Bullshit and boring are the words that David Aaronovitch’s columns in The Times usually bring to mind (surely he would be happier writing for the Guardian?), and this morning’s one screaming ‘Nimbies’ as a term of abuse at objectors to wind farms in Devon is no exception.
There is an insidious alliance between the woolly-minded left and the unprincipled far right over planning policy, the woolly left seeing ‘Nimbyism’ as the rich trying to hang on to their riches at the expense of the poor and the far right seeing it as sentimental wets putting a brake on their development profits. Give me the far right on this every time. I find their cynicism easier to live with than Aaronovitch’s woolly-minded bullshit, and there is always a better chance the former will be seen through by planning inspectors at planning inquiries than the latter.
But what is just daft about both their positions is their common underlying premise that the objections of those who have a great deal to lose from a proposal are automatically ignoble, selfish and therefore far less valid than the arguments of those who have nothing to lose and/or have something to gain from them. The far right are clear-headed enough to know this is bollocks but cynical enough to get that message repeatedly propagandised as attacks on ‘Nimby’s’ by their collaborators in the media in their own interests.
The woolly-minded left like Aaronovitch cannot even see that it is bollocks. What do they want – a planning appeal system in which if a barrister can show that you personally have a vested interest in objecting to a proposal you should not be heard, or heard but ignored? And how is vested interest to be defined? You might for example have no direct interest in the case in question but fear that if it goes through it will lead to other developments which might affect you directly. Is that self-interest? Or maybe it doesn’t affect you but is deeply distressing to relatives who are affected. Is that self-interest? And if both are self-interest, what armies of barristers could we look forward to in such a system pouring over every last inch of our private lives to dig out the dirt in support of their developer clients?
And will they accept the corollary that if an opposing barrister can show that you have a vested interest in supporting a development you too should be barred or ignored?
In the case of wind farms Aaronovitch is not even right in his basic accusation that only those with something personal to lose object. Everyone in the country with an ounce of common sense and genuine humanity is opposed to them everywhere, not just in their own backyards, because they know that they will give us nothing in return for the grotesque scarring they cause other than more expensive electricity bills. They know that wind power is just libtard greentard bollocks that will not have any measurable impact on global CO2.
Aaronovitch seems to think he has a great knock-out punch: would the objectors still object if it wasn’t windmills but pylons without which it would be impossible to bring them electric power he asks with a great rhetorical flourish. Well probably not, but what has that got to do with it? Windmills are not being proposed as the only way to bring them power but as the most expensive, ugly, inefficient and unreliable way of bringing them power out of several options.
Thrilled at his own supposedly rapier-like punching, Aaronovitch throws another one: the windmill objectors are just like the HS2 objectors. No they are not you muffin. HS2 will unarguably bring great economic advantage to the nation and travelling convenience and comfort to just about all of us. The objections of all those who have a lot to lose from it have to be carefully listened to and assessed to make sure that the final route selected is the best – i.e. least damaging – choice and that every mitigation that can reasonably be adopted is adopted. In the case of wind power the nation will be economically damaged by it and every single one of us will lose unless we are one of those who sells land for it or makes money building it. I am of course discounting as a ‘gain’ from wind power the smug sense of moral superiority it induces in the woolly heads of the likes of Aaronovitch.
Mind you, at least he managed for a change to get through a column without accusing opponents of his point of view of anti-Semitism.
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