This morning, while relaxing with a steaming cup of hot coffee, I was reading various news sites and articles when I came across this one on the Guardian: Windfarms: the bitter fight dividing the UK.
I am reminded that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I know some people think they’re an eyesore, some think they’re functional, others couldn’t give a sh**. So here’s my question that should rock the boat…
If wind turbines are an eyesore according to people in the local areas (or just people who stick their oar in), what about windmills?
Wind turbines/windfarms at least serve a purpose, they provide us with power which we desperately need. I won’t say it’s because of certain groups of people, because we’re all as equally guilty as each other and consume so much power we don’t even give it a second thought. Windmills don’t do anything! I mean, we certainly don’t grind wheat or barley with them anymore do we? So to be fair, -they- are the blight on the landscape because they don’t serve a purpose!
The article has interesting points of view, one of the most important of which is this: we should be producing our own wind turbines, because this island of ours is so blessed with wind (and we most definitely are!). Well, you can thank the Labour government for destroying our wind turbine business (yes we only had one but it was in the top three producers in the world) because they refused to subsidise and help them. Yes, we -should- be the world leader in that technology but just like so many other industries our government wasn’t foresighted enough to do the right thing.
German windfarms are a good example of what we should be doing; there, 60% of the local communites own the windfarms, they get the tax generated back into the local economy, so the people that support the windfarms tend to be those in that local area. Here, it seems that local issues are the ones overlooked, like some giant hand from Westminster guiding the placement without thought for those that live locally.
What’s even more vexing is this, surely all those islands, nooks and crannies that this place has, seem to be the perfect place for windfarms offshore. Why aren’t we pushing for those? I mean seriously very few people should care if a windfarm is 3 or 4 miles offshore and to argue that it destroys the ‘view’ is just laughable. The one thing we do have, like I’ve said, we should be capitalising on.
Tags: wind turbine, windfarm
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