ROB Wilcock (Citizen Letters, December 31) claims there are three reasons to support wind farms.

First he seems to think that if we don't build wind farms we will have to have more nuclear power stations. This is simply not true.

Wind farms produce so little energy that they don't make any difference at all to the number of nuclear power plants in operation. Even if no more wind farms are built in Britain this will not mean that more nuclear power stations are built.

To pretend that we have a simple choice between wind farms and nuclear power is a misleading tactic often used by the businessmen who stand to gain financially by erecting wind turbines.

Second, Mr Wilcock states that wind farms look 'quite nice'. I suppose there is no accounting for taste but I believe most people would prefer the moors as they are, thank you very much.

Third, Mr Wilcock says we should not fight wind farms because they 'come naturally' and represent 'progress'. Yet wind turbines are certainly not natural (quite the opposite) and progress is not necessarily a good thing.

If we have to accept bad ideas just because they are new we may as well give up now and let the businessmen behind the wind farm scheme have their way. It seems Mr Wilcock has done just that.

M France

Ashleigh Street

Darwen

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.