There were several reasons why this blog was set up, over a year ago. Partly, it was to offer an alternative voice to the rigorously enforced conformity of opinion in certain Lenches villages. It was to reach out to all those in the area who do not want to believe the loony nonsense about windfarms because they know quite a bit about windfarms already and they like them.
It was also to gather information to help counteract the insane ravings of the nimbies - that is, to examine each and every one of their ludicrous claims and to research the reality.
It was thought of as a kind of Radio Free Lenchwick, broadcasting in spite of the bullies and the thugs of VVASP. And it was designed to preserve for ever a commentary of this utterly shameful affair, this disgrace to local democracy, this outbreak of sheer stupidity, this (temporary) triumph of selfishness and irrationality over the greater good.
And it is in the spirit of that final reason that we here at Wind of Change now acccuse the guiding force behind "Vale Villages Against Scottish Power" of betrayal and community terrorism.
Yes, he has betrayed the trust of his neighbours. Exploiting his qualifications, he has lied to them over and over again. He knows that the wind turbines will not present any kind of threat whatsoever, and yet he has insisted repeatedly that they will, producing phoney evidence to that effect which - combined with his scientific background - is enough to make some of the less intelligent, less discerning members of his flock believe the complete rubbish that he's been telling them.
The VVASP website pretends to be providing "comprehensive information" about windfarms to the community. The fuhrer of VVASP knows that this is untrue. The information that he and his cohorts have purveyed is utterly discredited, and they have made no attempt whatsoever at presenting the vast majority of the studies, statements, reports and data which show how harmless, successful and popular windfarms really are.
By lying so constantly, he has misled his neighbours into believing that the windfarm will be a source of endless harm and trouble. This is the aggregate lie, the combination of all the many and various little lies he has been telling for the past 18 months. Those who have been feeble minded enough to believe him are now of the opinion that:
1) the windfarm will keep them awake at night, gradually destroying their health and sanity as it prevents them from getting any sleep
2) the windfarm will send out unidentifiable but deadly rays of some sort or another which will make their lives a living hell
3) the windfarm will knock more than half of the value off their property overnight (which, given how property minded - no, sorry, obsessed - the new breed in the Lenches tend to be, is a pretty nasty trick to play on them)
4) their horses will rear and attack them if they happen to ride near the turbines; showers of dead birds will rain down on their heads; the blades, when not dazzling them, will fly off willy-nilly, decapitating anyone who happens to be out in the garden sipping Pimms; crazy shadows will pass over anything and everything within a five mile radius; the Vale will be changed permanently into some kind of internment camp for asylum seekers and paedophiles; and so on
Many moons ago, a previous chair of Church Lench Parish Council pulled this powercrazed berk up on some of the mad claims he'd been publicising round the village - the one about house prices in particular. The Chief of the Nookies then admitted, privately, that the claim about house prices wasn't true.
AND YET, IT WAS ONLY AFTER A RULING WAS SECURED FROM THE INDEPEDENT ADVERTISING STANDARDS AUTHORITY THAT HE STOPPED PUBLICISING THAT STUPID LIE - AND THAT WAS A WHOLE YEAR AFTER HE'D ADMITTED TO THE PARISH COUNCIL CHAIR THAT IT WASN'T TRUE!!!
Another PC chair actually asked this middle class hoodlum to keep his baying packs of enraged villagers under control. He had been whipping them up into hysteria and then unleashing them in meetings of the parish council, thereby preventing any parish council business from getting done. Some kind of compromise was suggested. But Mr VVASP refused to play ball. He wasn't going to make any attempt at restraining the lunatics he had incited. He would rather bring down an honest parish council (and replace it with one more suited to his vicious aims) than allow his fellow villagers to do their democratic jobs properly.
But far and away the worst thing that he has done is to convince certain people in the area that the windfarm will damage their health and destroy their sanity.
Can there be any more antisocial, more irresponsible, more downright evil behaviour than that?
His own selfishness and misplaced sense of self-importance has led him to do this. Okay, so he doesn't want to see a wind turbine from the end of his driveway. It's hardly the end of the world if he has to, is it? And we know (from research, science, statistics and proof) that it will cause him no actual harm by being there.
But in order to try and stop a perfectly sensible, beneficial, necessary, clean, attractive and inspiring development he has brainwashed his neighbours into believing that it will ruin their personal fortunes along with their physical and mental health.
That, dear friends, is what EVIL does. There can be no excuse for behaving like that. That man is a criminal, terrorising local villagers into agreeing with his petty-minded opinion.
He is dangerous, deluded and downright wrong. QED.
Monday 31 May 2010
Saturday 22 May 2010
NIMBY PSYCHOLOGY
Science, it would seem, has provided an answer to a question that has exercised us at Wind of Change for some time. That question being - Why are the fanatical nimbies of VVASP so dishonest? Why have they told so many lies (to themselves, to each other, to us), and why do they continue to do so?
First of all, let's look at the difference between a 'sceptic' and a 'denialist'. A sceptic is uncertain until he/she has seen the evidence. A denialist has seen the evidence and yet still insists on talking arrant nonsense. At the heart of VVASP's campaign is a small clutch of denialists. They know how quiet wind farms are because they've been to a few. But they want to think (that is, they want everyone else to think) that they're noisy.
What strange behaviour, no?
Well, according to a social psychologist at the University of Connecticut, such denialists are actually suffering from psychological problems. "They display all the features of paranoid personality disorder," says Seth Kalichman. "Ultimately, their denialism is a mental health problem."
The characteristics described by Kalichman include anger, intolerance of criticism, and 'what psychiatrists call a grandiose sense of their own importance'. Anyone come across that in the Lenches lately? Anyone NOT come across that in the Lenches lately?
Kalichman adds that the denialists suffer from a form of neurosis called 'suspicious thinking', a 'warped sense of reality' which means that trying to argue with these people is pointless.
It also means that they should by no means be allowed to dictate what people can and cannot do in the area. Let's face it, the evidence suggests that the hardcore VVASP members are, quite literally, not all there. So to accept their silly claims, adopt their daft viewpoint and acquiese in their anti-social behaviour would be a really dumb thing to do for all of us.
That includes the newly elected Tory MP for Redditch who pretends she can fight for their cause. Even if she did have any influence over local planning matters (why doesn't she stick to Redditch, eh, and leave Wychavon to make its own decisions?) - even if, as a mere MP, she had any real say in the matter, to support a group of deluded, neurotic, paranoid, self-important crazies would be ... well, pretty stupid, really.
And if the nimbies are not deluded, neurotic and paranoid, then they are simply downright dishonest, which is an even better reason to ignore everything they say.
First of all, let's look at the difference between a 'sceptic' and a 'denialist'. A sceptic is uncertain until he/she has seen the evidence. A denialist has seen the evidence and yet still insists on talking arrant nonsense. At the heart of VVASP's campaign is a small clutch of denialists. They know how quiet wind farms are because they've been to a few. But they want to think (that is, they want everyone else to think) that they're noisy.
What strange behaviour, no?
Well, according to a social psychologist at the University of Connecticut, such denialists are actually suffering from psychological problems. "They display all the features of paranoid personality disorder," says Seth Kalichman. "Ultimately, their denialism is a mental health problem."
The characteristics described by Kalichman include anger, intolerance of criticism, and 'what psychiatrists call a grandiose sense of their own importance'. Anyone come across that in the Lenches lately? Anyone NOT come across that in the Lenches lately?
Kalichman adds that the denialists suffer from a form of neurosis called 'suspicious thinking', a 'warped sense of reality' which means that trying to argue with these people is pointless.
It also means that they should by no means be allowed to dictate what people can and cannot do in the area. Let's face it, the evidence suggests that the hardcore VVASP members are, quite literally, not all there. So to accept their silly claims, adopt their daft viewpoint and acquiese in their anti-social behaviour would be a really dumb thing to do for all of us.
That includes the newly elected Tory MP for Redditch who pretends she can fight for their cause. Even if she did have any influence over local planning matters (why doesn't she stick to Redditch, eh, and leave Wychavon to make its own decisions?) - even if, as a mere MP, she had any real say in the matter, to support a group of deluded, neurotic, paranoid, self-important crazies would be ... well, pretty stupid, really.
And if the nimbies are not deluded, neurotic and paranoid, then they are simply downright dishonest, which is an even better reason to ignore everything they say.
Wednesday 19 May 2010
WHEN SCIENCE IS SACRIFICED
It looks like New Scientist magazine is fighting back. Not so long ago its pages were dripping with anxiety and frustration over the way politicians are struggling or refusing to face up to the imminent disaster of climate change. Then came the University of East Anglia's email row - agents of a foreign government hacked into the university's computer and climate change deniers seized on a couple of ambiguous phrases among hundreds of email messages - and the scientific community was suddenly on the back foot. Media "balance" required TV and newspapers to pretend that the deniers and sceptics had just as much right to be heard as the global scientific consensus. Most people just ended up confused.
But New Scientist has a supplement this week on denial, and "Why so many people refuse to believe the truth". It's not just about climate change - it's about any fraudulent and dangerous campaign to undermine scientific evidence for ideological reasons. Darwinism, the dangers of tobacco, 9/11, AIDS and vaccines are also considered.
The issue is relevant to the Lenchwick Windfarm debacle because the opposition to the windfarm is led by a retired scientist. For personal reasons (doesn't want to see a windfarm from the end of his drive) this person is prepared to sacrifice all known scientific principles in order to whip up hysteria and get other people to campaign on his behalf.
It's a very worrying precedent - especially as the newly-elected Tory MP for Redditch is determined to show that she knows nothing whatever about the countryside, rural issues or the VVASP's delusional campaign. She has announced that she will be supporting the handful of home-owners who object to the windfarm (most of them without really knowing why they object) in the face of all evidence. When the planning application from ScottishPower Renewables is submitted, she has said, she will read it and then go to some higher authority in order to bark it down - regardless of whether there are any genuine grounds for objection or not.
So, we have a problem. A growing, international problem. People not just ignoring the evidence, but coming up with false "evidence" of their own that contradicts the real, genuine evidence.
This is what we mean by denial.
The magazine supplement includes a small inset entitled "How to be a denialist". In short, this is what you do:-
1. Allege that there's a conspiracy (e.g. power companies colluding with Europe and/or Gordon Brown to foist useless monstrosities on gentle middle-class country-dwellers)
2. Use fake experts to support your story (see: ASA ruling against VVASP)
3. Cherry-pick the evidence (VVASP website claims to be providing "comprehensive" information when in fact it suppresses or ignores practically all the available information in favour of its own hysterical nonsense)
4. Create impossible standards for your opponents (VVASP's info is claptrap, but supporters are expected to come up with even more research to prove that windpower works; weird, no?)
5. Use logical fallacies (every argument VVASP has advanced)
6. Manufacture doubt (enough said).
The last is where VVASP are at. Their other arguments have been steadily chipped away at, so that only a small fringe of brainwashed dingbats are still shrieking that "windfarms are noisy" and none but the most deranged are still making the "kill the Vale countryside forever" claim. They have successfully fostered doubts about the viability of windpower in a few feeble minds (the "comprehensive" information they provide somehow overlooking a favourable 2005 Oxford University study into the reliability of wind as an energy source for the UK).
But the real doubt lies in their last remaining card - the one they've been playing so desperately, and which the new Tory MP they're so delighted with has offered to wave about on their behalf.
TOO CLOSE.
Well over half a kilometre from the nearest dwelling -
TOO CLOSE!
On land the nookies don't own -
TOO CLOSE!!
When there is ample proof that there will be no noise, harmful effects on health or impact on house prices -
TOO CLOSE!!!
Let's be honest. This isn't a real argument. "Too close" simply means "too close to a couple of bloody-minded, fanatically selfish Tory voters who don't want to see a windfarm, end of".
The doubt they're trying to foster is just that - that maybe, just maybe, a turbine more than half a kilometre away in somebody else's field might be just that little bit too close.
And for that, they're willing to deny us all the clean, green, energy we so desperately need.
They make Vladimir Putin and his control of gas supplies to the West look positively benevolent, don't you feel?
Oh, and by the way, the "Blossom May Walk" to go and find some non-blossom and get a bit red-faced at some invisible turbines coincided with a 70s car rally in the next field. So much for the fabled peace and quiet of the countryside. "This is where they want to build the first turbine," the guide bellowed over the roar of revving engines - "can you imagine the noise that would make?"
But New Scientist has a supplement this week on denial, and "Why so many people refuse to believe the truth". It's not just about climate change - it's about any fraudulent and dangerous campaign to undermine scientific evidence for ideological reasons. Darwinism, the dangers of tobacco, 9/11, AIDS and vaccines are also considered.
The issue is relevant to the Lenchwick Windfarm debacle because the opposition to the windfarm is led by a retired scientist. For personal reasons (doesn't want to see a windfarm from the end of his drive) this person is prepared to sacrifice all known scientific principles in order to whip up hysteria and get other people to campaign on his behalf.
It's a very worrying precedent - especially as the newly-elected Tory MP for Redditch is determined to show that she knows nothing whatever about the countryside, rural issues or the VVASP's delusional campaign. She has announced that she will be supporting the handful of home-owners who object to the windfarm (most of them without really knowing why they object) in the face of all evidence. When the planning application from ScottishPower Renewables is submitted, she has said, she will read it and then go to some higher authority in order to bark it down - regardless of whether there are any genuine grounds for objection or not.
So, we have a problem. A growing, international problem. People not just ignoring the evidence, but coming up with false "evidence" of their own that contradicts the real, genuine evidence.
This is what we mean by denial.
The magazine supplement includes a small inset entitled "How to be a denialist". In short, this is what you do:-
1. Allege that there's a conspiracy (e.g. power companies colluding with Europe and/or Gordon Brown to foist useless monstrosities on gentle middle-class country-dwellers)
2. Use fake experts to support your story (see: ASA ruling against VVASP)
3. Cherry-pick the evidence (VVASP website claims to be providing "comprehensive" information when in fact it suppresses or ignores practically all the available information in favour of its own hysterical nonsense)
4. Create impossible standards for your opponents (VVASP's info is claptrap, but supporters are expected to come up with even more research to prove that windpower works; weird, no?)
5. Use logical fallacies (every argument VVASP has advanced)
6. Manufacture doubt (enough said).
The last is where VVASP are at. Their other arguments have been steadily chipped away at, so that only a small fringe of brainwashed dingbats are still shrieking that "windfarms are noisy" and none but the most deranged are still making the "kill the Vale countryside forever" claim. They have successfully fostered doubts about the viability of windpower in a few feeble minds (the "comprehensive" information they provide somehow overlooking a favourable 2005 Oxford University study into the reliability of wind as an energy source for the UK).
But the real doubt lies in their last remaining card - the one they've been playing so desperately, and which the new Tory MP they're so delighted with has offered to wave about on their behalf.
TOO CLOSE.
Well over half a kilometre from the nearest dwelling -
TOO CLOSE!
On land the nookies don't own -
TOO CLOSE!!
When there is ample proof that there will be no noise, harmful effects on health or impact on house prices -
TOO CLOSE!!!
Let's be honest. This isn't a real argument. "Too close" simply means "too close to a couple of bloody-minded, fanatically selfish Tory voters who don't want to see a windfarm, end of".
The doubt they're trying to foster is just that - that maybe, just maybe, a turbine more than half a kilometre away in somebody else's field might be just that little bit too close.
And for that, they're willing to deny us all the clean, green, energy we so desperately need.
They make Vladimir Putin and his control of gas supplies to the West look positively benevolent, don't you feel?
Oh, and by the way, the "Blossom May Walk" to go and find some non-blossom and get a bit red-faced at some invisible turbines coincided with a 70s car rally in the next field. So much for the fabled peace and quiet of the countryside. "This is where they want to build the first turbine," the guide bellowed over the roar of revving engines - "can you imagine the noise that would make?"
Saturday 8 May 2010
WHEN DID WE BECOME SO DISHONEST?
A walk has been organised. It'll lead people to where the wind turbines will be erected. So that people can get all worked up about them.
Someone has been commissioned to create photoshopped impressions of what the wind farm will look like in situ. Now, that's a bit weird, because when ScottishPower Renewables held its public drop-in sessions, the deranged nimbies went hopping mad about everything - especially the visual representations of what the wind farm will look like.
VVASP didn't trust the photo mock-ups of the wind farm produced by SPR, so they're having some of their own made up. But how accurate are these likely to be? The protesters wailed about Scottish Power's pictures not showing what the wind farm would look like. That said, SPR have yet to be caught out telling lies about the proposed wind farm, whereas VVASP have lied repeatedly about it. Even the independent Advertising Standards Authority told them to stop telling lies. So what are the chances that the VVASP-approved images of the potential wind farm will look anything like a real one?
One of our correspondents wondered why this walk was taking place to look at a wind farm that isn't there yet. Wouldn't it make more sense to organise a visit to a wind farm that does exist? Then they'd be able to judge for themselves what a real wind farm (and not a VVASP mock up of a wind farm) looks like.
That's a good point. But of course the nimbies don't want to know what a real wind farm is like - and they certainly don't want any of their supporters to go looking at them. Because people who have been to visit wind farms tend to come away wondering what all the fuss was about.
(This does not apply to the hardcore leadership of anti-windfarm protest groups, who visit them with the sole intention of finding somebody who might be inclined to complain about them).
So - VVASP would rather lead people round a non-existent wind farm (in order to stoke up outrage) rather than visit an actual wind farm (in order to find out what they're like). Yep, the nimbies strike again. Ignorance rules.
But this meaningless walk is being advertised locally - without any mention of VVASP's bogus agenda - as a 'Blossom May Walk'. This, supposedly, in order to attract a few normal people to take part.
It'll be a very strange kind of 'Blossom May Walk', in that it will involve walking in the opposite direction from where all the blossom is.
What is it about the protesters that it never seems to occur to them just how dishonest they are? They are advertising, in a suspiciously friendly manner, a 'Blossom May Walk' that has nothing whatever to do with blossom. If they advertised it as a VVASP-sponsored 'Visit the Site of the Proposed Windfarm Walk', that would be honest. But they're incapable of such honesty, so it is sold to Joe Public as an innocent-sounding, thoroughly apolitical 'Blossom May Walk'.
This dishonesty is what will undermine VVASP's cause. No one who isn't trying to get elected will take them seriously when the sheer depths of their dishonesty becomes apparent.
They've lied about wind farm noise, house prices, costs, efficiency, dangers to wildlife and some kind of eternal alteration of the Vale. They've lied about whether they are protesters or not. They lie on their website about providing comprehensive information to the community (for 'comprehensive' read 'biased and inaccurate'). They've lied, consistently, about everything. Now they're lying about a 'Blossom May Walk', and there's a fair-to-middling chance that the photos of the windfarm that they'll be showing to their sheep-like drones and anyone else who mistakenly takes part in the ramble will present a totally unrealistic image of the windfarm. Why? Because VVASP simply cannot tell the truth. It's beyond them.
But at what point did it become socially acceptable to lie all the time? When did that become normal middle class behaviour?
Someone has been commissioned to create photoshopped impressions of what the wind farm will look like in situ. Now, that's a bit weird, because when ScottishPower Renewables held its public drop-in sessions, the deranged nimbies went hopping mad about everything - especially the visual representations of what the wind farm will look like.
VVASP didn't trust the photo mock-ups of the wind farm produced by SPR, so they're having some of their own made up. But how accurate are these likely to be? The protesters wailed about Scottish Power's pictures not showing what the wind farm would look like. That said, SPR have yet to be caught out telling lies about the proposed wind farm, whereas VVASP have lied repeatedly about it. Even the independent Advertising Standards Authority told them to stop telling lies. So what are the chances that the VVASP-approved images of the potential wind farm will look anything like a real one?
One of our correspondents wondered why this walk was taking place to look at a wind farm that isn't there yet. Wouldn't it make more sense to organise a visit to a wind farm that does exist? Then they'd be able to judge for themselves what a real wind farm (and not a VVASP mock up of a wind farm) looks like.
That's a good point. But of course the nimbies don't want to know what a real wind farm is like - and they certainly don't want any of their supporters to go looking at them. Because people who have been to visit wind farms tend to come away wondering what all the fuss was about.
(This does not apply to the hardcore leadership of anti-windfarm protest groups, who visit them with the sole intention of finding somebody who might be inclined to complain about them).
So - VVASP would rather lead people round a non-existent wind farm (in order to stoke up outrage) rather than visit an actual wind farm (in order to find out what they're like). Yep, the nimbies strike again. Ignorance rules.
But this meaningless walk is being advertised locally - without any mention of VVASP's bogus agenda - as a 'Blossom May Walk'. This, supposedly, in order to attract a few normal people to take part.
It'll be a very strange kind of 'Blossom May Walk', in that it will involve walking in the opposite direction from where all the blossom is.
What is it about the protesters that it never seems to occur to them just how dishonest they are? They are advertising, in a suspiciously friendly manner, a 'Blossom May Walk' that has nothing whatever to do with blossom. If they advertised it as a VVASP-sponsored 'Visit the Site of the Proposed Windfarm Walk', that would be honest. But they're incapable of such honesty, so it is sold to Joe Public as an innocent-sounding, thoroughly apolitical 'Blossom May Walk'.
This dishonesty is what will undermine VVASP's cause. No one who isn't trying to get elected will take them seriously when the sheer depths of their dishonesty becomes apparent.
They've lied about wind farm noise, house prices, costs, efficiency, dangers to wildlife and some kind of eternal alteration of the Vale. They've lied about whether they are protesters or not. They lie on their website about providing comprehensive information to the community (for 'comprehensive' read 'biased and inaccurate'). They've lied, consistently, about everything. Now they're lying about a 'Blossom May Walk', and there's a fair-to-middling chance that the photos of the windfarm that they'll be showing to their sheep-like drones and anyone else who mistakenly takes part in the ramble will present a totally unrealistic image of the windfarm. Why? Because VVASP simply cannot tell the truth. It's beyond them.
But at what point did it become socially acceptable to lie all the time? When did that become normal middle class behaviour?
Sunday 2 May 2010
BIRTHDAY TREAT
Amazingly, incredibly, 'Wind of Change' is now one year old.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!!!
Yes, that's right - one whole year. We'd had six months or so of nimby ranting, lying leaflets shoved through doors, insanely shameful behaviour at parish council meetings, threats, more lies, enforced consensus and plenty of lies ... and then came 'Wind of Change'.
We have exposed VVASP's misuse of public money, the stupidity of their claims, the Advertising Standards Authority ruling against their stupid, stupid, stupid literature, their appaling behaviour during the SPR roadshows, the whole sorry daftness of their placards ...
And it would appear that there are even more reasons to celebrate. We're keeping it under our hat, just for now, but there's news on the way.
So, thanks all for tuning in from time to time. Thanks to our contributors, researchers, informers, those who've been in touch and even - yes - thanks to the hysterical idiot from VVASP who has occasionally left silly comments on the site.
Let's continue the battle for truth and democracy, for a sustainable future and a sensible use of our green space, and let's carry on highlighting the aggression, dishonesty, delusions and downright misguided selfishness of the anti-windfarm protesters.
They don't have a leg to stand on, you know.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!!!
Yes, that's right - one whole year. We'd had six months or so of nimby ranting, lying leaflets shoved through doors, insanely shameful behaviour at parish council meetings, threats, more lies, enforced consensus and plenty of lies ... and then came 'Wind of Change'.
We have exposed VVASP's misuse of public money, the stupidity of their claims, the Advertising Standards Authority ruling against their stupid, stupid, stupid literature, their appaling behaviour during the SPR roadshows, the whole sorry daftness of their placards ...
And it would appear that there are even more reasons to celebrate. We're keeping it under our hat, just for now, but there's news on the way.
So, thanks all for tuning in from time to time. Thanks to our contributors, researchers, informers, those who've been in touch and even - yes - thanks to the hysterical idiot from VVASP who has occasionally left silly comments on the site.
Let's continue the battle for truth and democracy, for a sustainable future and a sensible use of our green space, and let's carry on highlighting the aggression, dishonesty, delusions and downright misguided selfishness of the anti-windfarm protesters.
They don't have a leg to stand on, you know.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
