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Hoots & Havers - January 08
So, the Griffin wind farm has received the go ahead. Shame. It adds to the gradual grottification of Highland Perthshire. At one stage I was quite fond of wind turbines. They seemed a dramatic addition to the landscape. But I suppose one could have said the same about electricity pylons and their charm soon palled, as did the turbines.
As I’ve mentioned before, my starting point for dislike of the Griffin development was a shudder of horror at the name. Although it does emphasise the alien nature of the entire project, saddling the local map with the logo of a defunct English bank because its pension fund once owned some acres up the hill is cultural barbarity.
And then there is the fact that each of the 64 turbines will generate income worth £500,000 a year of which £300,000 is subsidy from the state. And that can’t be bad on a structure that costs £2m. The £200,000 which will be given to local communities amounts to less than the taxpayer’s contribution to a single one. Perhaps we should be allowed to know which one will be mostly ours. Then we can paint it pink and get the local school children to plant snowdrops and primroses round its base.
I have a relative whose job requires him to take an overview of renewable energy. He is a great believer in the concept and not only because he makes a very good living from it. He tells me that wind turbines are crap. They’re inefficient and environmentally disastrous. Aside from nukes, wave and tide power is where the short-term future lies before we learn how to harness the sun effectively, but these are starved of research funds in favour of the shoddy political fix of wind farms. Who has ever crossed the ferry to Skye at Glenelg without wondering how many light bulbs could be lit by a few turbines slung in the narrows?
There’s no logic to the way we are trying to save the planet by reducing greenhouse gases. It certainly gives that unproductive section of society – politicians, environmentalists, employees of quangos – something to do, something to talk about, and something with which to bully the rest of us and shiver our timbers. But it’s not a local or national problem. Everybody’s pollution effects everybody else. Shove the millions we’re spending on wind farms and the like into India or China – or the USA - and it would do much more good.
The only consolation is that the turbines will be redundant and will have rotted back to their concrete foundations in a generation or so. And the blackcock that haven’t been turned to mince will have excellent lekking platforms.
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They croak in parts of Glasgow by the age of 54. You’d think that our politicians would get excited about that and try to do something about it. But it’s much easier and much more glamorous to shout about Lewis chessmen or our currency.
The possible disappearance of Scots pound notes is on a par with the EU banning sausages or making us call our chocolate ‘flavoured grease’. It’s a bullshit story and won’t happen. One of the small pleasures in life to go south with a fistful of Scots currency, preferably Clydesdale Bank notes since they’re the least well known. I’ve never succeeded in getting them refused but I do enjoy the look of baffled panic that often comes over an English recipient’s face when they are proffered. And I have a pre-prepared pompous and scornful lecture if they are rejected.
Legal tender is what you must use to pay a debt if you want to remove the chance of being sued for non-payment of that debt in future. And the only legal tender in the UK is coins of £5, £2 and £1. Offering a pile of those in payment of Council tax would not make you popular. In fact I don’t think I know of a £5 coin, unless they’re those things encased in plastic that one gives to ungrateful small children. It means that Bank of England notes are no more acceptable in Scotland than our notes are in the south, and I await the day that a Scots shopkeeper refuses them.
And as for the Lewis chessmen, they were made by a Viking in the days when the island was a Norwegian possession and the best guess is that they were on the way to Ireland or the Isle of Man. Their current residence does not seem that important. The best resting place for any such artifacts is where the greatest number of people can see and appreciate them, and that’s not Lewis. The National Museum in Edinburgh isn’t bad, and the British Museum is likely better still. But anyone who gets excited about such things should really get a life.
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I’m unhappy about the Etape from a libertarian point of view. In pursuit of an unproven commercial interest, I object to government at whatever level interfering with the citizens’ freedom to use the Queen’s highway when and how they please. In theory the more locally we are governed, the more that government will reflect the views of the people, but it doesn’t seem to apply in this case.
In fact it’s quite difficult to have faith in the Council. Last year the Scottish government said that its housing department was ‘failing the people of Perth and Kinross.’ And, on the planning department, an audit last month stated that ‘Almost 30% of applications were found to have been misfiled by staff and, in one particularly worrying case, a personal application submitted by a planning officer was evaluated by one colleague and then approved by another, without any external scrutiny.’
As far as planning is concerned, avoiding corruption seems scarcely possible. A piece of wasteland locally might be worth, say, £1,000. But get permission to build a house on it and it could be worth £150,000. A brown envelope in the right place containing £100k would still give the plot’s owner a profit of 5,000%. In an imperfect world that looks like too much money all round to expect honesty.
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