October 8, 2012
Scotland
Scotland
Anti-windfarm campaigners to target SNP’s Perth conference
By Mark Mackay | The Courier | 8 October 2012 | www.thecourier.co.uk
By Mark Mackay | The Courier | 8 October 2012 | www.thecourier.co.uk
A protest is to be staged in Perth against what campaigners see as the ruination of Scotland’s countryside by the spread of wind turbines.
Anti-windfarm campaigners will take their message to the heart of the nation’s Government during the SNP conference this month.
As First Minister Alex Salmond delivers his keynote speech, hundreds will march through the city’s streets in a bid to ensure it is their voices that are heard.
National campaign groups, including the Scottish Mountaineering Council and Communities Against Turbines Scotland (CATS), are expected to take part in the protest, which is being led by a small group of Perthshire campaigners.
The Gask and Strathearn Protection Society (GASPS) will marshal opponents of the SNP’s green energy policies on Perth’s South Inch.
As they proceed towards Perth Concert Hall, a blimp will be flown 125m above the city to illustrate just how high turbines planned for the Gask Ridge in Perthshire will rise.
There has been increasingly vocal opposition to the ”creeping industrialisation” of Scotland’s countryside.
The SNP’s enthusiasm for wind power, its subsidies for developers and the repeated overturning on appeal of local government decisions to reject windfarm plans have all come under fire.
Last month the Mountaineering Council of Scotland – backed by the British Mountaineering Council – called for a moratorium on further developments in key upland areas, especially round the Munros and Corbetts.
The local and national concerns will merge in Perth on Saturday, October 20, as the protest converges on the SNP autumn conference.
GASPS chairman Brian Simpson said it was vital that communities open their eyes to the threat posed by wind turbines.
His group was set up in June with the aim of blocking plans for a ”wind park” near Tibbermore, a few miles west of Perth.
”The threat of turbines may once have seemed remote to many but with these proposals windfarms have begun to creep into the lowlands,” he told The Courier.
Mr Simpson hopes the Perth march will signal to the SNP the increasing anger of communities to green energy policies.
”We have secured permission for a march from the South Inch to Perth Conference Hall on Saturday October 20, beginning at 11am.”
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/10/08/anti-windfarm-campaigners-to-target-snps-perth-conference/