Wolfe Island, Ontario, Canada

Comments on an earlier posting alerted us to this blog about Wolfe Island in Canada, and some exciting "Guerrilla Sculpture"

Do go to windmillsblow.blogspot.com/2009/07/guerilla-sculpture.html where you can see photographs of this sculpture/installation that some brave artist installed right under the shadow of the turbines.

Also found, in the comments below the windmillsblow blog, a link to another blog, www.mywinddiary.blogspot.com about the health effects felt after turbines were erected in Blenheim, Ontario...

"Wind turbines in Europe do nothing for emissions reduction goals"

All our political parties (with the exception of UKIP) support wind power: perhaps they should take note of this report on Spiegelonline, by Ansell Walderman.

According to the article, under current EU law, German wind turbines do not help to reduce CO2 emissions - they simply allow Eastern European countries to pollute more.

Beryl Pipes from Argyll

Thanks to Beryl Pipes from Argyll for sending us this watercolour, titled "Eredine Sheep Fank (ruin), Loch Awe."

We have added it to the www.artistsagainstwindfarms.com gallery, and it is linked to Beryl's page with more details about the painting and the threatened area around Loch Awe.

New artists from Scotland

`Awe Winter, ' photograph by Karl Pipes
Looking NE over Loch Awe from Keppochan,


Artists against wind farms welcomes new contributors Karl and Beryl Pipes from Argyll, in Scotland. Karl sent us this photograph of the stunning landscape around Loch Awe, and more of his work will be seen on the new photographers web-page to be launched later this week, when we feature the work of photographer Tom Hutton, who lives not far from Nant-y-Moch in Mid Wales.

Karl's beautiful photograph, and Beryl's watercolour of the same landscape (to be shown later today) come just as we hear ominous news from Scotland that Ministers are going to grant new powers to Forestry Commission Scotland to negotiate with the private sector to build wind farms on its land.

MEP supports Bickerton Wind Farm objectors in Cheshire

UKIP MEP Paul Nuttall has backed campaigners in their fight against wind farm developers.. read more.

Go to the website of Stop Bickerton Wind Turbines to learn more about this proposal to build five 125m-high wind turbines on farmland at the foot of Bickerton Hill, in Cheshire, not far from Cholmondeley Castle.

Local MP Stephen O'Brien is also supporting the campaign.

North Hambleton Windfarm Action Group

We heard today from North Hambleton Wind Farm Group, in Yorkshire, set up to protect
Appleton Wiske, Deighton, East Rounton, Great Smeaton, Hornby, Little Smeaton, Picton, Welbury, West Rounton and our countryside.

They have an informative and interesting website, and they have recently set up a petition on the Downing Street Website, as follows:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to set up an independent working party of acousticians and medical experts to fully explore the problems of wind turbine noise and the health consequences as ETSU-R-97, the measurement presently used, is invalid and does not protect our communities from unbearable noise pollution."

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ETSU-R97Failings/

Having met property owners whose lives have been made intolerable by wind turbine noise, I am happy to endorse this. I am also pleased to see another MP, William Hague, has shown his support for this group.

Brechfa and Lanllwni

This important article by Andrew Gilligan in The Telegraph today highlights the plight of campaigners in these small villages near Carmarthen.

How many people have realised that these new planning rules give the IPC huge powers? It can - according to the article - "grant not just planning permission but also the power to compulsorily seize private property, close roads and footpaths and extinguish Green Belt protection."

And even more chilling, quoting again from the article:

"Indeed, if a developer is eyeing up your land for some new scheme, the IPC can grant that developer access to it – even allow him to dig “exploratory” holes in it – before planning permission has even been applied for, let alone given. "

It was Andrew Gilligan who exposed the Government over its briefing on weapons of mass destruction, and was named Journalist of the year in 2008. He asks now whether these new and undemocratic planning laws are "the new poll tax"?

Here is a link to the Mynydd LLansadwrn Action Group website.

And Artistsagainstwindfarms webpage and Cambrian Mountains Society website about Nant-y-Moch, also threatened (more to come) by the IPC.