Vestas, the wind turbine manufacturing plant in Newport on the Isle of Wight is set to close this week despite a government pledge only hours earlier to build a green economy. There is a Friends of the Earth campaign about it here, urging the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to save the UK’s wind power industry.

All of this comes at a time when the UK govenment has been accused of having an energy policy that’s too focused on wind power, and when companies trying to increase the UK’s supply of wind power such as Ecotricity are fighting years-long planning battles with local councils to install any. Dorset, the county where I live, has no wind turbines at all and one planning proposal was recently turned down by the council despite having been recommended by their own planning officers.

It’s a mad world.

We use Ecotricity for electricity supply in our household, as they use the money we pay them to build new wind turbines.  Annoyingly, aliens are wrecking them. One early report said that a blade had been torn off and — ominously — was nowhere to be found (perhaps implying it had been abducted). A later report said that it was found at the foot of the wind turbine.  Probably should have checked there first.

Now the county councillor for the area has piped up with a report of seeing a “round, white light” with a “slight red edge” hovering near the wind turbines. So was it aliens, or mechanical failure? Either way, it mightn’t be a bad idea to start installing cameras at turbine sites.

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