Turbines will kill tourism, not boost it 

What next from Jill Perry and those eco-warriors, Friends of the Earth, trying to promote turbine tourism with claims about the amount of electricity generated by the windfarms and her will for us to love them? (News and Star, July 10).

Obviously she hasn’t researched past her own little band of disciples as to what people’s feelings are regarding the destruction of the coastline of west Cumbria.

I could supply her with a copy of a DVD produced by MAIWAG (Millom, Askam and Ireleth Wind Action Group).

It shows the despondence and outrage of the people living under the wind farm at Askam in Furness, having to put up with noise and flicker turning their once-tranquil lives upside down.

Also, has she not registered the disquiet of west Cumbrians saying ‘our industries have been taken away from us, now they’re taking our landscape’?

Al Gore, that great, green crusader, was reported recently in the national press encouraging firms to join in, saying; ‘there’s a lot of money to be made out there with this green agenda.’ Don’t we (the taxpayers) know it? – it’s our money!

Look at Carbon Credit certificates – one of the biggest scams yet. Jill Perry and her entourage want to get real and take a good look at what’s happening to the Cumbria landscape, and ask ‘for what gain?’

I don’t know which earth they’re friends of. It certainly ain’t this one.

NOEL WATSON

ShapPenrith

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Oh dear! Watching too many windmills has obviously affected Jill Perry’s senses (News and Star, July 10).

Ms Perry obviously doesn’t use the West Cumbrian Coast rail-line very often or she would know that it must be one of the most unreliable services in the whole of England!

Only this morning, the 7am to Carlisle was cancelled with no prior warning – leaving commuters and would-be travellers stranded at Maryport station unable to get to work or make their main-line connections.

‘Turbine Tourism’? Yes, as much as I agree with renewable energy and alternative power sources, I am beginning to get a bit fed up with this constant, and inaccurate, eco-brainwashing and psycho-babble.

Although some people might find windfarms aesthetically pleasing, there are others who see them as clustering carbuncles ruining the face of the countryside – I haven’t seen any in the Lake District National Park yet, have you?

And where does this peculiar notion of ‘green ownership’ come from? The electricity generated from these turbines does not directly supply the households in Workington; the power is fed into a mainframe as ‘top up’ energy for the whole of the UK.

The Maryport Robin Rigg farrago is something else. Manipulating loopholes in planning restrictions, this development is double the size it should have been.

There was no public enquiry and any form of democratic objection was rejected out of hand.

I am starting to feel eco bullied – eco holidays, turbine tourism, carbon footprints, eco friendly banking – whatever next? What a load of old eco bull!

ANDY LONG

Kirkby StreetMaryport

News & Star

13 July 2007