Wind farms

Everywhere I look I find myself staring at rotating propellers and it’s starting to make me feel dizzy. There was a time, not so long ago, when a drive through Scotland filled me with awe, wonder and pride to live in such a unique country, with such outstanding landscapes, for which we used to be so famed throughout the world.

Now I find myself dreading driving around the next corner in case the next industrial-scale wind farm has been erected on one of our sacred mountain sides.

How much more of this vandalism are we prepared to accept and how much more of the Scottish Highlands and Uplands will be put to the sword in the name of green/renewable energy. How can you call something that destroys wild habitat “green energy”?

Don’t get me wrong: I fully appreciate and support smaller scale community-led wind turbine projects that benefit the community. However, there is a big difference between these and these awful industrial-scale developments which now blight much of Scotland.

I find it totally ironic that the whole “green energy” movement has been utterly hijacked by subsidy-hungry landowners and businessmen who drive around in their gas-guzzling 4x4 SUVs. They don’t care about climate change or Scotland, they only care about revenue. They don’t see the value in wilderness, only in money.

I now find myself considering moving away from Scotland, the land of my forefathers. Is this another form of Highland clearance? Where once it was hard-working, common people like me being driven out of the hills to make way for sheep, now it’s hard-working, common people like me being driven out of the hills for wind farms.

Calum Cormack

Barclay Park

Aboyne

The Scottish Government has missed a great opportunity to show that it listens to the people of Scotland by cynically dismissing the thousands who signed the petition asking for protection of the Loch Ness and Great Glen area from proposals to cover the area with wind farms.

Kenny MacAskill, speaking for the petitions committee, said that Highland Council had the situation under control and that it “was not as has been reported”.

The point of the petition was to gain protection at national level for this beautiful area  because we have seen many instances where councils had rejected applications only for the Scottish Government to overturn their decisions.

This summer we have had many visitors from overseas and they all want to see the beauty of Loch Ness and the surrounding hills, not another industrialised area.

I fear for our great Scottish landscapes and I fear for the principles of democracy under the present regime.

Peter E Smith

Aigas

By Beauly