Perth Protest – Speech by Graeme Steel

Before I start. I have a message from last years speaker, Lyndsay Ward. Lyndsay is unable to attend today, It’s the first major demo she has missed. I want to thank Lyndsey for her help in writing my speech. Lyndsey hopes that we give the SNP some wellie from her too.

Well here we are again folks. Standing outside another SNP conference hoping that those inside, who have come to listen to our dear leader’s speech, will listen to us instead.

There’s an idea. A message for the delegates inside. Forget fawning over what Alex tells you, come out here and listen to the truth about industrial wind developments and how it affects the people you want to vote for your party.

And while you are about it bring out some of the wind developers with you. The ones who are set up inside the hall schmoozing with the SNP members at this very moment.

Companies like Community Windpower. I’ve got a message for their MD Mr Ron Wood and his revolting, incompetent and financally unstable company. The communities in the Scottish Borders don’t want you or your bribes. Your company’s behaviour at recent Community Council meetings is disgraceful. You know perfectly well your supposed community benefits should not be used to help get planning permission. Why don’t you rebrand your company “divide the community windpower”

Let them listen to the truth as well. Let them be warned – we are on to them and their Environmental Fairy Stories.

Let them also be clear – we don’t want them in our communities, tearing them apart. We don’t want them ruining our environment and killing our wildlife.

We don’t want them building their obscene, unreliable turbines that generate a woeful amount of power and cause immense misery to those who have to live near them.

To be honest I am surprised that any of us made it here today anyway– or were even allowed to march, protest or publicly speak.

I thought that maybe the SNP would have had the law changed to stop us coming to demonstrate. Maybe the roads would have been blocked and protesters barred from getting here. Maybe that was even a step too far, even for Alex.

We have had confirmation just this week that this SNP government is actually above the law. Yes that’s right. If the law doesn’t say what Alex Salmond wants it to say, he just ignores it. He and his administration, collectively, wave two fingers at us and the law – a bit like his beloved turbines.

Remember whenever you look at a wind farm at least one turbine will always be giving you the two fingered salute! Alex has them built that way.

We now have a High Court ruling that makes a lot of current wind applications illegal as the applicants do not hold a generating licence. The Scottish Government is refusing to suspend current applications until the appeal is heard early next year. At present Lady Clark’s ruling is the law. If you don’t have a licence you cannot apply to build a wind farm. Mad Alex and his cohorts think they are above the law.

What are people called that defy the law? Criminals! What would happen to us if we wilfully defied the law? We would be arrested and prosecuted.

Alex Salmond is instructing planning authorities and reporters across Scotland to break the law. He is also wilfully wasting public money by allowing illegal planning applications to go through the planning process, appeals and public inquiries.

How can he get away with it? We are in a recession and he wastes thousands of pounds of our money to pay for illegal activities.

With people in fuel poverty and having to choose between heating and eating, he should be ashamed of himself.

We not only demand a moratorium on the building of more turbines, we want all the illegally built turbines taken down immediately!

We need to see exactly how many legally approved turbines we have in our landscapes, not just have more and more consented before the approved ones have been constructed. It is the policy of madmen.

There are literally hundreds of turbines that have yet to be built. They will soon start springing up like manic mushrooms all over Scotland and people are going to be stunned.

Every time there is any negative press regarding wind farms the Scottish government spokesperson says the same thing:

Wind farms will only be approved in appropriate locations.

I’ve got something to tell that spokesperson and the whole government.

THERE ARE NO APPROPRIATE LOCATIONS LEFT. YOU HAVE TRASHED ENOUGH. IT IS TIME TO STOP.

We are in the unenviable position of having wind factories in our most beautiful scenic locations OR plonked in the midst of our communities.

NEITHER IS APPROPRIATE!

What about building wind farms on Arthur’s Seat or at the Ryder Cup venue?

We all know that ain’t never gonna happen!

People are suffering. Their health is suffering, noise issues are escalating and folk are trapped in the homes they have come to despise because of the close proximity of industrial turbines. They cannot sell or cannot afford to take a greatly reduced offer on their property.

We have a referendum next year. A vote to decide if we want independence. A vote to decide if we want the likes of this government having even more power over us than they do now.

Alex Salmond could stop building wind turbines TODAY. It is in his power. He doesn’t have to ask Westminster, blame Maggie Thatcher, the Coalition, the Conservatives, Labour or the Lib Dems. He can do it and if he cared anything about you and the rural environment he would. But he doesn’t care. He is blinkered, arrogant and stubborn – and he is followed by those who do his bidding and do not question what he demands.

Us Scots living in rural communities are as likely to vote yes in a referendum as Alex Salmond is as likely to get his photo taken with the Loch Ness monster.

He is gambling with the rural vote for independence and he loses more supporters every day another wind farm is proposed. It was reported just last week that there are, on average, seven wind applications a day across Scotland. That is a helluva lot of votes he is waving goodbye to. He must be very confident he is going to win to so callously disregard our opinion.

And in the unlikely event we get independence has the SNP actually thought about how we will afford to pay for all those excessive subsidies promised to the wind weasels for the next 25 years?

Over 60% of UK wind farms are here in Scotland yet we only have around 8% of the bill payers in the UK. England’s energy account payers will not pay for Scottish wind farms despite what Salmond and Fergus Ewing say. Our energy minister is on record as saying England will have to buy our wind energy to keep the lights on. Is that in addition to the English consumers paying for wind developers in Scotland for a quarter of a century as Ewing has said they would?

Has he got that in writing?

He’s having a laugh isn’t he?

We all know England already buys nuclear from France, is looking to have it’s own nuclear power stations and is investing in fracking. Why on earth would England pay for Scotland’s very expensive and very unreliable wind power?

They won’t. We know it, England knows it and the SNP probably know it but ,like most other things, they conveniently forget to give us the facts.

Well Alex we’ve said it before and we will say it again. The facts are coming and they are gaining on you.

I won’t bore with the statistics and the facts regarding wind power now. It is wrong on virtually every level and anyone who has any interest can research the details themselves.

We have Mad Alex saying he wants Scotland to be the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy but turbines are not even manufactured here.

How many tourists go to Saudi to look at the oil wells?

Tourism and industrialisation from wind farms on the scale proposed for Scotland cannot co-exist.
Fergus Two Hats Ewing should be in utter turmoil over this anomaly.

We have the UK Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, saying wind farms are value for money. This guy is so far removed from the facts, he actually went on national TV and stated that power companies are only paid for generating power. We all know that they cost millions in payments to be turned off when the energy they produce is not required.

For every one job created in so called renewable energy, it costs three jobs in other industries. This is mostly due to the cost of energy to energy-intensive industries who simply move out of the UK or close down altogether. It has already happened in other countries. If you want to encourage industry you cannot charge them some of the highest costs in Europe for the energy they need to exist.

Simple maths. Salmond is an economist he should know that!

Mr No-Show, sorry I mean Fergus Two Hats Ewing, does not even turn up at wind farm openings any more! Myself and other local residents recently attended the supposed official opening of Drone Park Wind Factory in Coldingham especially to see him and see what he was going to say as he cut the ribbon on the latest bit of eco vandalism he had sanctioned.

But no he had chickened out – pleading diary clashes.

Diary clashes or was it evasive tactics, wanting to avoid the aggrieved local people who were going to have to live with his approved wind destruction for a generation – you decide for yourselves!

All Mad Alex and the SNP care about is the referendum next year, is ANYONE here considering voting yes?

These monstrous bird chopping, bat killing machines will ensure that the SNP receives no support or votes from the electorate in the countryside. Once they are defeated at the polls the reason for their existence will be terminated.

I need some crowd participation here.

When I put my hand up shout NO as loudly as you can.

WILL ENGLAND BUY OUR RENEWABLE ENERGY?

DO TOURISTS COME TO SCOTLAND TO SEE TURBINES?

ARE HOUSE PRICES UNAFFECTED BY TURBINES?

WILL THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT ONLY APPROVE THE RIGHT WIND FARM APPLICATION IN THE RIGHT PLACE?

PUT YOUR HAND UP NOW AND SHOUT!

NO MORE TURBINES