing being steamrollered by poorly conceived applications a couple of times.

I actually approved of ones on the top of hills. The ones at the bottom of hills, close to houses, not so much. Ones in schools erected without consultation as far as possible from the school and right against the neighbours gardens, also not.

But if you object, you are just a climate change denying NIMBY.

So the one in the school was 25m I think - so not large, but less than 5 rotor diameters between it and houses - 3 to the closest house, between 4 and 5 to mine. So I and several others suffered shadow flicker in addition to noise.

The initial response was that there was none, even though people took videos. I think one guy eventually got a small concession for some times of year, so his dog stopped barking at the shadows passing across the curtains.

It was erected under "permitted development", as being for educational purposes. I got legal advice that this was a flagrant misuse of the education act, but there's nothing I could do with a mortgage and a piffling trainee's salary at the time. I did point out to the school that the second world war was also on the curriculum, but they didn't have a gas chamber. But you can't outwit a teacher.

Eventually it stopped working I believe and the school I understand struggled to find a maintenance budget. They got one top up grant to repair it, but since it is no longer there I suppose it turns out it wasn't required to fulfil the school's educational remit after all.

The one that required tree felling 30 years early, and that will likely divert spring water away from houses and require bowsers to be driven to supply houses with water permanently, that got approved after a second rejection by the council and appeal to the energy consents department at the Scottish government. It's only not been built, as I understand it, because of the UK government's pesky commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, that means silly seismic monitoring stations and their silly sensitive equipment.

Two obviously have been built, and they were sensitively sighted. Turns out that white is a sensible colour if it has the sky as a backdrop.

One low lying one was refused twice and hasn't come back yet - the site is too small to get over the "national importance" threshold to bypass local planning, I think. Will require two greedy bastard landowners to cooperate, and they both live behind locked gates in Mayfair to avoid the rifraf, so that might take a while.

The other low lying one in a wind shadow, on peat lands, endangered bird and amphibian habitat and adjacent an internationally important overwintering site for endangered geese, on the birds' flight path between that and another one (they are RAMSAR sites, which is the highest designation possible I believe) - that one might or might not go ahead.

But if it is refused by the consents department, it won't be because of the peat, the newts, the lapwings, the curlew or the endangered geese. Nor will it be the other SSSIs of the bordering nature reserve or the nesting osprey. Nor will it be because the closest 180m turbine is proposed to be 800m from a small hamlet (this breaches guidelines), or because any locals don't want them there for whatever nimby reason.

No, if it is refused, it will be on landscape grounds, because you can see it very clearly along a large part of the horizon from Edinburgh Castle.

Can you tell I'm a bit cynical about all of this saving the planet stuff? Because it isn't, not really, or they'd have built in the large unpopulated hilltop plateau area that the three bordering councils identified as being the ideal place to build wind farms. That's largely used for grazing at the moment, and is well away from the nature reserve and wotnot. But it is turbine free.

The reason people object to so many such developments is because so many developments are put in for the wrong reasons in the wrong place, I am afraid. At least in my experience.

Oops.

So back to my original point - I'd researched the area before moving. Due to all of the environmental protections and a high value landscape classification, there was a strong presumption against development in all the local plans. And yet, 100% of the time there were multiple large scale industrial applications pending for this area. Widen it out and the number multiplies to dozens over what is a fairly small region of Southern Scotland. This adds to the world-leading numbers already built.

My point is that this will now be unleashed in northern England and Wales in areas that - judging from neighbouring populations - will be unacceptable to 5-10 times as many people.

It is incorrect to argue that there aren't suitable sites, but naive to presume that developers will take anything other than a scattergun approach to selling turbines and selling electricity.

There'll be a lot of everything around your area, I suspect. Rail, road, housing, schools and further north and east there's pretty much feck all so lots of pretty traditional wooden windmills will be built.

Suspect you are happy with all of the above. I certainly think the varsity rail and more housing is a good idea.

'The Rick Chasey of Windfarms' - that's an insult if ever I heard one. When is the pistols at dawn event? 😃