Arrogance of windfarm companies 

A charm merchant from one of the windfarm companies came round visiting rural homes.

She was trying to gain a positive reaction from local residents for their intended project.

On being met with some anti-windfarm views, she recommended: “If you don’t like what we are doing, move.”

What arrogance!

These companies hang in there and, despite being refused permission, new planning policies, objections, an appeal and a hearing, guess what? They tell us to move “if you don’t like it”!

Anne Lynch,

Glenluce.

Most people know that windfarms would not exist without subsidies. And most people know that they are a threat to Scotland’s most beautiful countryside.

What most people don’t know is that these subsidies (which go mostly to foreign companies and rich landowners) aren’t paid by the government, but instead are financed entirely from electricity bills.

This covert tariff throttles economic growth, makes our exports less competitive, and is horrendous for the seven million people in fuel poverty.

If you want this scam to end, vote for a recent e-petition that asks for a reform of windfarm subsidies that will reduce electricity bills. Please go either to the government e-petition website (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/), and then type “reduce electricity bills” or you only have to Google “electricity petition”.

When the petition has reached its target, it will be eligible for a five-hour debate in the House of Commons. Let’s hope this pressures the government into reducing our inflated electricity bills.

John Hatt,

Nettlepott, Firbank, Sedbergh.

As far back as I can remember I have always had the greatest admiration for the RSPB, this great British organisation, which I deemed the mark of a caring society and an emblem of true civilisation.

Sadly, I can no longer hold that view. How can the people who run the RSPB sleep at night in the knowledge that thousands of birds and bats are being slaughtered globally in the killing zones of what misguided and ignorant people perceive as planet-saving wind farms?

The facts are indisputable on the number of birds and bats being killed. Putting “Save the Eagles” into a computer search engine will reveal the birds being slaughtered globally. Unbelievably, 2000 vultures are being killed each year in Spain, and one has to ask what madness places wind farms in the path of migrating birds in south Texas, at the Straits of Gibraltar, in Sicily and so on.

Closer to home, Southwell Primary School in Dorset had to switch off its modest wind generator after 14 seabirds were killed in six months. Large wind generators are having a devastating effect on raptors, especially golden eagles in the Hebrides, and the Scottish Highlands in general – the Cairngorms in particular.

Other birds are also under threat. Indeed, at the time of writing this letter there is an outcry in Shetland as a huge wind farm with 475ft tall turbines, with enough potential power (when the wind is right) for 175,000 homes, gets the go-ahead on islands with just 22,000 people. What unimaginable impact will this have, not only on birds and other wildlife, but the irreplaceable scenery?

Despite their ability to use sonar, an unexpectedly high number of bats have been killed at wind farms across the US and Europe over the past decade: some by direct hits from the blades, others by internal bleeding of the lungs (“barotrauma”) caused by a rapid change of air pressure as they fly too close to the blades.

There is no justification for this slaughter as data clearly shows windfarms are unreliable, ineffective and very costly at producing electricity – bearing in mind that without the very generous subsidy, which we all pay for in our ever increasing energy bills, nobody would be building any wind farms. The only people to prosper are selfish landowners and foreign developers.

Surely the leaders, and indeed members of, the RSPB, should be at the gates of Holyrood and Westminster loudly proclaiming their outraged disapproval.

Dave Haskell,

Newchapel Road, Boncath, Pembs.