CLACHAN WINDFARM 'DROP-IN' SESSION

[NickB]

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I've just been watching some videos purporting to show windfarm noise. The ones from Hadyard Hill have been well-made and are pretty convincing. I have to admit it wold worry me if my house was going to be within 1km - although the Hadyard Hill turbines are larger and higher, and of course the landscape countours make a big difference in individual cases.

It does help to associate a real sound with the noise contours in the scoping report though.

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SnTxKhZBsxU[/youtube]

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dzNj9DKDk1c[/youtube]

[spiderman]

Seil folks, Let 's wipe this goddam nuts proposal off the map! Nick, why do you keep posting on & perpetuating this damn nonsense? It's dead in the water. Everyone knows it makes no sense to build windmills above Clachan Bridge near our homes & we, the locals, will kill it dead when the time comes. We don't want money, we don't want absentee landowners being subsidised here to spoil our environment to make big bucks for a few kilowatts. We know it's noisy, ugly, energetically unreliable & useless & all we plan is to kill it off when the time comes, which we surely will. We did it before with Raera and, for sure, we'll do it again soon. You are in danger of giving it too much publicity & credibility. We don't want it, we don't need overanalysis here. In Scots vernacular, it's deid! And, being a yankee boy in lycra, I'm not a member of PACT, but their leaflet is pretty damn good! Everyone who cares, please write in when the time is right! KAPOOOW!

[abelincoln2]

got the PACT leaflet through the other day, I'm sorry but I cannot see where they are comng from at all !! seems a classic case of NIMBY. Give me one good reason why tourism would be affected.

[spiderman]

Wow! It seems we have an antediluvian old-timer in our midst! Welcome! But I suspect that Abe Lincoln1 would have been able to understand why the community doesn't want needless monstrosities, built only to make money for someone who doesn't live here, on their beautiful hilltops. Didn't he once say "These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people." Well, they won't fleece the Seileachans!

[jimcee]

Well now, we have a hotting up of the debate, with the arrival of Abe Lincoln 2. who has a legitimate question to raise.
So far, Spiderman suggests that he has intimate knowledge of all the sayings of the original Abe - either that or he is putting words into his mouth which the poor fellow, now long deceased, cannot deny.
All this talk of flicker (whatever that is) and noise,and visual impact, and inefficiency are but attempts to persuade the powers that be, that we do not want this development in our NIMback yard. Also combined with an understandable bit of resentment over the proposer making use of our back yard to make a quick buck or two out of land which he inherited, and probably never had much interest in anyway. If one of our current resident landowners had come up with this proposal, I wonder what the response would have been.

[Pentlandpirate]

The reason it is resented, Jimcee, is it's our money being wasted and handed to one person who is in a position to take advantage of a crazy system. Do you think Mr Young would give a fig for windfarms if there wasn't money in it? Is he so environmentally friendly he'll give up rallying and buy an electric car?

[jimcee]

Obviously Pentland Pirate knows a lot more about the proclivities of our "would be" wind farm installer. The question I posed was, - would our currently resident landowners had the temerity to foist this scheme on to us, knowing that they have to live here themselves with the results. I think not. And this was the basis of my previous post - although we are probably mixed in our response to the thought of windfarms in our neighbourhood, it is the fact that it is an absentee landowner who is behind the scheme which makes our hackles rise to the top end of the hackle scale

[Pentlandpirate]

it is the fact that it is an absentee landowner who is behind the scheme which makes our hackles rise to the top end of the hackle scale

I don't think so. But as he chooses to live on his 'home' farm in Dumfriesshire, why doesn't he stick his wind farm there? Then the environmentally friendly, green-thinking Mr Young can benefit from local, home grown energy in a less sensitive part of the countryside.

[Beetlejuice]

as he chooses to live on his 'home' farm in Dumfriesshire, why doesn't he stick his wind farm there?

Quite right PP and jimcee. He's an absentee landlord here and isn't going to be affected in the slightest, whereas we're the ones that would have to live with it. So yes, my hackles are well risen.

Let him put whatever he likes in his own Dumfriesshire "back yard", where he can enjoy it to the full. (Wonder what the neebs there would think ...??)

[jimcee]

My education has been sadly neglected.
I was well versed in the 3Rs but unfortunately my vocabulary never encountered the word neeb - presumably a member of the human species with some sort of social ranking - imagined, worked at, or inherited?
To illustrate my lack of the social distinctions, I once thought that the expression "hoi polloi" referred to the toffee nosed, but only recently discovered that it means the riff-raff.
So where does a neeb fit in to the scheme of things?

[Beetlejuice]

neeburs (neighbours)

[jimcee]

Thanks for that elucidation.
As they say in the school of life, you can choose your friends but you can't cherry pick your relations or neebs.

[canUsmellthat]

The place is already trashed: houses going up everywhere, more traffic on the roads, pollution, an eyesore of a sewage system and a plethora of so called locals wanting to keep the place the same as it was when they arrived 5-10 years ago when it was already getting bad…

The windmills might actually make the place look better, the ones that don’t like them can move back out the area, further North and/ or West and bring their misery to other parts of Scotland…PP I’m sick of reading your tripe…

[NickB]

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Harsh, Canu . . . although I agree the Pirate does say a lot on the subject for someone who doesn't live here.

Was the 5-10 years ago period particularly bad? I think the problem you describe - people moving to their 'dream' then wanting to preserve it in aspic - has probably been going on for much longer than that and will continue indefinitely. I suppose you can see a sort of 'front' in terms of the spread of increased house prices moving inexorably North and West, so maybe the main wave has now washed over Seil.

If they are built the turbines will be hardly noticeable from most of the island unless you are quite determined to be annoyed by them. We will be able to see all of them clearly from our living room window, but holding a thumb at arms length blots them out . . . A few houses wil have them in their face a bit, and I can see why they would be upset. I might also be anxious about noise if I lived that close. I suspect though that most people will get used to them quickly and wonder what all the fuss was about. Are you actually pro the development, or just not against it?

[canUsmellthat]

I am most definitely not against the idea…however I am not going to say the whys and the wherefores of being for the idea…this is solely because today I do not wish to be lectured at by some fork who would have you believe their knowledge to be superior…or that they have insider info on all things from terrorism to nuclear power (probably gleaned from Chris Ryan or Andy McNab novels)…Perhaps the only superior thing going for them is their age, but this is not a good indicator of being correct or of intelligence...

The 5-10 years was just artistic licence, a reminder to some that we are all just transient beings travelling forwards in time…the rest is just nonsense and windmills…

[Pentlandpirate]

canusmellthat: You're in a foul mood today! But I can take some humour from your comments. If you think I am lecturing, I'm sorry if you get that impression. I merely express an opinion in the same way that you do and if you read my comments you can take them or leave them. But surely the best way to have a discussion is to have a melting pot of different opinions where each and every one, as long as they don't cross certain boundaries, is respected for their own views.