In June, the paper reported on a protest about the transportation of a wind turbine through the town of Welshpool:
You might imagine that if the protestors had indeed 'lined the streets' they would have been able to take a photo showing more than, umm, eight people.
But Bell says the Shropshire Star may have been exaggerating 'slightly'. The photo only shows eight protestors because there were only eight protestors.
Can eight people 'line the streets'?
Been a while since I've been to Welshpool, but maybe they just have really small streets?
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, that's 0.13% of the population of the town. If they had the same percentage turnout in London, there'd be over 9500 of them! And, yes, that says rather a lot more about the irrelevance of impressive-looking demonstrations in London...
ReplyDeleteDoes that really say 'detrimental affect'??
ReplyDeleteWhat strikes me as funny is that they're not protesting againt having a bloody great turbine in or near the town, merely protesting against moving them THROUGH the town! I mean how many are there - is this likely to be a 24/7 transport? Hardly - some people really have nothing better to do, do they?
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry - I just can't get past the subject of the story. They are objecting to wind trubine PARTS being transported THROUGH their town? What? Are they afraid some liberal environmentalism might fall off in their town?
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering what a "detrimental affect" is. Clearly it's something much more serious than a "detrimental effect".
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, the reason why the good people of Welshpool are unhappy with the idea is that the transport of these wind farm components involves bespoke lorries measuring 180ft (55m) long, 16ft (5m) wide and weighing nearly 130 tonnes coming through their town. They would travel on one or more of the chosen routes five days a week for five years, more than 3,000 journeys in total. According to the Shropshire Star's report, when this was trialled in Welshpool it took one lorry 20 minutes to get from one side of the town to the other.
ReplyDeleteHaha, given where Welshpool is I think these might be the wind turbines my uncle was having built on his farm a few months ago. Incidentally there weren't many protests where they were actually built, mainly because everyone realised it meant cheaper electricity.
ReplyDeleteI don't really get the wind farm protestors, turbines are definitely a lot more elegant than having a whopping great big smoking power plant on the landscape.
I'm not sure that the bloke at the back of the picture is actualy a protestor he looks like he's just a nosy passer-by.
ReplyDeleteThe Dorset Echo is full of this sort of thing, usually with a barely-concealed arch-right-wing agenda. So are most papers in such places I imagine.
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