Thursday, July 28, 2011

Lies about wind farms at Llanerfyl

Its always a good sign that you are scoring well when others start telling 'porkies' about you. Since I began notching up a few runs over the wind turbines/pylons in mid Wales issue, a few people have raised with me a 'suggestion' that I once wanted turbines on my own land. This is simply not true. And when this untruth is deliberate, its reasonable to refer to it as a lie, and the perpetrator as a liar. While this should be my own 'private' business, I've decided to expose the porkie-tellers. This is what actually happened.

In 2006, a Spanish wind farm company named Gamesa approached 5 landowners in the Llanerfyl area, (my family being one of them) informing us that they were hoping to build a wind farm on our land, and offering each of us a generous sum of money annually if we would sign a contract granting 'exclusivity' to Gamesa for 5 years. Now I didn't want to offend my neighbours (or my family who quite liked the idea) so I exercised my right to make no reply, believing (correctly) that the proposal would eventually go away. However I declined to sign any contract, and informed Gamesa that I did not want any of their money. I have no idea what my neighbour's responses were. I should add that even though Gamesa knew of my anti-onshore wind stance, they showed me around their various wind farms when I was in Spain (at nil cost to Gamesa before you suspicious types ask). They were not the first (or last)to think I would change my mind. It was also the case that wind measuring equipment was stationed on land which I had once owned, but had sold long before anyone thought of wind farms in the area. In addition, because I was an Assembly Member at the time, opposed to the Welsh Government's TAN 8 policy, I made all this public. I still remember taking the poor BBC reporter and cameraman (who turned up wearing smart shoes) up the dirtiest roughest track possible to the site in pouring rain for an interview for Wales today. Laughed for days about that.

Doesn't worry me a damn when lies are told about me by my political opponents. But I do mind when my efforts to resist the Mid wales connection Project are being undermined. So the next time you hear someone repeating these lies, perhaps you would be so kind as to correct them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

what is more alarming is the lies spread by the anti wind farm campaigners here in Montgomeryshire.