TV documentaries and wind turbines: an essay on the grotesque

Do you remember the hall of distorting mirrors that used to come to the Hoppings every year?

Admittedly a bit scantily dressed for the Hoppings

That, I discover, is very much the experience provided by an appearance on TV. I realised that I had put on a little weight since my engagement five years ago. In my more honest moments, I might even admit to being rather fat. But it took a documentary film crew to make the staggeringly unflattering revelation that I am not only possessed of a vast corporation, but that it actually moves about independently as I walk.

This is, for me, the most depressing aspect of Iceland Foods: Life Inside The Freezer Cabinet, which begins its run on BBC2 at 9pm next Monday, October 21st.

My own bit part in this series as Iceland’s PR adviser was somewhat inflated by the fact that filming coincided with the Horsegate food “crisis”. The robust language I used at the time is apparently mainly responsible for the programme’s post-watershed slot.

Overall, I think the impact on my future career prospects was neatly summarised by the Iceland director who assured me that it would be a great break. “There will be lots more people wanting to work with you once they’ve seen this,” he said. “Not doing PR, obviously.”

The “reality documentary” is, it seems, a great growth area for broadcasters, perhaps because the “talent” performs for free. They have already shown us everything we could possibly want to know about airports, airlines, railways, call centres and Greggs the bakers. Next comes Iceland, and soon every retailer will want one.

I think there is a lot to be said for shedding light on the workings of businesses, but I’d be glad if the film-makers spread their net to other areas, too. In particular, I would simply love to see a fly-on-the-wall documentary following the process of building a wind farm.

This already has all the ingredients that made the Alien film franchise such a box office success. The structures are repellent and it seems all but impossible to kill them off.

In August my stomach and I were photographed among a happy band of local residents outside County Hall, after Northumberland’s planning committee unanimously rejected an application for a large industrial turbine at Follions in Whittingham Vale, on the edge of the National Park.

The committee had heard eloquent speeches by our own councillor Steven Bridgett and by Tim Stienlet, whose nearby holiday cottage business faces ruin if the beauty and tranquillity that draws in his customers is shattered by this grotesque development.

Those members of the Committee who spoke against the proposal made it clear that they did so from intimate personal knowledge of the area, and the damage that a huge turbine in this location would do to a unique and precious landscape.

Yet now the developer has slapped in an appeal, with a demand for costs, on the grounds of the council’s “unreasonable behaviour” in turning down the application without a site visit.

Allowing members of the public to clap and cheer opponents of the scheme apparently also threatened the impartiality of the committee, which seems to have overlooked the fact that there is a “presumption in favour” of “sustainable” developments of this sort.

Well, God forbid that democracy should prevail and that the feelings of those who actually know and love an area should have the slightest bearing on planning decisions of any kind.

But if Eric Pickles’ recent pronouncements about giving due weight to the views of local communities have any meaning at all, the Follions application should be booted swiftly back into the bin to which the council rightly consigned it just two months ago.

In the meantime the costly appeal grinds on, and I would urge anyone who cares for Northumberland, and has the slightest interest in keeping its tourist industry alive, to visit the website http://www.fightfollionswindfarm.co.uk/ and view the page on the planning appeal process.

The deadline for representations is October 23rd, which means that you will be cutting it a bit fine if you leave it until 9pm on the 21st to start composing your letter. But you will find something else to fill the time, won’t you?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

From Clattery to Wandylaw: I should have seen it coming

My favourite place in the whole world, surpassing even Venice, was a damp two-room cottage on the moors above Warenford in Northumberland.

It was called Clattery or, on the maps, Clattering Houses. My family rented it as a weekend retreat for most of the last century, and my mother was born there in 1909.

My family at Clattery, circa 1909

My grandfather (in Panama hat) and the family business from which he apparently needed a weekend retreat: the Lion Garage in Alnwick Market Place

Clattery in July 1986, when I moved in

I was lucky enough to live at Clattery full time for two years in the 1980s, while I pretended to write a book. I will never forget the magical view down to Bamburgh and the Farnes, or the sweep of the Longstone light in the evenings.

I thought its peace and beauty were timeless, but the place is a ruin now. I left when the neighbouring Wandylaw estate decided to try its luck at opencast coal mining. Since then a much bigger profit opportunity has emerged in the form of a wind farm.

Today's view of Wandylaw from Adderstone, where my great-grandfather was the local blacksmith

With hindsight, I should have seen all this coming. Clattery got its unusual name from the racket of the primitive drift mines once worked on the moors, while you probably don’t need me to explain that “Wandylaw” means “windy hill”.

The fact that I never go back to my favourite place is sad for me, but of no consequence to anyone else. Those moors were the opposite of a tourist hot spot. Many years ago my uncle introduced me to Ros Castle, the hill fort a little further inland, and pointed out the seven castles one could see from its top.

Now visitors to this favourite resort of the foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey seem much more likely to end up counting turbines.

Looking east from the roadside near Ros Castle

Which is another shame, though Ros has never drawn the huge numbers of visitors its breathtaking views merit. But then a major part of the attraction of Northumberland has always been the ability to go hill walking or sit on a stunning beach, and feel that one has the place almost to oneself.

Sadly this becomes a serious handicap when attempting to stir up opposition to those who would transform the character of the place in the pursuit of profit.

My own position is unusual in that, for most of the last 25 years, I have had my home in Northumberland but earned my living elsewhere. Hence I tend to see the county from the semi-detached perspective of a frequent visitor rather than that of a permanent resident.

I have never wanted to take my holidays anywhere else, and have spent the last five years battling with a series of dreadful summers to bring my wife round to my point of view. Last week I felt we came close to a breakthrough as the children played happily on the sun-drenched sands of Newton-by-the-Sea, fortified by truly excellent fish and chips from the village’s Joiners’ Arms.

Family holiday fun at Newton-by-the-Sea

Driving around the county, the intrusion of huge wind turbines into the views I have loved all my life upsets me, and the prospect of many more seems simply appalling. But I am well aware that my views are not universally shared. Even my four-year-old son disloyally announced that he found them “pretty”.

I haven’t yet been able to ascertain his views on the alternatives, though I hope he will share my joy in the irony that those who shouted loudest to defend the miners from “the Tories” now seem to be the most vociferous opponents of the new fossil fuel technology of fracking.

Personally, I’d prefer some fracking rigs and the odd fully functional nuclear power station to serried ranks of intermittently operative wind turbines. I’d also like to explore the potential for a revival of coal, plus wave and tidal power.

But, at the end of the day, the will of the people should prevail. If those who share my son’s perception are in the majority (and I hope not, because he’s been wrong about most things up to now) let us proceed with a wind farm free-for-all.

If not, neither central Government nor local planners should be trying to impose them on unwilling communities.

If I prove to in the minority, I’ll sadly move on from Northumberland as I did from Clattery and never come back, though I hope I may continue to enjoy some very precious memories.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Dictatorship seems a more pressing danger than global warming

This column has never made any claim to omniscience. How could it? I am a half-employed PR man, for heaven’s sake. Though at least this makes me less of a threat to the nation than the former PR man currently resident in 10 Downing Street.

The sharpest knife in the box. Apparently.

But I did work in the City of London for almost 30 years after somehow picking up a first class honours degree in history. So I do know a tiny bit about both the world of high finance and the lessons of the past.

In “Views of the North” last week, Mr Derek Robertson of Gateshead took me to task for claiming in my last column that “our current financial woes are basically down to the EU and the euro”. I did no such thing. I merely pointed out that the creation of the euro had, quite unnecessarily, made an already extremely bad situation potentially catastrophic for democracy and peace.

At the risk of repeating myself, the euro was and is an economically illiterate construction, designed to drive the political union of Europe so that a tiny elite could strut the world stage as representatives of a superpower, claiming parity with the US or China.

Our beloved President van Rompuy

The fact that its creation was dressed up in the language of peace and prosperity made it all the more annoying. That is why I drew a parallel with wind power, which is a classic moneymaking scam designed to benefit a relatively small number of developers and landowners at the expense of the rest of us. Yet it similarly comes infuriatingly wrapped in self-righteous claims that it is all about “saving the planet”.

Let us accept, for the sake of argument, that the Earth is getting warmer. Let us further concede that this may be driven by population growth and industrialisation. I have no difficulty in believing that, while the world may be able to support more than seven billion human beings, it is going to be placed under some strain if they all aspire to the lifestyle of rich Americans.

But bearing in mind the UK’s tiny share of world industrial output, consigning 515 people around Lynemouth to the dole queue by raising taxes to cut carbon emissions seems to me a disproportionately high price to pay for Chris Huhne’s occupation of the international moral high ground.

So, farewell then: Alcan Lynemouth

Meanwhile the Government’s own chief scientific adviser on energy pointed out at the weekend that we will need to cover vast swathes of the country in wind turbines, solar panels and biofuel crops to “go green” and will still only be able to generate a relatively small fraction of our energy needs from renewable resources. Of which wind is much the least satisfactory because of its intermittent nature.

As for allegedly failing to name and shame those guilty for our current economic predicament, even I grew bored with writing week after week that the claim to have “abolished boom and bust” defied all the evidence of history.

The ultimate responsibility of bankers, and those who failed to regulate them, is beyond dispute. It is indeed maddening that they have gone unpunished, their unjustified bonuses neatly laundered into agreeable town houses in Chelsea and country estates in the Cotswolds. I have pointed out in the past that, if it happened in China, at least a representative sample of them would have been shot.

Bankers: the way forward?

But this isn’t China, and I hope it never will be, however much the Chinese economy may prosper. Because the bottom line is that I would like my sons to grow up in a free country where they have a chance to sack the government every five years, rather than being ruled by “technocrats” or commissars who can only be deposed by taking to the streets and facing down people armed with batons, rifles or tanks.

Call me dumb if you wish, but right now that seems a much greater threat to their future than rising sea levels, and is also something that we might be able to take some meaningful action to prevent.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The best shopping street in Britain?

What do the following have in common: (a) Sharon Shoesmith and Spanish cucumbers; (b) Alnwick’s Bondgate Within and London’s Bond Street?

Clearly the answers are not the obvious ones: (a) “not a lot”, and (b) the word “Bond”.

Ms Shoesmith, the combative former head of Haringey’s children’s services, was first in line when the late, unlamented Labour Government was looking for someone to blame, apart from his murderers, for the tragic death of baby Peter Connelly. While Spanish cucumbers sprang to mind when the German authorities were seeking a culprit for their current E.coli outbreak.

As a result of this unseemly rush to judgement, both Ms Shoesmith and the Spanish salad industry are now in line for substantial compensation. The former because she was denied the elementary human right to say a word in her own defence before she was fired; the latter because the source of the infection has now been identified as German-produced beansprouts. Or so it was at the time of writing; by the time this column appears the allegedly lethal salad ingredient may well be something completely different.

But at least this brings a little light into the lives of pasty, overweight salad dodgers like myself. “I’m sorry I can’t touch that: it might kill me. I’ll just have a pork pie and a couple of Scotch eggs instead. Oh, and a family bag of salted crisps. That must be at least two of my five a day.”

Could there be more joyous news than that salad kills you? Well, the discovery that chocolate makes you slim would be good, as would alcohol turning out to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and tobacco to promote longevity. Oh, and wind farms being proven to cause insanity (rather than merely being a consequence of it). But at least it’s a start.

Tiffany and Prada have not yet grasped the potential of Bondgate Within

As for Bondgate Within and Bond Street, let me begin by saying that I have absolutely nothing against the former. My mother was born and raised in Bondgate Within, at the address where the Iceland store now stands. I am a regular visitor and shopper; indeed, I bought my wife’s last Christmas present from Jobsons’ splendid country store by the Hotspur Tower. But the notion that this is, as voters in the Google Street View Awards have decided, “The Best Shopping Street in Britain”, seems frankly bizarre.

I can think of better equipped shopping streets in Morpeth and Newcastle, for a start, before turning to opportunities further afield. And while Mrs Hann seemed rather pleased with her tweed coat from Alnwick, the shops of Bondgate Within feature decidedly infrequently when she is dropping little hints about what I might like to think about getting her for birthdays and anniversaries. Unlike, I regret to say, establishments in Bond Street.

But then the voters in the Google Street Awards are the same bunch of eccentrics who decided that “The Hippest Street in Britain” is South Shore Road in Gateshead. Ever heard of it? Me neither. Apparently it’s the strip of tarmac running by the Tyne in front of the Sage and on to the Baltic and the Blinking Eye. Desperately searching for its other attractions, yesterday’s Guardian added that it enjoyed a fine view of the waterfront in Newcastle. That probably says it all.

We live in an age when PR people like me (though admittedly ones who are a good deal more creative than I am) dream up absurd Days and Awards to promote their clients, bang out press releases, then watch contentedly as the free advertising clocks up.

I’d rather like to do to the inventor of the Google Street View Awards what Ed Balls did to Sharon Shoesmith and the Germans to the Spanish cucumber producers. But at least this particular non-story has one great virtue: nobody needed to die to bring it our attention.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The mouse and the Hitler moustache

In a week full of surprises, the mouse running out of the restaurant kitchen was only narrowly trumped by the chauffeur sporting an Adolf Hitler-style toothbrush moustache.

He claimed to have done it for a bet – the chauffeur, that is, not the mouse. And, when I told my wife how much he stood to make if he kept ignoring the jibes of angry passers-by until Christmas, she vowed to grow one herself. Now all we need is someone to wager that she cannot do it. I would step up to the plate myself, but that would rather defeat the object of enriching us as a family.

My first surprise came before all that on Monday, when we arrived in north Norfolk for a few days of rest and recuperation. I have long been fond of the area, since in my years working in London something about its remoteness and emptiness evoked memories of my beloved Northumberland.

Now, however, Sleepy Hollow has become the Klondike. The excellent Crown Hotel in Wells-next-the-Sea had commissioned a large extension to its restaurant since I last passed by, and on an out-of-season weekday I anticipated no need to book. But the place was busier than I had ever seen it, with many of the tables occupied by parties of middle-aged males. Had it become the unlikely setting for a greybeard gay encounter group?

Discreet enquiries soon established that this was not the case. The men were pioneers constructing the massive Sheringham Shoal offshore wind farm, to service which a dredger was industriously creating new berths in the quiet harbour. A local property owner told me that all concerned in the project were so awash with cash that they were happily paying double the going rate to rent his house.

I pointed out that this was because they were being drenched in public subsidies to create this ludicrous “saving the planet” PR stunt, an analysis with which he readily agreed. “But it’s like getting a tax rebate,” he said. “You know they’re only giving you some of your own money back, but it’s still nice.”

My own happiest surprise came on Saturday morning, when I surfaced from my Norfolk sickbed after 24 hellish hours sharing it with a winter vomiting bug, and my nine-month-old son nodded at me and distinctly said “Dadda”: his first intelligible utterance. Admittedly he has been rehearsing the sound to himself in his cot for weeks now, but hitherto all invitations to repeat it at an appropriate moment had been greeted with his all-purpose response “Guck”.

The mouse incident occurred during a brief visit to London on Tuesday, when I had lingered over lunch for long enough to be prepared to dismiss it as a Burgundy-induced hallucination, until another rodent appeared by our table to give us a close inspection. The management dismissed it humorously; we were in a very old building, right by the river, so what else did we expect?

Very fair points, though I could not help thinking that if we had been in a commercial establishment rather than the dining room of the House of Lords, Elfin Safety officials from Westminster City Council would have had it closed down and sealed with “scene of crime” tape before you could say “men in tights”. Still, as we know through every story from the smoking ban to the expenses scandal, different rules apply in the Palace of Westminster.

I was just glad that Mrs Hann was not with me, as she would undoubtedly have leapt onto her chair and screamed in the style made famous by the maid in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. In the unlikely event that I am ever invited back after this, I must remember to try to take her so that I can report whether the experience sets her new moustache bristling.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.