I'd rather my wife made land mines than worked in the wind farm industry

James Delingpole
James Delingpole, The Telegraph
Jun. 09, 2010

If there’s an industry in the world that deserves to be stigmatised more than any other, it’s the despicable, reprehensible, money-grubbing, mendacious, taxpayer-fleecing, bird-mangling, landscape-ruining, economy-blighting wind farm business. At least you could argue that blood diamonds make nice jewellery and that land mine manufacturers are making a valuable contribution to infantry defence. But wind farms are not merely worthless but actively evil – and anyone involved in them deserves to be as pilloried and despised as estate agents were in the Eighties or bankers are now.

For chapter and verse on why they are such an abomination, I must refer you to Dr John Etherington’s definitive The Wind Farm Scam, which explains in comprehensive and unarguable detail precisely why wind farms are one of the most inefficient forms of power generation since the human treadmill and why they can only ever possibly be economically viable with the help of massive (and entirely unjustified) taxpayer subsidy.

And then there’s the recent Spanish experience. From Steve Goreham’s superb book Climatism – about the many disasters that have been caused by the global warming religion – we learn that Spain’s concerted government-funded drive towards wind and solar power has been an utter catastrophe. Electricity costs have risen by 60 per cent while the 50,000 “green jobs” it created cost 571,000 Euros per job via government subsidy, effectively losing 2.2 jobs in the real economy for every one created in the green one.

Now, we learn today, the wife of Britain’s deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is to take a lucrative job in this vibrant, go-ahead industry. Miriam Gonzalez Durantez – as she chooses to call herself, presumably because it sounds a lot classier than Mrs Clegg – will be acting as an independent adviser to Acciona, the world’s largest wind farm supplier.

Apparently, to avoid any “conflict of interest”, she will not be advising it on any of its British projects. Oh, right. And presumably she’ll also be knocking off her salary that portion of Acciona’s profits – courtesy of UK taxpayer subsidy – made from building the four wind farms our economy and landscape need about as much as we need an outbreak of nuclear war or John Prescott or Ebola.

PS Some of you seem to be under the impression that I don’t love you or that I have not been fighting your corner over the great comment redesign. You should be ashamed of yourselves for making such unfounded accusations. Who do you think it was, for example, who insisted on having Gulfvictim’s comment restored the other day? I am doing what I can and have been assured that my blog especially will be kept moderation-light. Obviously, I shall be monitoring this with as much interest as you will. But FFS, some of you, give me the benefit of the doubt and get off my case.