Speaking of the countryside, I get letters from the supporters of wind turbines, those hideous and inefficient energy sources which blight our land. The more ludicrous letters allege that I want us all to use candlelight and cook over wood fires. They clearly have no real arguments left. Kenneth Whittaker writes an evocative email (an e-elegy?) about his youth, when he lived in the Lancashire cotton towns dotted among the magnificent moors.
“A friend and I were driving to a spot north of Manchester for a walk. We were heading towards Heywood, where I was born and grew up. The familiar landscape that had accompanied me through all my childhood years, the expanse of Knowl Moor with Knowl Hill, came into view as we gained the top of Hollin Lane, but this time it came as a severe shock. The entire sweep of the moorland was grotesquely disfigured by a series of enormous wind turbines. It was like coming across an old family photograph and discovering that it had been scrawled over with obscenities …”
[excerpted]
Simon Hoggart
12 July 2008
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/07/12/snouts-troughs-and-gravy-trains/