Blowback
Sir: Matt Ridley’s article ‘The Winds of Change’ (3 March) says that the government has finally seen through the wind energy scam. If this is the case, it is most welcome news to those who have been fighting on all fronts to keep Britain’s countryside clear of unwelcome, unnecessary and inappropriate wind farms.
In Mr Ridley’s own county, Northumberland, the amount of wind farm capacity planned and already with planning permission exceeds that in any other English county by several times. If the government is serious about its change of heart, and has at last appreciated the extent to which it has been hoodwinked by the wind industry, it should at once take steps to ensure that county planning policies are changed to prevent such development proceeding. Currently it seems that ‘the urgent need for wind energy’ and the ‘benefits arising from renewable energy’, quoted in every planning officer’s report, trump almost every other policy designed to protect and enhance the rural environment and economy.
Andrew Joicey
Northumberland
Sir: What a brilliant article by Matt Ridley! He sums up everything we laymen have suspected about the wind-farm fashion. Here in Bath (a world heritage city) plans were seriously considered to put a 240ft wind turbine up on the hills south of the city, on a very visible location. A local and fairly notorious landowner was pushing the scheme. Only after mass protests from large numbers of citizens who lived a few hundred yards from the site and the threat of Unesco taking away Bath’s coveted status did the Liberal Democrat-led city council reluctantly drop the scheme. The very thought of destroying the views of Bath for this ridiculous greeny chimera defies belief. But then again the city planners ‘sacked’ Bath of much of its architectural heritage in the 1970s, as is well documented. Wind energy is just another vain, foolish project of the self-righteous state.
Richard Fothergill
Bath
A question of manners
Sir: As a resident of the Midlands I was sorry to read of Dr Theodore Dalrymple’s disagreeable experiences in Coventry (‘Coventry blues’, 3 March). I have followed the good doctor’s writings for many years, and know that he has the bad fortune to encounter ill-mannered, ill-dressed English people wherever he goes. Even so, it must have been particularly irksome for him to enter a bar where a football match was being shown on a television screen and to be addressed at breakfast by a waitress in a dishevelled costume. Well, we all have our standards. For instance, top of my personal list of those who are quite beyond the pale are pompous, snobbish, intolerant bores who constantly lecture us in a tediously repetitive manner on how things have declined since their day. It is a jolly good thing that The Spectator would never commission an article from such a person.
Ian Stevens
Warwickshire
Sir: One element of Theodore Dalrymple’s portrait of contemporary urban dystopia jarred. Lumped in with lurkers, muggers, dealers and the fat, crippled and prematurely aged unemployed were skateboarding youths. I think it a little unfair; skateboarding may be a bit of a nuisance to some and an easy target, but clearly it is a physically strenuous and difficult activity which requires persistence and practice. The fact that skateboarders are present in such an environment is positive; on a number of occasions I have been reassured by their innocent presence whilst passing late at night through some of London’s similar examples of brutalism.
James Singleton
London NW6
Better news
Sir: I share the distaste of Miriam Gross (Diary, 3 March) for the coverage of Whitney Houston’s funeral on what was supposed to be the BBC news. The problem though reflects the lack of taste now characteristic of the BBC as much as the mawkishness of the occasion. I have recently returned from Australia, where SBS offers excellent and the ABC adequate news programmes. It comes as a shock to see a public broadcaster stoop to the appalling prurience exhibited in the coverage of ‘human interest’ stories by the BBC. I can only suggest that viewers turn to channel 89 and Al-Jazeera to watch news with an international scope, presented with professional expertise.
John Fisher
Shelford, Notts
Dickens and Victoria
Sir: In his review of John Sutherland’s The Dickens Dictionary, Marcus Berkmann (Books, 25 February) draws attention to the ironic fact that this ‘quintessential Victorian novelist never mentioned Queen Victoria in his books’. Although this may be true for the novels as such, his influential and highly profitable Child’s History of England concludes — after a celebration of the United States, ‘one of the greatest nations of the earth’ — with a resounding encomium to the Queen: ‘she is very good, and much beloved. So I end, like the crier, with God Save the Queen!’
James P. Carley
Toronto, Canada
Just the tonic
Sir: Toby Young (Status Anxiety, 3 March) asks, ‘How do you stop children fighting on long car journeys?’ My father, a GP, had an answer. We would be dosed firstly with an aspirin, followed by a reasonable gin and tonic. After that, bliss all round.
Tim Jaques
London NW3
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