Jeremy Clarkson recently wrote, “I predict that 30 years from now there will be just one wind turbine in Britain. It’ll have been kept as a reminder of the time when mankind temporarily took leave of its senses and decided wind, waves and lashings of tofu could somehow generate enough electricity for the whole planet.”

Generous government subsidies are enabling Britain’s 10 worst-performing wind farms to earn a total of £1.3m a year, despite producing electricity worth only half of that.

The Ecotricity wind turbine beside the M4 in Reading runs on average at just over 16% of its capacity. It earned £229,700 in 2010-11, but half of that was paid in subsidy as the electricity generated was worth about £115,000.

The worst performing turbine is at GlaxoSmithKline’s pharmaceutical plant at Barnard Castle, Co Durham which ran at just 8.2% of capacity and earned £26,000, half of which was paid as subsidy by the government’s renewable obligation scheme.

Whitelee in East Renfrewshire, Britain’s biggest onshore wind farm, with 140 turbines is not much better, running at an average 20% of capacity, or load factor – the proportion of power generated compared with the theoretical maximum. This was still enough to ensure that in 2011 it got £31m in subsidy, according to government figures.

The industry generally quotes an average load factor of 30%. The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) has found that in 2010 79% of Britain’s wind farms are operating at less than 30% of capacity.

The renewables industry blames poor performance in 2010 on a shortage of wind. However, the figures also raise serious questions about where turbines are being built. All top 10 performers are in Scotland, and the only two that operate at more than 50% capacity are on the Shetland Isles. John Constable, director of the REF, said: “The consumer is paying to make these wind farms artificially viable. Why are our subsidies so generous that it makes sense to build wind farms in places where there is, frankly, no wind? This is just not smart.”

The problem with wind power is demonstrated well in Denmark, which embraced the technology years ago. And as a result not a single conventional power station has been shut down. They’re needed for the days when the wind doesn’t blow, or blows too strongly. Worse, ramping them up and down all the time uses more energy than keeping them working constantly. So the Danes have paid a fortune to build wind farms that don’t work, and, in return, their normal power stations are producing even more CO2 than they did in the past.

Rural Voice asks: “What is the point in building hundreds of wind turbines that are ruining our countryside and which can’t even do the job they’re built for? The only winners are the energy companies which own them. The environment loses, the taxpayer loses, and rural community loses.

Badgers were first discovered to carry bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in 1971. Since then much research has been undertaken and badgers are now widely considered to represent a significant wildlife ‘reservoir’ of this disease.

Cattle are by far the most susceptible domestic species to the M.bovis bacteria, although farmed deer, boar, bison, buffalo, goats, llamas and alpacas can also be affected.

How does TB spread?

In hotspot areas of cattle TB, the badger population is considered to play a significant role in maintaining the disease and in preventing its eradication. Although other wild mammals carry the disease, badgers have high rates of infection (the number of animals contracting the disease) and high rates of being infectious (where an infected animal then starts spreading the disease).

The ecology and behaviour of badgers means the potential transmission to cattle is high. For example, badgers often forage in pasture, and can spread the disease by cattle sniffing infected faeces and urine. It is considered that these factors make badgers an important link in the cycle of disease. Other routes of disease transmission include direct contact between badgers and cattle and transmission within farm buildings where cattle are housed or feed is stored.

Once a bovine (e.g. a cow) is infected, however, it does not immediately start spreading the disease. TB develops very slowly and it takes time for lesions to grow in the lungs, and these lesions have to open up before cattle start coughing out the bacteria.

What are the symptoms of TB?

TB is primarily a disease of the respiratory system but very few cases are reported in cattle. This is possibly because the symptoms are very similar to other respiratory diseases but also because regular TB testing of dairy herds catches the infection long before it becomes a chronic disease visually affecting the animal.

As lesions are most common in the lungs (called tubercules) a hard, dry, short cough is usually the first symptom, leading to more frequent coughing and laboured breathing. As this continues cattle will lose condition and later cough up blood.

What is the scale of the TB issue in humans?

The Department of Health still views TB as a ‘major public health problem’ and of the 9.2 million new worldwide cases of TB in 2007 (resulting in 1.7 million deaths!) around 7,750 were in the UK.

In the UK and across the world, more than 99 per cent of new cases in humans are caused by M.tuberculosis and not M.bovis. The risk is still there and so TB is a notifiable disease in all farmed animals. TB in humans presents with the same symptoms whether it is caused by M.tuberculosis and not M.bovis.

How do farmers prevent their cattle being infected by TB?

Farmers are required to undertake regular dairy herd surveillance testing for the disease. If cattle test positive they are sent for compulsory slaughter. In 2010 around 25,000 cattle were slaughtered costing the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds. Once a farm has had TB detected in its herd, movement restrictions are placed on that farm. This means animals cannot be moved off the farm (unless straight to slaughter) until the herd passes two further tests, to ensure TB is no longer detected in the herd.

Farmers can often be surprised at the level of badger activity in and around farm buildings, so they also take practical measures to prevent their animals contracting the disease from badgers. Husbandry measures, such as ensuring gates on cattle sheds and feed stores fit well and are shut at night and raising troughs and salt licks.

The financial implication to farmers.

Regular testing and slaughter of animals is a stressful and costly affair. Although farmers receive money for the animals slaughtered, the amount received does not always accurately reflect the true cost of that animal, for example when high value breeding stock contract the disease.

Government figures state that every time a farmer has a breakdown in the herd it will cost an average of £33,000, although this figure can vary greatly between farms. The compensation paid does not cover any consequential losses, for example the loss in milk sales, or the cost of hiring more labour to help with TB testing.

Is culling badgers the right answer?

A poll conducted by the BBC last year found that about two-thirds of the public oppose culling, with majorities in every age group, region and across both genders.

I’m sure the general perception of badgers is a classically beautiful English animal, but before the question of, ‘do you oppose killing badgers to curb cattle tuberculosis’ with a simple yes or no answer, might it be better to enlightened the general public that it’s ultimately costing the taxpayer about £100m per year and resulting in the death of tens of thousands of cattle?

Your views & thoughts?

Angela Merkel backed attack on the City Tuesday December 13, 2011 by Frederick Forsyth.

Dear Madame Chancellor,

PERMIT me to begin this letter with a brief description of my knowledge of, and affection for, your country.

I first came to Germany as a boy student aged 13 in 1952, two years before you were born. After three extended vacations with German families who spoke no English I found at the age of 16 and to my pleasure that I could pass for German among Germans.

In my 20s I was posted as a foreign correspondent to East Germany in 1963, when you would have been a schoolgirl just north of East Berlin where I lived.

I know Germany, Frau Merkel, from the alleys of Hamburg to the spires of Dresden, from the Rhine to the Oder, from the bleak Baltic coast to the snows of the Bavarian Alps. I say this only to show you that I am neither ignoramus nor enemy.

I also had occasion in those years to visit the many thousands of my countrymen who held the line of the Elbe against 50,000 Soviet main battle tanks and thus kept Germany free to recover, modernise and prosper at no defence cost to herself.

And from inside the Cold War I saw our decades of effort to defeat the Soviet empire and set your East Germany free.

I was therefore disappointed last Friday to see you take the part of a small and vindictive Frenchman in what can only be seen as a targeted attack on the land of my fathers.

We both know that every country has at least one aspect of its society or economy that is so crucial, so vital that it simply cannot be conceded.

For Germany it is surely your automotive sector, your car industry.

Any foreign-sourced measure to target German cars and render them unsaleable would have to be opposed to vetopoint by a German chancellor.

For France it is the agricultural sector. For more than 50 years members of the EU have been taxed under the terms of the Common Agricultural Policy in order to subsidise France’s agriculture. Indeed, the CAP has been the cornerstone of every EU budget since the first day.

Attack it and France fights back.

For us the crucial corner of our economy is the financial services industry. Although parts of it exist all over the country it is
concentrated in that part of London known even internationally as “the City”.

It is not just a few greedy bankers; we both have those but the City is far more. It is indeed a vast banking agglomeration of more banks than anywhere else in the world.

But that is the tip of the iceberg. Also in the City is the world’s greatest concentration of insurance companies.

Add to that the brokers; traders in stocks and shares worldwide, second only, and then maybe not, to Wall Street. But it is not just stocks.

The City is also home to the “exchanges” of gold and precious metals, diamonds, base metals, commodities, futures, derivatives, coffee, cocoa. the list goes on and on.

And it does not yet touch upon shipping, aviation, fuels, energy, textiles. enough. Suffice to say the City is the biggest and busiest marketplace in the world.

It makes the Paris Bourse look like a parish council set against the United Nations and even dwarfs your Frankfurt many times.

That, surely, is the point of what happened in Brussels. The French wish to wreck it and you seem to have agreed. Its contribution to the British economy is not simply useful nor even merely valuable.

It is absolutely crucial. The financial services industry contributes 10 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product and 17.5 per cent of our taxation revenue.

A direct and targeted attack on the City is an attack on my country. But that, although devised in Paris, is what you have chosen to support.

You seem to have decided that Britain is once again Germany’s enemy, a situation that has not existed since 1945.

I deeply regret this but the choice was yours and entirely yours. The Transaction Tax or Tobin Tax you reserve the right to impose would not even generate money for Brussels.

It would simply lead to massive emigration from London to other havens. Long ago it was necessary to live in a city to trade in it.

In the days when deals can flash across the world in a nanosecond all a major brokerage needs is a suite of rooms, computers, telephones and the talent of the young people barking offers and agreements down the phone.

Such a suite of rooms could be in Berne, Thun, Zurich or even Singapore. Under your Tobin Tax tens of thousands would leave London.

This would not help Brussels, it would simply help destroy the British economy.

Your conference did not even save the euro. Permit me a few home truths about it. The euro is a Franco-German construct.

It was a German chancellor (Kohl) who ordered a German banker (Karl Otto Pohl) to get together with a French civil servant (Delors) on the orders of a French president (Mitterrand) and create a common currency.

Which they did. IT was a flawed construct. Like a ship with a twisted hull it might float in calm water but if it ever hit a force eight it would probably founder.

Even then it might have worked for it was launched with a manual of rules, the Growth And Stability Pact. If the terms of that book of rules had been complied with the Good Ship Euro might have survived.

But compliance was entrusted to the European Central Bank which catastrophically failed to insist on that compliance.

Rules governing the growing of cucumbers are more zealously enforced. This was a European Bank in a German city under a French president and it failed in its primary, even its sole, duty.

This had everything to do with France and Germany and nothing whatever to do with Britain.

Yet in Brussels last week the EU pack seemed intent only on venting its spleen on the country that wisely refused to abolish its pound.

You did not even address yourselves to saving the euro but only to seeking a way to ensure it might work in some future time.

But the euro will not be saved. It is crumbling now. And since you have now turned against my country, from this side of the Channel, Madame Chancellor, one can only say of the euro:

YOU MADE IT, YOU MEND IT.

Chris Huhne and his Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) propose building 32,000 more wind turbines. This construction programme would transform Britain’s landscapes, with an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 new turbines needed onshore and up to 25,000 offshore.

Britain already has 3,400 onshore and offshore turbines which only generate 1-2% of the nation’s power. Wind turbines, along with nuclear power, are regarded as the most economically viable green energy sources.

Professor David MacKay, chief science adviser to DECC has calculated that even if 10% of the country was covered with wind turbines, it would generate only a sixth of the nation’s energy needs. All types of renewables generally produce about 2.5 watts of electricity per square metre. A nuclear power station, by comparison, produces about 1,000 watts per square metre.

A joint report just published from the Adam Smith Institute and the Scientific Alliance, argues that the government’s focus on renewable energy sources is misguided. The report, Renewable Energy: Vision or Mirage, says: “as renewable energy sources produce power intermittently, they cannot replace gas, coal and nuclear generation, even with further development”.

The storms last week highlighted this raising concerns about the reliability and cost of wind turbines. In Scotland, the wind turbines were generating more than 2,000 megawatts, but as the wind speed increased, the turbines started to shut down. By midday, output had fallen to 708 megawatts. Funnily enough, the turbine operators had predicted they would operate normally.

Sir Bernard Ingham, secretary of the pressure group Supporters of Nuclear Energy, said: “They are no good when the wind doesn’t blow and they are no good when the wind does blow.”

Energy experts say the unreliability of wind turbines means extra expenditure is needed to ensure they are always backed up by other power sources. John Constable, director of policy and research for the Renewable Energy Foundation, said: “it is a very expensive way of generating power because this shows you need two systems running in parallel.”

Is this just another example of a politician wanting to leave their stamp in history? Guess who pays for the politicians grand plans, the paying consumer!! Why not just build more nuclear power stations.

A wind turbine at the Ardrossan Windfarm in Ayrshire, Scotland bursts into flames due to high winds and severe weather.

The 30 megawatt windfarm has a total of fifteen Danish manufactured turbines which each stand 100m (328ft) high. Rather ironically today, one of the wind turbines, which are obviously made to harness the natural power of the wind, couldn’t cope and burst into flames.

Wind power isn’t necessarily the wonderful gift that Chris Huhne and the government would like us to believe. They are now proposing to build another 32,000 wind turbines in addition to the existing c.3,000 turbines. Are these going to be build near houses? The video below also highlights the dangers of wind turbines in high winds.

Each member of the public could save £550 by 2020 if the government scraps expensive wind energy plans in favour of cheaper nuclear and gas-fired power plants.

KPMG, the accountants and adviser on government energy policy will this week publish a controversial report saying that Britain can reach the 2020 target on reducing pollution imposed by the European Union for a third less than predicted, a potential saving of £34 billion.

To achieve this saving, the proportion of wind power envisaged would need to be slashed and the energy shortfall made up by new gas and nuclear power stations.

Wind power is by far the most expensive form of electricity generation to build, and with 5.5m households already suffering from ‘fuel poverty’, energy prices will only rise further substantially increasing this figure.

Nuclear and gas powered plants would cost £74 billion, considerably less than the £108 billion required for the current programme.

Based on current building costs an 800 megawatt gas-fired power station, capable of producing round-the-clock power for 800,000 homes, will cost about £400m. By contrast, an off-shore wind farm with the same capacity, will cost £2.4bn which is similar to a nuclear plant. A wind farm will only produce power for about one-third of the time due to weather conditions so would also need to be backed-up by another gas-fired power station as well.

These figures do not include the billions required for all the additional unsightly national grid power lines to remote places where many wind farms are located.

On top of the financial implications, what about the environmental issues with thousands of huge wind turbines in many unspoilt parts of the countryside, and the increased heavy construction traffic through village communities.

Surely a rethink is required…

The definition of the word traveller is ‘someone who does not have a permanent home and who travels from one place to another’. I applaud Basildon Council for having the backbone to stand up for the Law of this country and evict the Irish travellers who do not have planning permission.

Dale Farm was started in the 1970s when Basildon District Council in Essex gave planning permission to 40 families. The entirety of Dale Farm, legal and unauthorised, now contains about 100 families. The disputed section is a ‘former scrap yard on seven acres of greenbelt land’.

Basildon Council has been undertaking court proceedings for the last 10 years to evict these so called travellers at huge cost to the tax payer. The c.400 illegal Irish travellers even have the gaul to accuse the council of ethnic cleansing. Perhaps they should read up on real ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia!

If a normal person (non-traveller) built a dwelling on a piece of land in the green belt, or even tried to legally apply for planning permission, the local council would have the issue resolved very swiftly, and quite rightly in Law’s favour.

Why are we pandering to these people who are blatantly breaking the law? If they want to be classed as travellers, then why don’t they stay in their caravans and travel? If not, sell their caravans and live in a house like the rest of the population.

The government’s new planning proposals seem rife for abuse by developers and further open the door for the alleged ‘backhanders’ made to the planners.

The proposals basically force councils to make a “presumption in favour of development”, which as Alice Hardiman, acting head of planning for the RSPB said: “This is effectively allowing planning applications to be bought and sold.”

The Greenest Planning Ever Coalition was set up last October to represent 22 organisations who oppose the proposals with members like the RSPB, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), the Woodland Trust, WWF and the National Trust.

Among the concerns in the national planning policy framework (NPPF), are the greenfield sites, which are not officially designated as greenbelt, will be at risk of development.

The groups have said that if the proposals were not amended they could backfire on the government in the same way that proposals to sell off the forestry estate in England this year forced the government into an embarrassing U-turn

“Planning is for people, not for profit,’ Dame Fiona Reynolds, director of the 3 million-strong National Trust, wrote. “This finally sounds the death-knell to the principle established in the 1940s that the planning system should be used to protect what is most special in the landscape, creating a tool to promote economic growth in its stead… Weakening protection now risks a return to the threat of sprawl and uncontrolled development that so dominated public debate in the 1930s.”

Developers will only need to show that their proposals will deliver growth. Other considerations, such as impact on communities, nature and landscape, will be pushed aside.

Theft in 2010 is estimated to have cost the UK farming industry £50m, an increase of 20% from 2009, says the NFU Mutual.

The NFU Mutual Rural Crime Survey (RCS) was based on the 2010 claims experience of its branch offices in rural towns and villages and reports that the most popular targets for rural thieves were not livestock or crops but chainsaws, electric drills and lawnmowers.

In England, theft cost farmers £42.8m in 2010, up 26% on the previous year. In Scotland, the cost of claims rose by 57% since 2009, to £1.4m, and in Northern Ireland it rose by 28% to £3.8m. But in contrast in Wales, the cost was £1.7m, down by 48% from the previous year.

The theft of tractors, heating oil, scrap metal and livestock from farms and rural businesses tended to be during broad daylight, 59% of branches said the most common time of day for thieves to act was between midnight and 0600.

Nearly 60% said thefts from farms or outbuildings was the biggest problem, while 12% said garden sheds and garages attracted thieves. When asked why thieves target the countryside, 41% of branches said the large areas involved made it difficult to police, while 32% claimed there was less chance of thieves being seen.

Lindsay Sinclair, chief executive of NFU Mutual, said: “Whether it’s the recession, tighter security in towns, or the rise in oil, meat and scrap metal prices countryside people are feeling the blight of rural crime on their land.

“However, country people are not taking this scourge lying down. We’ve already seen that by working with the police forces and manufacturers, tractor theft and organised rural crime can be tackled head-on. A united front against crime in the countryside will help to protect communities from being targeted further with vigilance as the watchword.”

TCI Renewables are now trying to destroy the North Downs countryside in Hampshire with the proposed application for eleven 150 metre high wind turbines at Woodmancott Down, which would be visible from up to 20 miles away.

The proposed location is centred on the hamlets of Popham and Woodmancott and surrounded by the villages of Preston Candover, Chilton Candover, Brown Candover, East Stratton, West Stratton, North Waltham, Dummer and Axford.

Are these energy companies entirely blind to the beauty of the UK countryside, or purely driven by greed and indifference to the damage they cause? This damage can come in many forms:

• the environmental damage to the surrounding area, both during and after construction
• the obvious visual damage to the countryside and views
• a number of safety issues during the construction with huge increases in lorry traffic on small country lanes
• the financial cost to the local community of falling house prices

When are we going to say enough is enough and stop the destruction of our ‘green and pleasant land’?!!

No Woodmancott Down Wind farm