Spectator letters: On wind turbines, Churchill's only exam success, and the red-trousered mayor of Bristol

When the wind blows

Sir: Clare Oxford’s piece (‘Gone with the wind turbines’, 12 April) is both timely and sad. Those who applaud the use of these infernal machines are prone to eulogise their efficiency by saying (in the same annoying, dumbed-down way in which commentators always compare the size of something with the number of football pitches it equates to — presumably on the basis that a normal person is unable to conceive of anything larger) that the number of machines to be erected ‘could provide power for x thousand homes’.

It would be far more honest of them if they went on to make the caveat ‘when the wind blows’, and query what happens to the power supply to the ‘x thousand’ homes during the 80 per cent of the time when this is not the case. At those times, their power supply really has ‘Gone with the wind’.
Geoff Neden
Craven Arms, Shropshire

Is crime really falling?

Sir: Following on from Mary Wakefield’s column (‘Crime’s falling, but we still hate the police. Why?’, 12 April), I would urge everybody to show more scepticism towards the assertion that crime is falling. Last week the Commons Public Administration Committee produced a report called ‘Caught red-handed: why we can’t count on police recorded crime statistics’. This followed on from the astonishing statements of expert witnesses at the committee’s meeting in November last year that suggested widespread misreporting. And all this is combined with the facts that the police have retreated from the streets and that much crime goes unreported; try telling the weary residents of crime-ridden ghettoes and housing estates that crime is falling.