Concerns over Walshaw Moor wind farm should not be overlooked - Yorkshire Post Letters

I read with great interest but also great sadness the letter published in The Yorkshire Post today (July 23) from Simon Watkins of Todmorden urging a halt to the planned Walshaw Moor wind farm, destined to be the largest anywhere on land in the UK.

I was further saddened after reading the impressive ‘Stop Calderdale Windfarm’ website. We desperately need more wind power but at the same time the concerns documented in the letter and on the website are heart-breaking.

I would dearly love to read in your pages an attempt at an even-handed assessment of the proposals by your journalists and an honest comment from the MP Josh Fenton-Glynn - I hope he is reading all this. I'd particularly like to see confirmation that public rights of way will be maintained once the turbines are in place.

There are hints from Simon Watkins that wind farms should be out of the hands of private enterprise and I wholeheartedly agree - what else is the point of the much-trumpeted (and regrettably jingoistically-named) ‘Great British Energy’ if we don't nationalise new infrastructure of this type? In parallel, surely more could be done to compensate the affected surrounding areas?

Britain continues to do well with sea-based wind power but we have been made a pariah by the Tory ban on land-based wind farms and we are now way behind many of our other fellow European countries.

Time to make amends - but with something done to sweeten the deal for residents and better mitigation around peat, wildlife, drainage and so on.

Perhaps I am whistling in the wind, but I hope I am not the only one who realises that every spin of a turbine blade is another bit of global heating avoided and a tiny step towards the long-term survival of human civilisation close to its current form.