I Have Always Been Totally Against Wind Farms

because I have yet to see any evidence of them making a worthwhile investment,

unless of course you own a wind farm!, the odds are really stacked in the wind farms owner, even if you do not produce any electricity, payments of £11.1 million was paid over three years to ScottishPower, a Spanish-owned firm, which operates the Whitelee wind farm around 10 miles from Glasgow, in another example of throwing money away, an analysis shows that 10 wind farms have each been paid more than £3 million over the past three years to shut down their turbines, 


the sums given out for non-production of electricity are eye wateringly high, in 2011 the Norwegian owners of the Crystal Rig wind farm in the Scottish Borders had not produced electricity for eight and a half hours so they were paid compensation, how much for the eight and a half hours? I would have thought a few thousand for each hour was excessive, but I was totally wrong, they had been paid £1.2 million for not producing a thing!

among the payments was a total of £7.6 million to RWE Innogy, a German-owned firm, for shutting down the Farr wind farm, 10 miles from Inverness on dozens of occasions, Fred Olsen has received £3.2 million for shutting down its 85-turbine Crystal Rig wind farm over the past three years, now here is the good news for Fred, the main loss from turning off its turbines was a consumer subsidy amounting to around £50, therefore, it was still receiving £64 per megawatt hour more than if it had been generating electricity, so lets read that again, it was still receiving £64 per megawatt hour more than if it had been generating electricity! I still can not understand why the British public do not cry enough and ban these costly farms, just think how much the average household power bills would tumble,

the strange thing I guess is that people really believe they save money, but to see some of the success stories (not), have a look here,

now, where oh where can I buy a wind farm? then sit back to collect my windfall profits for producing nothing!

This Is The Sight That We Will Be Seeing In Years To Come In The UK,

abandoned wind farms,

when government subsidies run out as the electricity windfarms produce is way too expensive windfarms like this one in America will fall into disrepair, the 27-year-old Kamaoa Wind Farm remains a relic of the boom and inglorious bust of America’s so-called ‘wind rush’, the world’s first major experiment in wind energy, if any spot was tailor-made for a wind farm it would surely be here, the gales are so strong and relentless on the tip of South Point Hawaii that trees grow almost horizontally, but on the 100-acre site, where cattle wander past broken ‘Keep Out’ signs, stand the rusting skeletons of scores of wind turbines,


with so many moving parts to worry about, maintaining turbines is expensive, way too expensive when the electricity they could produce is worth so little, ‘so when something broke, you simply didn’t send a repairman because it just didn’t make financial sense,’ Hawaii wind sceptic Andrew Walden, according to the California Energy Commission, the collapse in subsidies stalled the state’s huge wind energy industry for nearly two decades, no one who has driven past one of America’s mega wind farms today can fail to be struck by how few have blades that are turning, even in strong winds,


then of course there is the cost to wildlife, no one noticed until far too late that the 5,000-turbine wind farm at Altamont Pass is on a major migratory path for birds, the National Audubon Society, America’s RSPB, has called it ‘probably the worst site ever chosen for a wind energy project’, an estimated 10,000 birds including up to 80 protected golden eagles, 380 burrowing owls, 300 red-tailed hawks and 330 falcons were being shredded each year in Altamont’s massed banks of turbine blades — to say nothing of thousands of bats — until outraged conservationists sued America’s ‘deadliest’ wind farm four years ago, as a result, it has agreed to grind to a halt for four months every year to avoid causing more carnage during the migration season, I wonder where the electricity for those four months comes from? back to the birds, the problem is so serious that in Minnesota and Oregon, wind farms have drawn national condemnation by applying for an eagle hunting licence as the blades kill so many,


while Hawaii has six abandoned wind farms, most of California’s derelict turbines are only now being removed — decades late — after disgusted local authorities threatened to sue, but if a turbine’s owner had walked away from his investment or gone bankrupt, it was sometimes the hapless farmer or rancher who owned the land who had to foot the huge clean up bill, I hope that the land owners of wind farms in the UK will foot the bill when it is their turn to remove these huge wastes of space,


this is what we in the UK are going to do, Downing Street’s controversial pledge spurred on by EU green targets is to give £400 million-a-year subsidies to wind farms as well as hefty bribes to landowners in order to spur the building of an additional 4,500 turbines, meanwhile in the USA this is what they are going to do, Republicans in Congress want to cut wind energy’s 20-year-old subsidy at the end of the year, why, they ask, should the debt-laden country be giving wind energy companies a 30 per cent tax credit, costing taxpayers nearly $3 billion a year, why indeed.

More Of The UK's Money Thrown Away,

as yet again wind farm owners are compensated,

for the second time in a month wind farm owners had a windfall as the National Grid rushed to pay them for not producing electricity, I have always said it, wind farms are a waste of time and money, unless you own one! seven wind farm operators switched off their turbines on Monday night, the National Grid said they were generating too much power, the National Grid paid out almost £3 million to wind farm operators in compensation in mid-September when a dozen wind farms were shut for three nights in a row, just a thought, are other power producers, oil, coal, nuclear paid if they are shut down if there is too much electricity? no I thought not,



the Grid spokesman insisted: 'this is all a normal part of how we balance the electricity transmission system and manage constraints on the network,' and I bet the foreign owned wind farm owners said the equivalent of 'goody-goody, gum drops!'.

In A Statement That Will Drive Tree Huggers And Greenies To Distraction,

it appears that the modern blot on our ancient landscapes fails to deliver the goods, what am I talking about? wind farms, yet another save the planet con, take the most efficient wind farm in all of the UK, High Volts 2, Country Durham, the largest and most powerful wind farm in Britain, it achieves an efficiency of just 18.7 per cent, Britain's most feeble wind farm is in Blyth Harbour in Northumberland, where the nine turbines lining the East Pier reach a meagre 7.9 per cent of their maximum capacity, another at Chelker reservoir in North Yorkshire operates at only 8.7 per cent of its potential,

why? I hear you all ask, no wind you see, we in the UK pay under the controversial 'Renewable Obligation' scheme, £1billion a year in our fuel bills to subsidise the drive towards renewable energy, but as Professor Jefferson, of London Metropolitan Business School, has said previously: 'We should be putting our money where the wind is and that is quite often not where the development pressure is.' Britain has 2,741 wind turbines spread over 262 sites, but the number is due to soar, with a further 7,000 planned for the next 12 years to meet European targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions,

many experts have accuse developers of 'grossly exaggerating' the amount of energy they will generate in order to get their hands on subsidies designed to boost the production of green power,

also as important for the tree huggers, how much carbon have we saved? none, because electricity supplied by a combination of gas, coal and nuclear can't be just turned off when the wind blows, obvious really but no one in the green industry mentions this fact, in fact we have put more carbon into the atmosphere making the turbines in the first place! whats the answer? as I have always maintained, pull down the wind farms, return our beautiful views and go nuclear, every time I read about going green it is always a con, in the case of government funded wind farms erected by private companies a very big con.

Look Out, Look Out, There's A Blade Flying About!

a 14-tonne one! if wind farms are not bad enough at wasting money they are now downright dangerous, Europe's largest wind farm was shut down after a blade snapped off one of the huge turbines, operators said today, all 140 turbines at the Whitelee wind farm on Eaglesham Moor near Glasgow are being inspected by engineers following Friday's incident,

Scottish Power Renewables said mechanical failure or a lightning strike could be to blame for the breakage, which it described as 'highly unusual', well I guess lightning is a fairly unusual phenomena in Scotland if that is to blame,

but here, apart from the reliability problems is the thing for me, it is Europe's largest wind farm, it has 140 huge energy inefficient turbines and supplies? a pitifully small number of homes, just 180,000, oh I forgot, that is if the wind is blowing! please everybody follow what some commentators say is happening in Europe, get rid of wind farms and go nuclear.

Two More Have Joined The Wind Farm Farce,

that I have been banging on about for the past few years,

in an outright attack on the terrible waste of money they are, former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson warns today that the Coalition’s obsession with climate change is damaging Britain’s recovery from recession, Lord Lawson, one of the most respected Tory figures of recent decades, accuses the Prime Minister of risking Britain’s economy to make a ‘symbolic’ point, in a devastating verdict he writes: ‘the Government’s highly damaging decarbonisation policy, enshrined in the absurd Climate Change Act, does not have a leg to stand on, it is intended, at massive cost, to be symbolic: To make good David Cameron’s ambition to make his administration “the greenest government ever”, ‘My dictionary defines green as “unripe, immature, undeveloped”,’

he warns, that plastering Britain with wind farms will push up bills to families and businesses without producing any real benefits, the switch to ‘low-carbon’ energy is expected to add £200 to annual energy bills, ‘this price increase would be economically damaging at the best of times; and these are not the best of times,' he says it is ‘highly uncertain’ that higher carbon emissions will warm the planet to a dangerous extent and warns it is ‘futile folly’ for Britain to act alone when its emissions are two per cent of the global total, that is an interesting fact, even if the fools that believe wind power will prevail at huge costs, the benefits world wide would only be 2%, of course no other country in the world will try to go anywhere near this, as a fact to put our adsurb goals into perspective the annual increase in China’s emissions, is greater than the UK’s total emissions, also the U.S., the second-largest emitter, has made it clear that without China and India on board, there is no prospect of the U.S. signing up to anything, but us Brits will go it alone,

a second writer to join the cause is Richard Littlejohn, who today writes, 'following the revelation that we’re all paying a secret stealth tax to subsidise so-called renewable energy sources, it seems like a good time to check out exactly what we are getting for our money, (he must have read the blog), at midday yesterday, wind power was contributing just 2.2 per cent of all the electricity in the National Grid, the last time I checked the wholesale electricity industry’s official website, at the turn of the year, the figure was 1.6 per cent, during the cold snap the turbines had to be heated to stop them freezing and were actually consuming more electricity than they generated,' yes read that again, the turbines had to be heated to stop them freezing and were actually consuming more electricity than they generated,

'even on a good day, they rarely work above a quarter of their theoretical capacity, and in high winds they have to be turned off altogether to prevent damage, Britain’s 3,426 wind turbines produce no more electricity than a single, medium-sized gas-fired power station, any sane individual would conclude that wind generation is hopelessly inefficient and horribly expensive and stop throwing good money after bad, we are paying for all this through hidden charges which now make up a fifth of all gas and electricity bills, the average household has to fork out an extra £200 a year, Ministers know there would be an outcry if they raised taxes to pay for windmills, so they hide the subsidies in our gas and electricity bills and hope the energy companies get the blame,'

of course there is some good news regarding wind farms, they can some times, when it is windy, produce too much electricity, earlier this year the National Grid was forced to pay £900,000 compensation to the owners of six wind farms which were forced to close down one especially gusty night — because they were producing too much electricity and there was no capacity to store it, for National Grid read you, the bill payer, I just hope for the good of all this wind farm business is scrapped for the folly it is, but I doubt if the greenies and tree huggers will let it, way too much of your money involved.

The Madness Continues,

Scira Offshore Energy, a joint venture company formed by the global energy giants Statoil and Statkraft, both of which are majority-owned by the Norwegian Government, is building a £1 billion flagship project, covering 14 square miles on completion, it will be the world's second-largest offshore wind farm, Scira says the farm will power the equivalent of 220,000 average households, the wind is harnessed by Norwegians, using German, Dutch and Danish machinery, then sold on to French electricity distribution giant EDF, the sad news is that we the British are not involved in any of this, it appears that we do not have the technological know how to do any of this type of engineering, the project is huge involving 29 vessels and 535 Scira workers, (it appears that one or two workers are from the UK),

as you might expect the electricity produced and going through so many companies will be super expensive, pity the people who have to buy it with huge companions making vast profits before it gets to the consumer, oh, did I mention the electricity will be bought by people in the UK? I must have also forgot to mention the windfarm is off the coast of of North Norfolk in the the Sheringham Shoal, the higher cost of wind-power electricity compared to that from conventional energy sources is one of the main reasons for this New Klondike, Scira has the lease on the seabed beneath or around here for the next 50 years and is looking to build an even bigger turbine field some miles to the north of Sheringham, along the Dogger Bank, the size of North Yorkshire, the madness continues, only this week, it was revealed that wind farms may have to be shut down for 38 days of the year when it gets too windy, because the National Grid cannot cope with a surge in power, I mention in a previous post about the National Grid paying out £900,000 to wind farm owners as the grid, read us, could not cope with the electrical surge, and once again stating the blindly obvious, if the wind drops too far, they do not work at all, so alternative power stations will have to be built to make up the short fall, or we plunge into darkness, the tree hugers and greenies will bleed the UK dry!

I Have Always Been Very Skeptical About Claims Made For Electric Cars,

and it appears I have reason to be, the first question that I ask is how much does it cost to scrap the batteries in these cars in an environmentally friendly way? no answerer's to that one so I guess it would be a lot, next zero emission's - no way! sure low CO2 locally where the car is driven, but in reality if you look at the fuel of electric cars and how it is produced the gap between diesel engine cars and electric ones CO2 output is close and getting closer, at last some one has decided to tell part of the truth about these sometimes twice the price of diesel engined cars,

it has all come out in the Which? report, it noted, 'the common manufacturer claim that electric cars produce ‘zero emissions’ ignores the fact that most drivers use a conventional electricity supply to charge them, which has a carbon cost from burning fossil fuels,' to test its theory, Which? looked at three of the first electric cars destined to hit the UK market and put them up against three 'efficient' conventional rivals, experts found, for example, that the electric Smart Fortwo, expected to cost around £21,000, creates an 'equivalent' of 84 grams of CO2 per kilometre driven, whereas the £9,540 diesel Smart Fortwo emits 103 grams, the conclusion by experts at Which? 'sometimes there’s not a great deal of difference, and the gap is narrowing as 'conventional' cars up their game to cut emissions,'

off course if you factor in 'cheap' electricity like wind farms it gets worse, only two days ago Energy secretary Chris Huhne has reopened a wind farm capable of offering green power to around 7,000 homes, it only cost £11,800,000 to reopen it, that means that each of the 7,000 homes has been subsidized to the tune of £1,685! this cost does not include the cost of opening the original wind farm, just the make over, the farm will produce 9.2 MW, naturally this figure is if the farm is running at full capacity, no wind = no electricity, so back to nuclear or fossil then, so for me stick to diesel, especially with the price of electricity out here!

Why Only A Quarter?

why not cut all wind farm subsidies?

because the tree huggers and greenies want to stifle British industry, as Douglas Carswell said: ‘why has it taken so long? a centre-right government should be bringing an end to this, one of the reasons that the economy is not growing is because energy costs are so ridiculously high because of this wind farm scam which is adding hidden surcharges to our bills,’ this has all been brought on by George Osborne who is demanding huge cuts in government aid for wind farms – a step which could kill plans for the construction of hundreds of turbines across the country, the Chancellor has told the Treasury to draw up plans for a reduction of 25 per cent in subsidies for onshore wind farms, but the questions still remains, why only a 25% reduction and why not on off shore wind farms as well?


in February more than 100 Conservative MPs wrote to the Prime Minister to demand cuts to the £400million a year public support for wind farms, I have to say I still do not see why the people of Great Britain have to pay any subsidies to a failed technology that does not work when there is no wind.

I Have To Admit,

I have never been a fan of wind farms, 

above Filson the dog who works on a wind farm in Southern California, photograph Rogue Detection Teams, why am I down on windfarms? without government subsidies and other cash breaks they just do not cut the mustard, take Hawaii with its trade winds one of the windiest places that wind farms could be placed, the record is not very good, did I mention that after 25 years the blades are worn out, but wait for it, they can not be recycled they have to go to landfill! never mind the horrific cost to wildlife, and here is the problem, humans are terrible at finding bats and birds killed by wind turbines, however dogs are great at it, the specific problem of bat deaths at wind turbines first came to biologists’ attention in 2003, when 2,000 bats turned up dead on a West Virginia wind farm, most bat deaths occur during autumn migrations, and that is just the tip of a very huge iceberg when it comes to wildlife deaths by windfarm, on wind farms in the US a patchwork of federal, state, and local regulations might govern how companies have to monitor wildlife deaths, but reporting requirements vary widely. This means that reliable data on deaths are hard to come by, estimates suggest that turbines in North America kill 600,000 to 949,000 bats and 140,000 to 679,000 birds a year, and that is just in North America, strange how the greenies and tree huggers never mention unpleasant side effects like these, for the full low down have a look here, great that dogs can help us, just so sad it is is in finding dead wildlife that we have knowingly killed.

 

Could This Be The Beginning,

of a bright new future?

as Energy Minister John Hayes says 'enough is enough’ when speaking of onshore wind farms, I have always maintained that wind farms are a hugely expensive waste of space, just look at the 27-year-old Kamaoa Wind Farm sat on arguably the windiest island in the world, Hawaii, total failure,

He said existing sites and those in the pipeline would be enough to meet green commitments with no need for more, ‘even if a minority of what’s in the system is built we are going to reach our 2020 target, I’m saying enough is enough,’ common sense at last, naturally the greenies and treehuggers known as I believe the Liberal Democrats will moan and wail, but then they are not paying the huge subsidies that wind farm owners collect, speaking of which in a shift in Government policy, ministers announced this summer that the subsidy for onshore wind power generation would be cut by 10 per cent this year,

all of which will delight 100-plus fellow Tory MPs who have urged David Cameron to take a more skeptical approach to onshore wind power, well I hate to say 'I told you so' but I told you so here!

Now Here's A Thing,

Lord Lawson agrees with me!

I have always said it, wind farms are a total waste of time, money and energy, Lord Lawson chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: ‘[Wind farms are] absolutely pointless, extremely damaging both for the British economy and for British consumers', it turns out that of the 3,419 turbines, no fewer than 2,276 are either fully or partly owned by companies which are based abroad, why are so many foreign owned? because we give massive grants to companies that build the farms in the UK,

an investigation found that one Danish company owns or part-owns three offshore farms which receive almost £100million a year in subsidies from British consumers, firms from Japan, the U.S., Norway, Sweden, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany also own British wind farms, from next year, £523million in subsidies will go to foreign companies, according to the Renewable Energy Foundation think tank, the amount will soar in the next decade as the Government tries to meet carbon-reduction targets,


the good news for the wind farm owners is that they will be paid even if they do not work, £2.6million was handed to 11 wind farm companies last week to stop generating electricity, the National Grid says if the network cannot cope with a surge in production, some firms must stop operating and are compensated, it can not just be me thinking this but why is Great Britain building more of these financially crippling machines?

but some in Britain do make a good case for more of these machines, take the case of the Prime Minister’s father-in-law, Sir Reginald Sheffield, the father of Samantha Cameron, by his own estimate, he already receives almost £350,000 a year for the eight turbines at Bagmoor, which was constructed in 2009, that means he is earning nearly £1,000 every single day on the back of the turbines, no wonder he wants planning permission to build seven more 400ft tall wind-turbines to be erected at Flixborough Grange, nice little earner!



Dr Lee Moroney, of the Renewable Energy Foundation, said: ‘target-driven and generously subsidised growth in the renewables sector was always likely to attract international investors seeking rapid returns and a prompt exit, the real concern is that, having made handsome profits from UK bill-payers, they will move on leaving the UK with subprime or distressed assets', I guess that means the UK consumer still picks up the bill!

It Looks Like The National Trust Have Changed Their View On Wind Power To Mine,

the National Trust chairman, Sir Simon Jenkins,

dismissed wind as the ‘least efficient’ renewable power, ‘broadly speaking, the National Trust is deeply sceptical of this form of renewable energy', deeply sceptical? the understatement of the year! the money handed out to wind farm operators to produce the most expensive electricity in the world is obscene,


just last month it emerged that wind farms in Scotland were paid nearly £300,000 in the first five days of this year to close down because it was too windy, four turbine operators shared the controversial ‘constraint payments’ because they produced more energy than the National Grid could handle, last year 17 wind farm operators were paid £7m to shut down on 40 occasions between January and September, wind power, what a gigantic waste of public money.

I Hate To Say 'I told You So',

but wind farms as I have always predicted will come to haunt every home in the UK,

Professor Gordon Hughes, who has produced a study on how wind energy will hit energy costs, has predicted a stark warning for every home in Great Britain, but first his credentials, professor Hughes is one of the UK's leading energy economists and works at the prestigious University of Edinburgh, He was also a senior adviser on energy and environmental policy at the World Bank, so I guess he knows a thing or two, in his stark warning, (remember the mantra of wind farms is to bring Britain's greenhouse gas emissions down), but he believes for all the huge investment in wind farms Britain's greenhouse gas emissions may not even fall!

worse still after not achieving their first goal by 2020 average electricity bills will be around 58 per cent higher - a £320 increase - just because of the flood of wind turbines planned for Britain's coastlines, fields and seas, 'the key problems with current policies for wind power are simple,' he said, 'unless the current Government scales back its commitment to wind power very substantially, its policy will be worse than a mistake, it will be a blunder, the average household electricity bill would increase from £528 per year at 2010 prices to a range from £730 to £840 in 2020,' the report has been published by former Chancellor Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation,


backing up Professor Gordon Hughes, Professor Ian Fells, who is Professor of Energy Conversion at Newcastle University and an adviser at the House of Commons and Lords, also said that wind farms are too costly, instead he claims that combined gas cycle plants could produce the same amount of green energy for £13billion – nearly 10 times cheaper than wind power, 'wind energy is the most expensive way of generating renewable electricity,' he said, 'it will also cost jobs, We are already seeing some industrial firms packing up and moving abroad, the increasing price of energy is going to be the next big political problem,'


but here is the real problem with tree huggers and greenies spending your money, it is making them too much money so they and their cronies with their snouts in the trough will never stop gouging for their cash rewards, just a pity we can not be more like America with Hawaii's wind farm project! 

At Last Some Light At The End Of The Tunnel,

the Thinking About the Affordable report claims that scrapping wind farms would save every Briton almost £550,

a controversial report by KPMG, the accountants and adviser on government energy policy, will this week say that Britain can reach the 2020 target on reducing pollution imposed by the European Union for a third less than predicted, a potential saving of £34 billion,


this summer saw steep price hikes imposed by the “big six” power firms, which drove the average household bill to £1,345, almost double the £740 figure of five years ago,


based on current building costs an 800 megawatt gas-fired power station, capable of producing round-the-clock power for 800,000 homes, will cost about £400m, by contrast, an offshore wind farm with the same capacity that will produce at most a third of the time, due to the wind’s variability, will cost six times that figure, nuclear plants cost a similar amount but do not require the back-up plants that wind farms do, common sense really, as I have always maintained wind farms are costly to install, inefficient, as alternative power sources have to be maintained for the times there is no wind and expensive in the extreme to maintain, but the greenies and tree hugers will still want wind power regardless.

There Is Not Much That Griff Rhys Jones says,

that I agree with,

but in one area we share common ground, the actor and comedian Griff Rhys Jones hit out at the ‘hypocrisy’ of wind farms - labelling them ‘green tokenism,’ when speaking to today’s Radio Times, of course he does have an agenda, his home in Holbrook, Suffolk, is near the proposed site of one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms, the huge development off the Suffolk coast would cover 300 square kilometres and include 325 turbines, so I guess he does not want the view spoilt, but at the end of the day wind farms are complete madness when it comes to producing power,


look no further than the failed experiment in Hawaii, or what do you do when a wind farm fails or there is no wind? I have of course been against the folly of wind farms since day one, for a few musings on them have a look here and scroll down for a real eye opener.

One Thing I Have Never Been Convinced About,

is wind turbines,

and how cheaply they make electricity 24/7, and like the batteries in all electric cars, how in an environmentally friendly way can you get rid of them once their life is over? this is the untalked about part of wind farms, the above photograph is of the municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, which is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to end, photographer: Benjamin Rasmussen for Bloomberg Green, tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills, I thought we were supposed to be cutting down on landfill waste, it seems the wind farm industry is making more! in the U.S. alone, about 8,000 blades will be removed in each of the next four years, here at home in Europe, which has been dealing with the problem longer, has about 3,800 coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF, and it is going to get worse, most were built more than a decade ago, when installations were less than a fifth of what they are now, the fact is that wind power is carbon-free and about 85% of turbine components, including steel, copper wire, electronics and gearing can be recycled or reused, but, and it is a big but, the fiberglass blades remain difficult to dispose of, with some as long as a football field, big rigs can only carry one at a time, making transportation costs prohibitive for long-distance hauls, so use more energy cutting them up, and then transport them to, you guessed it, a landfill site! there has been laboratory research into breaking the blades down, but the cost of heating the blades to the temperatures required is prohibitive, wind farms helping to fill landfill sites near you!

With Summer Here And You Want To Go Surfing,

but a snag, no wind, so what are you going to do?

answer go 1960's retro and buy a Jet Board, that's right a surf board with its own petrol motor, (wind farm owners might like to think about this), this aluminium board is powered by a one cylinder two cycle JB-100 water cooled motor, the aluminium board was made at that time by Sargent Fletcher Inc in the USA, part of the company moved to become Cobham plc, Dorset, United Kingdom, when new the Jet Board sold for $1700 at the Jet Board corporation on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles,

the controls are mounted on the top of the board, a small foot/hand activated wheel is the throttle, in case you are thinking of buying one this polished and unpainted one went for $1800 the last time that one came up for auction, but I have to say I could not find a date for the sale, in case of mechanical failure there is no sail, so as Max Bygraves would say, 'you need hands'!


now I have second thoughts about using a surf board with no wind, I assumed that there would be no waves, so the motor would mean that you could still go out and ride the board, say to improve your balance, but that seemed not quite right, then it stuck me, the motor must have been put in it for lazy people like me - so you do not have to paddle using your hands to reach the waves, then ride the board in, though to be fair the board with the motor is so heavy I do not know how well it would compare to a normal board, anyone out there got one and can let us know?

Get Over It We Are Alone!

a wind turbine breaks and the little green men must have done it! face facts, we are alone, with the number of digital cameras and videos around today if there were aliens popping over to see us we would by now have crystal clear images of them, but not so in at a wind farm in Conisholme, Lincolnshire, over night (notice, not in the day time when people are around) a wind turbine breaks, so rather than a normal failure due to say metal fatigue it must have been an alien visitation, what a relief for the insurance company, at least they have an excuse for not paying!

Witness: Lesley Whittingham took a photograph of the lights, below, she said they remained in the sky for several minutes,

I still do not see any aliens, oh I have just been told they are invisible! so that's all right then!

Day 12,

we started the day, 

   with breakfast,

  then up and out early,

  onto the lake,

  for a walk around the edges of it,

  we passed one of the igloos that look out over the lake,

  and continued our way around the lake,

  as it got brighter,

   but I still had to use the cameras flash,

   we came across this abandoned hut,

   I am guessing it was used to keep hay for winter feed,

 talk about desolate, it was in the middle of nowhere,

  we circled around and found the reindeer farm where we would be going later,

  we started walking back to the resort,

 the pictures do not do the scenery justice,

  it was so picturesque,

  later we walked back to the reindeer farm, well I got on OK with the dogs, bur reindeer are a different kettle of fish, we were told not to touch or pet them as they still are wild animals and can not be 100% predicted, keep the rein loose, but not too loose and never tighten it,

 I had a new friend,

  the reindeer behind us,

 soon we were all set,

and started past the farm,

and make our way into the forest,

the reindeer seemed to be enjoying the ride too,

as every time we stopped it looked around at the scenery,

for us it was enjoyable too,

especially,

as I could keep taking pictures,

of the snow laden trees,

we left the forest,

 and headed out onto the lake,

where things got decidedly chilly,

 without the cover of the trees the temperature really dropped due to the wind chill, 

back into the forest on our way to the farm,

another stop and a look around,

our ride was over,

another hay barn I am guessing,

the teams were led away,

I carried on taking pictures,

a nearly black reindeer,

and a almost white one,

mind the antlers,

they are taking a rest,

before the next group of tourists arrives,

 all set and now ready to go,

we really enjoyed the ride and Diana was so happy to be given some moss that the reindeer like,

 to be feed as a treat,

 there were about 20 of them in the carrel,

all waiting for a treat,

what a wonderful day,

and it was not over yet,

we were taken into a barn and given information, 

about the costumes and customs of the local population that goes back so many years,

with examples of clothes,

and costumes,

we then went into a typical house,

that has been kept as it was from the 1940s,

with the original cooker and hot plate,

everyone had a good look around,

we said goodbye to the farm and the reindeer,

and made a move to a hut,

where inside a we were given a small meal,

it was quite cosy with the fire going,

and the hot vegetable soup was so tasty,

for some reason we were both very hungry,

we made our way back,

watching some of the dog teams across the lake,

behind the main building Diana found a rubber ring,

and a course in the snow,

so jumping on the ring,

she hurtled down the slope,

I am not sure if she was screaming or laughing,

but whatever it was,

she enjoyed it so much she had another go,

this time with the gopro, 

which accompanied us on our next walk,

we decided to walk to the left rather than the right as we had done before,

then from across the lake,

the dog teams arrived on their way back,

we settled down for our evening meal,

   then I was out looking for the aurora borealis,

 we had been told that at last there was a break in the cloud, all of the camps keep in touch with each other to advise on weather conditions,

  so a mad scramble to head out to the lake and set up the tripod,

 it was bitterly cold, but a break in the clouds made it all worthwhile,

and here are a couple of the pictures I took, the lights at the bottom of the picture are a town across the far-side of the lake, for the technical f3.5, 8 second exposure at 1600asa

for this picture I moved the camera away from the town and used the silhouette of the trees at the bottom of the picture to give it some scale, for the technical f3.5, 12 second exposure at 1600asa the only problem was that in no time, just a few minuets the cloud cover returned and it started to snow, so that was that!

 then back to the cabin to warm up, play a few hands of cribbage and then we were off to bed.