Wind farms are risk to national treasure

IN the WMN (April 6) Energy Secretary Ed Miliband warns that communities in the Westcountry have "no option" but to support a "massive expansion" of wind farms.

Does he think we are the only ones who care about what happens to the countryside? Many of the people who live in cities but come down here on holiday will be shocked and angry too when they find that the places they love have been turned into, or are surrounded by, wind power stations.

The sand dunes of Braunton Burrows are one such place: a national treasure and internationally famous. The picture with this letter is the view from the edge of the Burrows, taken after turning inland on the coast footpath, past Crow Point. Soon this facing line of hills will be sprouting with the giant (361ft) turbines of the Fullabrook Down wind farm.

As can be seen on the website I run – www.artistsagainstwind farms.com – even bigger (400ft high) turbines could look down on to the Burrows as well, from the opposite side of the Taw Estuary at Yelland.

With more turbines threatened across Bideford Bay at Parkham, the character of the Burrows could be altered drastically – dominated from most sides by industrial turbines. And the "massive expansion" has not even started yet.

As my father, James Lovelock, the environmental scientist, said in the WMN on April 3, wind farms are "no answer to global warming".

The more we rely on wind power, the more likely it is that the lights will go off – just when we need them most, in the middle of cold midwinter anticyclones.

And, because wind power needs conventional power stations as back-up, it does little to reduce CO2 emissions.

Ed Miliband has also said that protests against wind farms should be "socially unacceptable". Energy security and climate change are such serious issues that he should instead welcome all serious scrutiny of government policies on these matters.

Christine Lovelock

Barnstaple

Tories snub Europe

THE current state of David Cameron's Conservative Party links with our European partners illustrates how the Tory Party is much nearer the ideology of UKIP rather than in the centre of British politics.

Patrick Nicholls attempts to make light of his party's policies of turning its back on Europe and Britain's most important trading and economic partners.

At a time of global economic and political crisis, Britain needs to work closer with Europe rather than follow deputy Tory leader William Hague's philosophy of moving in with hard right political parties on the fringe of Europe rather than in the centre, thereby undermining Tory values ("UKIP is back from brink", Patrick Nicholls, WMN April 2).

It will be interesting to see if shadow Business Secretary Kenneth Clarke and others can keep quiet while the Tory Party becomes more anti-European than any other Conservative shadow administration from the past.

Mr Nicholls also makes an important claim in stating that "policy is not for sale in the Conservative Party, no matter how large your wallet".

Does this extend to millionaires like Lord Ashcroft, who fund marginal parliamentary seats in a similar way to the old rotten borough scandals of yesteryear?

Mr Cameron is finding it difficult to hold the anti-European and pro-European factions in the Conservative Party together, but to allow the rabid anti-European clique to dominate policy on Europe is bad for the Conservatives and bad for Britain.

Dr David Pedrick-Friend

Labour Prospective Candidate for Torbay Paignton

Dismiss Draper

I NOTE that Damian McBride is "shocked and appalled at the way the e-mails had been leaked". Had they not been dreamed up and sent, there would have been nothing to leak. If this man has so little real work to do that he can compile such comment, why was he employed by the Prime Minister?

Further, what is being done over Derek Draper? He also works for the Labour Party and thought the "comments" were "absolutely, totally brilliant, Damian. I'll think about timing and sort out the technology this week so we can go as soon as possible".

Surely with a man like that, who runs the Labour List website, we are entitled to ask what real work he does, and his dismissal is surely a prerequisite to any apology coming from Mr Brown – but don't hold your breath.

Finally, when Alastair Campbell adds his criticism, we know without doubt that such people – who are unelected – should be prosecuted for this terrible action.

Mike Bennett

Barnstaple

Stand up to Miliband

I AM really worried that, unless Cornwall Council and South West MPs stand up to the Government, we will see the unique Cornish landscape trashed by more wind farms.

It is time the powers that be of Cornwall really studied renewable energy and what will and will not work. If they choose to believe Ed Miliband when he infers that 95 per cent of the region support wind power, Cornwall is doomed – but if they have any credibility they will face down Mr Miliband and the poor solution of wind power.

If we have wind power, we will have blackouts, not a secure supply, and we will also have a poor tourist industry.

If you look at the annual power from wind farms across the UK you will see that Cornwall's wind farms perform perhaps 2 per cent better than the few in Oxfordshire, and in some cases worse – so to say the South West has exceptional wind resources is not entirely true.

Perhaps Mr Milliband should face down the South East and build a Thames barrage like the proposed Severn barrage.

C Wright

Camelford

Misguided missile

CONSIDERING the direction and payload uncertainty of the North Korean missile, it prompts the question: Why didn't the US shoot it down?

Barrie Yelland

Helston