Folks

Here, at 4.0pm on a cold still day is a Christmas thought. If you go to:

http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp.php#generation_by_fuel_type_table

… you will see that the 2,000 or so wind landscape ruining turbines built so far are at this very moment contributing just 0.2% of the country’s electricity.  On days like these, we’d need just a million to power all our needs and even to get to the renewables target we’d need 300,000 of them. In short even if we could build them, we’d need to make the entire country one giant wind farm and even then it would be a bit tight on space.

Would you want to rely exclusively on these guys to provide the energy to cook the Christmas dinner?

Happy Christmas!

The Say No to Harrington Wind Farm action group.

Nuon’s website now refers to a ‘delay in deciding’ that ‘also provides a better opportunity for finalising potential community benefits linked to the wind farm’, but neglects to tell you that the delay is at their instigation.  They say:

‘We had been expecting the Council to decide before Christmas which I reported in the newsletter I sent you last month.’

The implication here is that the delay had nothing to do with Nuon when in fact our understanding is that the postponement of the determination meeting that was to be held on December 16th was a direct result of Nuon asking Daventry District Council Planning Department for more time in which to conclude their discussions on matters of what they chose to call ‘community benefits’.  Even if discussions are going on, it has long been understood that, for obvious reasons, matters of ‘benefit’ of this sort related to planning decisions should not influence them.

Just what are these ‘community benefits’?  Nuon’s website now lists them as:

1) ‘An exciting wild life habitat project in fields near the Brompton (sic) Way’.  Presumably this is to offset the massive environmental damage their project will inflict elsewhere?

2) ‘A circular walk taking in the wind farm and the history of the air field and missile base’.  This is a walk that most of us have being doing for years!

3) ‘A Community Fund of £50,000 a year for local projects and potential initiatives in local sustainability such as micro generation and energy efficiency’.  Well, you will find that our District Council already do a great deal to promote energy efficiency in the home.  £50,000 each year sounds a lot, but who would administer it, and anyhow it is a very small fraction of the profit they stand to make at our community’s expense.

As a community, through our Parish Councils, we have repeatedly told both Nuon and Daventry District Council that the great majority of us do not want this monstrous development.  These ‘community benefits’ do not, and should not, change this in any way.

The other matter reflected on Nuon’s website that we have issue with is their unashamed recruitment  of

‘supporters to join us at the committee meeting (likely to be 6.15 on Wed 27 Jan. at the Council Offices, Lodge Road) to be a part of a positive wind energy lobby and encourage a yes vote.” 

This is combined with a facility automatically  to  generate an email to DDC planners, with no postcode checker to ascertain that the supporters are local to the development or have genuine addresses.  The Say No to Harrington action group is similarly asking for support in our endeavour to have the application defeated at the Planning Committee meeting, but we have done this via a newsletter distributed locally to those who have a genuine interest in the detrimental implications of the proposed development.

Finally, Nuon’s website lists summaries of the various Consultee Responses but omits the response from English Heritage which is firmly, and importantly, against the proposals, and says that Brixworth Parish Council support the application when in fact that is absolutely untrue.