Marilyn Taylor’s Ever-Growing List of Liberal Scandals!!!

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Marilyn Taylor     Jun 6
In that we’re quickly approaching election day, I am enclosing my most recently revised list of Liberal scandals and mishaps. Upon sharing it, please ensure to keep my name on it as I invite people to continue contacting me directly with anything they may feel should be added to the list. This is how I have maintained it over the years. Thank you.

Marilyn Taylor’s List of Liberal Scandals:

Green Energy Act (20 billion)
eHealth scandal (almost 2 billion)
Gas plant scandal (1.1 billion theft and cover-up of our tax dollars)
ORNGE scandal (700 million)
Ontario Northland Railway scandal (820 million)
Caledonia Hydro Line scandal (116 million)
Lobbyist scandal (two multi-million dollar scandals)
Eco-Fee Reversal scandal (18 million)
CancerCare Ontario scandal (millions of dollars)
Slush Fund scandal (32 million)
Presto (Ade Olumide is tackling this in court and has dug up a web of deceit, lies and cover-up’s that will cost us millions if not tens of millions)
Niagara Falls Commission scandal
Ontario Power Generation scandal
Children’s Aid Society scandal
Nanticoke Coal Power Plant Shutdown scandal
G20 Secretly Approved Police Power scandal
Foreign Scholarships scandal (our students pay the highest tuition in Canada while foreign students get free university educations)
Offshore Wind Turbines scandal
Samsung scandal (sole-sourcing)
Pan Am scandal (cost increase from 1.4 to 2.5 billion)
MPAC scandal (over and under-valuation of properties)
OLG scandal (millions of dollars)
Closed down the only English agriculture college in Eastern Ontario which is the hub of the dairy industry while St. Albert Cheese received one million dollars in funding the prior day despite not requesting it
Chemotherapy Dosage scandal
Payout for Pan Am CEO (250 million)
Trillium Wind Power and Sky Power Limited lawsuit (500 million)
Cement company lawsuit (275 million) – Quarry outside Hamilton was scuttled for political reasons
School bus service lawsuit
Augusta/Westland lawsuit as it pertains to ORNGE
Elliot Lake Collapse lawsuits (two lives lost due to recovery delays)
Ontario Medical Association lawsuits – applied to Superior Court alleging McGuinty not negotiating in “good faith”
Breast Screening scandal (ensuing lawsuits due to thousands of misread mammograms, one life lost)
Class-action lawsuit for autism funding cancellation
Over 650 new agencies, boards, commissions and entities such as LHIN’s and CCAC’s
Over 300,000 new public servants many of whom, are on the sunshine list
Public sector employment in health care increased by 39%
Public sector employment in social services increased by 39%
Public sector employment in education increased by 34%
Paying more Liberal taxes only to receive fewer services as taxes now being spent to pay the salaries and perks of newly-assigned, Liberal-friendly public servants
Gutted our manufacturing base (job growth across Canada except in Ontario)
Almost one million Ontarians now out of work
Increased spending by 80% while our economy grew by only 9%
More than doubled our debt to 288 billion
Running a 11.3 billion annual deficit – debt servicing costs will rise from 11.4 billion today to 14.5 billion once the debt exceeds 300 billion by 2017-18
Interest payments on our debt now the third largest budget expenditure after health and education
Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress confirmed that McGuinty’s Green Energy Act grossly underestimated the cost to consumers and overestimated the number of new jobs that would be created
Tax collectors getting 45,000.00 severance packages for switching job titles from provincial to federal
Two OPP criminal investigations underway – ORNGE scandal and gas plant scandal
Pharmacy war
Illegal green taxes
Increased smart meter, electricity, hydro, tuition
Raising car insurance costs to the highest in Canada
Implemented a tire tax : my friend needed new tires for his farm tractor & eight tires at $352.00 each came to $2,816.00 for one tractor
Implemented an electronics tax, eco fee’s, Health Premium (tax), WSIB tax increase, HST, beer surtax
Failing grade on ADHD education
Ranking the lowest of all provinces for fiscal performance
Delisting eye exams, physiotherapy, chiropractic care, diabetic strips, etc.
Increasing wait time for cataract surgery
No longer covered for eye exams yet taxpayers paying for sex changes
Wait time for nursing home bed tripled
Failure to disclose elevated radiation levels
OES missed its collection and recycling targets by 59%
Not correcting the foreign ownership of our beer market
Acceptance of garbage striker extortion
Harassing labour inspectors
Kowtowing to green energy lobbies
Imposing blood alcohol rules that punish people who are not impaired
Millions wasted on questionable grants to multicultural groups, including 1 million to a cricket club which had asked for only 150,000.00
Trades college a self-serving Liberal creation to reward union friends
Public utilities donating to Liberals
Voting to cover up the Niagara Parks Commission scandal
Emergency room wait times not meeting provincial targets
Put on notice by Standard and Poor, credit rating downgraded, under a very serious credit watch
Have-not province for the first time in Canadian history
Borrowing more debt than any province except NB
Dramatic cuts in health care services in schools
Nurses getting bonuses despite a wage freeze
Insufficient senior homecare services
Failing grade of Family Responsibility Office
Abstained from vote to investigate CBC expenses
Cash kickback scheme involving government cleaning contracts that ended with the conviction of Liberal officials
Talked about a two-year freeze on wages for public sector while previously giving the OPP a 5% wage increase – the OPP received another raise of over 8% in January, 2014
Energy now unaffordable yet we must pay Quebec and some north-eastern States to take our surplus energy
Encouraging farmers to build small-scale solar projects but having no way to connect them to the power grid
Laid up in US hospital beds as no beds available in Ontario
Refusing public inquiry into G20 fiasco
Giving those who hire only newcomers a 10,000.00 tax credit
Third highest user of food banks
Announced pay freezes knowing that 38,000 were getting a 3% salary increase after the election
Hiding hospital errors from the public
Teachers skipping classes to assist with anti-Conservative campaign
Failing grade in northern forestry management
Almost 40 C. difficile deaths to date
Loss of 6,500 cancer patient health records
Highest rent increase rate in years
Ignoring evidence that wind turbines can cause poor health
Workers at eHealth suing for not receiving bonuses

Children pleading for life-saving medication that other provinces provide but Ontario doesn’t (Liam, Madi, Anya)
Ontarians dying due to a lack of health care (Kim recently lost her life to brain cancer)
Ontarians being denied eye care that other Ontarians have covered under OHIP (Liam)
Forced all-day childcare at a cost of 1.5 billion against Drummond’s recommendation
Electricity rates to rise 42% over five years – based upon Liberal proven lies and broken promises, rates will rise over 42%
Prior loss of 60,000 jobs in the horse racing industry – now attempting to correct this
Ring of Fire
Muslims praying in our public funded school system while the Lord’s prayer is banned
A pedophile was developing the Liberal’s sex education curriculum
Millions spent to remove the “C” from OLG when Ontario Lottery & Gaming Corporation was changed to Ontario Lottery & Gaming
McGuinty defunded the Centre for Forensic Sciences throwing a world-renowned police team who specialized in retrieving deleted computer files out of work two months before he resigned
Millions spent to needlessly redesign our provincial logo
Legal rights of Ontarians disregarded relative to the Caledonia-Mohawk matter
Education minister signing off on documents that she doesn’t even read
Staggering increase in the Sunshine List
Nanny-state banning of nearly everything
Outrageous property assessments
Cancelling the mandatory LHIN review and giving their CEO’s $15,000 raises
Sneaking tax-dollars into Liberals campaign team coffers
Wynne’s brother-in-law appointed as 210,000/year interim eHealth CEO
London CAS charged 1.4M for false accusation and deleting documents
David Peterson, brother-in-law of Deb Matthews, appointed Pan American Games organizing committee chair
Wynne’s wife owns 50% of a consulting company that gets government business – including Ministry of Health
Numerous CAS problems identified by Provincial Auditor General include luxury vehicles, resort vacations, etc.
Lack of oversight regarding how often babies die in unregulated child care
Huge severance packages and bonuses paid out by taxpayer dollars
Creation of the Ontario College of Trades
Solid Gold scandal
AGCO decision disallows contract brewers like left field brewery at events that are licensed with a Special Occasion Permit (SOP)
Drive Clean Program changed to cost more
21,000+ adults and children with developmental disabilities on wait lists
Proposed hospital and winery grant to to win another by-election (fails)
Minimum wage increase concerns
1.4 billion Windsor Parkway’s serious safety flaws from substandard materials
Mike Crawley awarded 456 million wind contract while Liberal Party president
2.5 billion lawsuit from cancellation of turbines of Scarborough shore which saved 2 Liberal seats and led to WTO ruling
Mishandling of the outlaw of pit bulls
10.00 tax on tax increase on license plate stickers every year for the past 3 years
Introduction of a “modest” 70% increase on the heavy truck licensing sticker fees
Lack of provincial action regarding the Law Society of Upper Canada that does not protect the public from lawyers who steal from their clients
Advising that 5.00 was more than enough to feed seniors in a nursing home every day
4 billion dollars taken from the debt retirement charge fund, thereby adding 5 more years to the payoff time
Health Minister Deb Matthews blames doctors for nursing homes drugging residents at an alarming rate
Working Families Coalition is another Liberal scam of epic proportions
Wynne approved a 317 million bailout to the MaRS office building in downtown Toronto without the public’s knowledge or approval of the Legislature “after” she dissolved government
1 million spent to set up fake twitter accounts supporting Wynne’s road tolls proposition
Terminated 2,500 nursing jobs in 2011
Vandalizing opposition signs and replacing them with Liberal signs during elections
Ornge charged with 17 offences under the Canadian Labour Code
Ontario ignored cancer lab warnings
Hid the over payment by billions of the “Debt Retirement Charge”
Supply teachers paid to “help stop Hudak”
Wynne didn’t correct the media when they reported in error that she “studied at Harvard” – she went there for a one week seminar only

Does Canada Go Too Far, To Accommodate Multiculturalism?

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A must-read for all Canadians & especially our Politicians!

Time to Change Tune on Official Multiculturalism
by Licia Corbella, Calgary Herald –

About one dozen families who recently immigrated to Canada are
demanding that the Louis Riel School Division in Winnipeg excuse their
children from music and co-ed physical education programs for religious
reasons. The families believe music is un-Islamic ~ just like the
Taliban believe and then imposed on the entire population of
Afghanistan and that physical education classes should be segr
by gender even in the elementary years.

The school division is facing the music in a typically Canadian way –
that is, bending itself into a trombone to try to accommodate these
demands, even though in Manitoba , and indeed the rest of the country,
music and phys-ed are compulsory parts of the curriculum. Officials
say they may try to have the Muslim children do a writing project on
music to satisfy the curriculum’s requirements. The school officials
have apparently consulted the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, and
they have also spoken to a member of the Islamic community suggested
by those very same Muslim parents. In any event, the school district
is trying to find a way to adapt the curriculum to fit the wishes of
these families, rather than these families adapting to fit into the school
and Canadian culture.

Mahfooz Kanwar, a member of the Muslim Canadian Congress, says he has
a better idea. “I’d tell them, this is Canada , and in Canada , we teach
music and physical education in our schools. If you don’t like it,
leave. If you want to live under sharia law, go back to the hellhole
country you came from or go to another hellhole country that lives
under sharia law,” said Kanwar, who is a professor emeritus of
sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary ..

That might be putting things a little more forcefully than most of us
would be comfortable with, but Kanwar says he is tired of hearing
about such out-of-tune demands from newcomers to our country.
“Immigrants to Canada should adjust to Canada , not the other way
around,” he argues. If they did not like these things in Canada , why
did they not go somewhere else? If they want Canada to be like their
homeland why don’t they go home?

Kanwar, who immigrated to Canada from Pakistan via England and then
the United States in 1966, says he used to buy into the “mosaic,
official multiculturalism” (nonsense). He makes it clear, that like
most Canadians, he is pleased and enjoys that Canada has citizens
literally from every country and corner in the world, as it has
enriched this country immensely. But it’s official multiculturalism –
the state policy “that entrenches the lie” that all cultures and
beliefs are of equal value and of equal validity in Canada that he objects
to.

“The fact is, Canada has an enviable culture based on Judeo-Christian
values – not Muslim values – with British and French rule of law and
traditions and that’s why it’s better than all of the other places in
the world. We are heading down a dangerous path if we allow the idea
of sharia law a place in Canada . It does not. It is completely
incompatible with the idea and reality of Canada ,” says Kanwar, who in
the 1970s was the founder and president of the Pakistan-Canada
Association and a big fan of official multiculturalism.

Kanwar says his views changed when he started listening to the people
who joined his group. They badmouthed Canada , weren’t interested in
knowing Canadians or even in learning one of our official languages.
They created cultural ghettos and the Canadian government even helped fund
it.

One day it dawned on me that the reason all of us wanted to move here
was going to disappear if we didn’t start defending Canada and its
fundamental values.” That’s when Kanwar started speaking out against
the dangers of official multiculturalism. He has been doing so for
decades. So, it’s no surprise that Kanwar is delighted with the recent
speech British Prime Minister David Cameron delivered to the 47th
Munich Security Conference on Feb. 5.

“Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism,” said Cameron, “we
have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to
belong. We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving
in ways that run counter to our values. So when a white person holds
objectionable views – racism, for example – we rightly condemn them.
But when equally unacceptable views or practices have come from
someone who isn’t white, we’ve been too cautious, frankly even
fearful, to stand up to them.

This hands-off tolerance,” said Cameron, “has only served to
reinforce the sense that not enough is shared. All this leaves some
young Muslims feeling rootless and …. can lead them to this
extremist ideology.”

Kanwar actually credits German Chancellor Angela Merkel for being
among the first of the world’s democratic leaders to take the
courageous step in October to say that official multiculturalism had
“failed totally..” It appears leaders are getting bolder. During an
interview with TFI channel on Feb. 10, French President Nicolas
Sarkozy declared: “We have been too concerned about the identity of
the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the
country that was receiving him.” Cameron ended his speech by saying: “At
stake are not just lives, it’s our way of life.That’s why this is a
challenge we cannot avoid – and one we must meet.”

That democratically elected leaders are at long last starting to sing
a different tune on official multiculturalism is sweet music to Kanwar.
Here’s hoping those poor kids in Winnipeg will get to hear some of it.

Licia Corbella is The Herald’s Editorial Page Editor

Discussion About the Parasitic Wind industry!

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Exposing wind industry “vampires”: Alan Jones and James Dellingpole

June 6, 2014 by 

 

263977-alan-jones

James Dellingpole was interviewed by Alan Jones on 2GB  last week about the economic, environmental and social fraud of the wind industry.

Alan has a little radio show that more than just a few Australians tune into each morning. Syndicated through over 77 Stations and with close to 2 million listeners Countrywide – AJ as he’s known – is one of those people that leads the political charge on many issues that really affect ordinary Australians and which the rest of the press ignore.

To hear the interview click on the player below. The transcript follows.

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Transcript

Alan Jones: Well I told you yesterday, there’s been more damning evidence if any was needed, that this renewable energy rubbish, the Renewable Energy Target scheme, propping up the so-called “clean energy” sector (whatever that means) is sheer economic madness. Economic vandalism. Economic waste.

There’s now an economic analysis of the scheme, commissioned by the Mineral Council of Australia, but it is an independent analysis, suggests that there will be job losses as economic activity slows in the face of ever increasing power costs, caused by these ridiculous Renewable Energy Targets. Now you’ve heard me on about this for years and years. The economic analysis argues that the scheme’s opportunity cost, that is, money that could have been invested elsewhere will be more than $36 billion in six years time. That subsidies to the scheme could reach between $19 and $21 billion – your money in six years time. It finds that solar panels and wind farm subsidies will cost you, the electricity consumer, nearly $22,000,000,000 by 2020, six years time.

The Renewable Energy Target scheme of Rudd and Gillard is another ‘Building the education revolution’, another ‘Pink batts’, another ‘Broadband’, another harebrained idea of the utterly discredited Rudd and Gillard regimes, and it is now, as we warned, reeking its havoc.

Tony Abbott has an expert panel reviewing the scheme. That is compromised because the Federal Energy Minister, this bloke Macfarlane, is in bed with the wind industry. He dines with them, and that day is not far away when I will start naming some of those people and the occasions on which Mr McFarlane has been both their guest and their host. Talk about ICACs! Quite frankly, this whole renewable energy nonsense should be abandoned now.

The former Queensland Labour Treasurer Keith De Lacy, who is now a significant business figure, has said it is plain crazy to have schemes such as this-solar feed in tariffs and carbon tax that are driving up power bills. He said the Australian public keep complaining about the increases in the cost of living and this is become even more so. One of the biggest increases he said, is the price of electricity. He said it is the most fundamental of services to the Australian public. Now the most brain-dead aspect to all of this, and you’ve heard me say this a million times before, it that this wind power and solar power can only survive with massive taxpayer subsidies. And of course it is seeking to demonise coal fired power which has been the source of our international competitive advantage.

It was Terry McCrann who said to me years ago on this program, that if we de-carbonised the Australian economy, we are writing for ourselves, his words “a national suicide note, albeit by slow strangulation”. And of course it’s not just the decarbonisation that is the so-called carbon tax, well it’s not a carbon tax, that’s a lie too, its carbon dioxide tax, it’s this abject persistence with the so-called Renewable energy targets. The mistaken and dishonest view is that Australia’s energy needs can be met by sources other than coal-fired power.

And that was always the source of our international strength.

Now the fact that we have to feed solar power and wind power into the national energy grid, together with the carbon dioxide tax – are the reasons people can’t afford to have the heater on at night. It is the reason why manufacturing is locating overseas. It is the reason why thousands and thousands of jobs have been lost in the manufacturing industry. 60% of the increased cost faced by business in recent times were a direct consequence of the combination of the carbon dioxide tax and the Renewable Energy target. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, and we would most probably be prepared to cop it, if the science weren’t so obviously flawed.

It’s not just Tony Abbott who has a review and privately believes, as does Joe Hockey, that these Renewable Energy Targets are rubbish. Joel Fitzgibbon, when Labour were in government, has said that the Renewable Energy Target should be dismantled. So we have got wind farms around the country, which can’t survive unless they are subsidised to the tune of about half $1 million per turbine. Billions and billions of dollars are wasted in Renewable energy certificates for wind turbine farms that are non-compliant.

Forget the destruction that they do to the environment, to public health, and all those other things we’ve discussed, now here we got proof of the pudding that subsidies for renewable energy schemes, such as rooftop solar panels and wind farms will cost you the consumer almost $22 billion by 2020.

Well James Dellingpole-well I should just say before we go to James, how can we say, rightly as a government and as a community that we are not going to follow Holden and Toyota and SPC Ardmona down the road with an open cheque-book – yet here we are tipping billions into entities – wind power, wind turbines which are only jacking up the price of energy to you and to business, putting business and people out of work and they couldn’t survive without massive taxpayer subsidies.

Well James Dellingpole, I’ve spoken to him before, an English writer – tough bloke, and fearless broadcaster and he has expressed and written his opposition to this. It wasn’t long ago that in an extraordinary article he wrote and he said, and you’ve got to say this slowly- in Britain, every wind industry job costs the taxpayer 100, 000 pounds a year in subsidies. James Dellingpole is on the line from Northamptonshire. James -good morning.

James Dellingpole: G’day Alan, good to be back on your show.

Alan Jones: Thank you, lovely to have you. How much longer can we tolerate this nonsense?

James Dellingpole: It’s going to take a very long time to turn this oil tanker around. Because there are so many people with their snouts in the trough. And in Australia as I know from the last time I visited your beautiful country, and God knows I want to come back soon, I was astonished to discover how heavily the ALP is involved in this scam. A lot of the pension funds are heavily invested in these wind turbines. I don’t know if you caught that fantastic speech a few months ago by Senator John Madigan?

Alan Jones: I did, We talked to him at the time.

James Dellingpole: Talking presumably under Parliamentary privilege, because I know from my experience – when ever you speak out against the wind industry in Australia you get very nasty threatening lawyer’s letters. Because these guys don’t like the truth and they’ve got various tame academics supporting them, they’ve got …. It is as you’ve rightly said, it’s an industry which can only survive with heavy taxpayer subsidies. And what this kind of industry does is it attracts the very worst kind of people. People who don’t want to make an honest buck. People that just want to live like vampires off the taxpayer. So this is what is going on and John Madigan in this speech pointed out one example about the Waubra wind farm in Victoria. I mean it was an absolute disgrace

And the one thing I think you can console yourself with in Australia is that you really are ahead of the game in fighting back. I don’t know whether it’s that you Aussies don’t take it like other people do, but you are really fighting back hard. And I was looking today actually at the website of the Waubra foundation – this wonderful thing by Sarah Laurie.

Alan Jones: Just for my listeners’ sake, James, James is speaking in his Northamptonshire accent there – that is W-a-u-b-r-a and we have talked about that often here. Waubra, but might’nt have come through, but that is where it is, in Victoria. But of course, Napthine is the Premier of Victoria, and these things are all is in, many of these things are in his electorate.

James Dellingpole: Yes. I was reading the extraordinary story of a guy – he wrote – various people have written letters describing their experiences with the wind industry, and one of these guys actually was conned into having wind turbines on his land and he was told there was going to be no health consequences, no noise, etc. etc. Anyway, once he had signed the deal in blood and there was no escape from it, he discovered that on the contrary, these things ruined his life. To the point where even when he was sleeping 5 km away, 5 km away from wind turbines they were  destroying his health. I’ve spoken to loads of people who have wind turbine syndrome and I can tell you it is a miserable experience. It has all sorts of terrible effects.

And we haven’t even gone to the environmental damage these things do. The number of birds and bats they chop to pieces. I call them bat-chomping eco-crucifixes – because that’s what they are. They are just kind of a symbol of the green movement but they don’t actually do anything useful for anyone other than the rent seekers who’ve got their snouts in the trough.

Alan Jones: It’s frightening isn’t it? I mean even if it were economically viable, which it isn’t, its unpredictable, it’s inefficient, it’s intermittent, you can’t rely on it …I mean it has government protection like no other in a day and age where we are saying we are winding all of this protection stuff back so you’ve now got a large scale wind turbine developer can make nearly half $1 million in taxpayer subsidies, and they call them renewable energy certificates.

James Dellingpole: Yes. The point I think that some people don’t understand. You get some idiot, some naive idiot saying “we are just harvesting nature’s free bounty”, “wind is free”, wind energy is free”. No it is not free and there is a very simple reason for that which you can tell by the fact that wind does not blow all the time. Wind blows when it feels like it. Wind doesn’t blow when you want to take a hot shower. It doesn’t blow when you want to use your air conditioning. It blows when it wants to. So in other words the energy that the wind industry produces is essentially worthless because you can’t have a situation where the supplier decides when to supply you. I mean what kind? … How does that work in a free market?

Alan Jones: When do you think people are going to wake up to the fact that this has destroyed our once comparative manufacturing advantage because we had cheap energy and cheap electricity it has been destroyed now. We can’t compete internationally because of energy costs.

James Dellingpole: Well part of the problem of course is that apart from all these rent seeking politicos and corporations which are involved in these dodgy deals, is that also you’ve got organisations like Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, you’ve got all these organisations are pumping out eco-propaganda saying that renewable energy is the only answer. These organisations are multi-nationals ….

Alan Jones: But James,that shouldn’t matter – if you’ve got a government that listens and understands what the issues our-we’ve got a federal energy Minister in bed with these people.

James Dellingpole: Yes. Well I mean at least Tony Abbott is beginning to turn the tide.

Alan Jones: Yes he knows – And so does Hockey, Hockey knows too. But you’ve got to do something about it.

James Dellingpole: Yes, when I was last there, somebody called Julia Gillard was in charge and would you prefer her back?

Alan Jones: Don’t start me there, thank you very much. But the people listening to you our funding all of this dramatically.

James Dellingpole: Yes.

Alan Jones: Maurice Newman, Maurice Newman is a man I’m sure you know him.

James Dellingpole: I love Maurice Newman – he is a hero.

Alan Jones: He is a very respected Australian businessman, and he called wind farms, quote, “an obscene wealth transfer from the poor to the rich”. He called it “a crime against the people”. Now the people listening to you James this morning are all battlers out there in Struggle Street. They’re having money ripped out of their pockets so some Thai company, or Chinese wind turbine company is going to make a big, big quid.

James Dellingpole: Yes, I know. It is an absolute obscenity. And the depressing thing is that across the world these dishonest political leaders – you know like President Obama. President Obama has built the second term of his administration on creating “green jobs”. Well you’ve seen what’s happened to America. You have the example, for example of Solyndra, this company run by his friends into which he poured $500 million dollars-half a $1 billion of taxpayer’s money down the drain. And there has been research from all over the world. The Spanish economy has pretty much been destroyed by renewable energy. In fact it was a Spanish economist who came up with the shocking statistic that for every green job created by government so called “investment”, 2.2 jobs were killed in the real economy. And in Britain they did a survey and it was even higher – 3.7 jobs killed for every “green job” created.

Alan Jones: And Germany has had a gut full of it.

James Dellingpole: Oh yes.

Alan Jones: I must say last time that you were here, you said this, and it might be a good spot to end, James, James Dellingpole said, “God I wish I could be there at the barricades with the protesters in Canberra today – if ever a cause was worth fighting for, this is the one.

James Dellingpole: Yes.

Alan Jones: It is isn’t it?

James: It is, absolutely. I mean I only wish that – no I can’t say this, I can’t say this – I wish that some Tornado would come along and blow them all down. I’m not going to advocate terrorism but sometimes it is quite tempting.

Alan Jones: Lovely to talk to you. We’ll keep in touch. Okay, there we are, so there we are. Now there is a review of this. Tony Abbott does understand that he has and Achilles’ heel here in that the Federal Energy Minister in Macfarlane is in bed with these people. How this review is objective – I don’t know. But why do you need review? There is any amount of evidence out there – the whole thing needs to be scrapped. If people can make it pay without taxpayer’s money-away you go. But not one cent of our money should be spent. Another Rudd and Gillard failure that has to be dismantled.

Liberals Attack Hudak, Out of Fear…..of Losing!

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Eric Jelinski M. Eng. P. Eng. — June 5, 2014

We’d have to admit this is a most boring campaign given that we have made up our minds long ago including the sit on the fence types who don’t vote. Therefore our curiosity wanders and we find interest in what is not being said. The liberals appear to think the world will end if the PC’s win. But in truth, the world will not end. Yes, for the liberals, their world will end. For everybody who votes PC, this will be a new beginning. We already know what all the candidates especially Wynne is talking about using her seemingly bottomless well of money to pay for those boring adverts about how their world will end.

We already have a taste of what Wynne doesn’t talk about. She doesn’t say anything about how renewable energy will create and sustain jobs and the economy. Wynne is admitting that the Green Energy Act is a technical and public relations disaster. The thousands of wind turbines and so little sporadic energy, that gas plants had to be built for real energy. Yet, gas plants were never part of the GEA in the beginning. They were dreaming and continue to dream in Technicolor about wind turbines. They have not answered to my e-mail below from 2 months ago.

More-over there are the health and other issues her government fails to answer, including the latest peer reviewed article about the issues,
http://www.cureus.com/articles/2457-systematic-review-2013-association-between-wind-turbines-and-human-distress#.U42qS2fji00 The day is fast approaching when this topic can no longer be avoided and the medical practitioners, College of Physicians, OMA, ONA, Ministry of Health and Environment, the Premier, and perhaps even their Federal counterparts will all need to talk about this, as this is the most lumpy part of the liberal platform.

Having decreed that we have enough electricity due to the failed economy, they continue to fail the economy by giving preferred friends contracts for the high priced wind energy and giving their friends a 15% return on investment of the wind farms on a colossal scale. While Mayor Ford campaigned on cutting the gravy train, it seems anything goes under the liberals.

The hidden agenda in the MaRS caper is to increase the size of government by adding more assistants to the assistants… as if we need a more bloated government. This election is partly about opportunity to build empires…Wynne’s empire.

Last, but not least of all the not talked about are the tax increases Wynne would impose. You hopefully have not forgotten the “revenue tools” she has talked about months ago, but is now silent on perhaps to slyly screw us with her revenue tools to pay for her promises. Of course we see another connection not talked about and that is all of the public service will get pay raises to cover the tax increases. Does that sound possible? Does that sound fair and right for the greater good.

The province is basically divided between those who work for the government and get the benefit of about 2x the paycheque plus health and dental plans vs those in the private sector who employ the vast majority of the Ontario people who work at minimum or near minimum wage who have to suffer from the taxes and high hydro rates.

And the last thing not talked about is how the bullies become bullies when they are about to lose their assumed entitlement. After 10 years of a centrist partisan monastery, it is time for a change for the greater good where all of Ontario can have input to government policy.

I hope this will get talked about perhaps at the next debate.

 

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The Corruption and Misdeeds of the Liberals, Never End…

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OPP serves court order at Queen’s Park, McGuinty interviewed by detectives

Published on: June 5, 2014Last Updated: June 5, 2014 9:25 PM EDT
Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty has been interviewed by detectives about the gas plant scandal.
Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty has been interviewed by detectives about the gas plant scandal.

The OPP anti-rackets investigation into an alleged coverup in Dalton McGuinty’s office intensified Thursday with detectives serving a court order to staff at Queen’s Park for key records, and confirming they have interviewed the former premier about the gas plants scandal.

The information to obtain the court’s production order was drafted after a handful of police interviews, including one with McGuinty in April.

The judge-issued order requires staff to hand over various records, including visitor logs for the times police believe an off-the-books computer tech accessed hard drives in the premier’s office, four days before Kathleen Wynne was sworn in.

Queen’s Park staff have 10 days to hand the records over to police. The information to obtain will not be made public until Det. Andre Duval files his returns to justice — a form that lists all items seized by police. While the contents of the ITO will therefore not be revealed until after the election, the latest police search for evidence comes in the final stretch of the campaign.

The anti-rackets unit, known for its detailed searches in high-profile cases, made a point of saying they are anything but political, and will go whenever and wherever the evidence takes them.

“The timing of the production order comes in the regular course of the investigation and should be viewed exclusively in that light,” said OPP Sgt. Pierre Chamberland, who confirmed the latest events in the investigation.

Detectives are trying to see who, if anyone, ordered the destruction of emails in an alleged coverup to hide the true costs of cancelling gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga — a tab now pegged at $1.1 billion in taxpayers’ money.

Police allege that David Livingston, McGuinty’s last chief of staff, enlisted Peter Faist to work on the hard drives in the premier’s office, using a secretary’s super-password that was specifically created to grant full access to any computer and was designed to hide any electronic tracks.

Faist is the tech-savvy partner of Livingston’s former deputy chief, Laura Miller, who has since gone on to work for the B.C. Liberal Party.

Months before police say Faist accessed staff computers, Livingston was asking around about storage protocols at the premier’s office, and asked cabinet secretary Peter Wallace how existing email accounts of employees could be deleted.

“I advised (Livingston) at that point in time that if he was interested in deleting records associated with the public service, this would be futile because we retained our records,” Wallace told detectives.

On Jan. 25, 2013, Livingston went to see then-corporate chief information officer David Nicholl about getting an administrative password “to clean hard drives during the transition period to the new Wynne government,” according to a search warrant application filed in February.

Livingston is the only named suspect in the case so far. Anti-rackets detectives are investigating him for an alleged breach of trust while in public office, specifically when they say he gave the “special global” password for unfettered access to computers in Ontario’s highest office.

None of the allegations has been proven or tested in court, and Livingston has not been charged with a crime.

In a statement, his lawyer has said his client “did nothing wrong and certainly did not break the law as alleged.”

Lawyer Brian Gover said Livingston “was consistently open about his actions in the premier’s office and he always believed that those actions were proper and in accordance with normal practices.”

Thursday’s production order marks another key phase in the probe into the final days of McGuinty’s office.

The last days were anything but business as usual. It was as if the premier’s office was transferring power to a rival party, not its own. Two staffers reported to police that they witnessed the non-government employee access their computers.

In late March, and a day after the court filings were made public, the Ontario Liberal Party told Faist his computer services were no longer required.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

DIRECT Health Effects Caused by Wind Turbines!

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Wind turbines fall over in strong winds!!

Collapse in strong winds is one of the more amusing modes of failure for the notorious wind turbine.  Other forms such as blade throw are also hazardous.  You need to be 3000 feet away to be safe.  Yet noise, and shadow flicker require them to be kept even further away than that from habitations.  Many are being injured and some are dying.  The cost of wind power is higher than we thought.

By Miriam Raftery
April 4, 2012 (San Diego’s East County) – Today marks the “International Protest Day Against Wind Power” with 765 websites participating.
A dark side of the wind industry that many media outlets have failed to report on is the thousands of documented cases of serious accidents. These include numerous documented cases of turbines falling over, blades flying off, injuries to workers and the public, and at least 99 reported fatality accidents.
Of the deaths, 67 were wind industry and direct supporters workers or small turbine operators and 32 were public fatalities.Wind turbine fire

How many tragedies have occurred worldwide is a well-kept secret within the wind industry. In the United Kingdom alone, however, Renewables UK, an industry trade association, has admitted to 1,500 wind turbine accidents/incidents in the UK alone during the past five years, the London Telegraph reportedhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8948363/1500-accidents-and-incidents-on-UK-wind-farms.html. Those included 300 injuries and four deaths—in just one small part of the world.
A partial database of accidents , injuries and deaths through December 2011 has been compiled at the Caithness Wind Farm Information Forum:http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/page4.htm
According to the Caithness database, which estimates it represents only 9% of actual accidents (based on the RenewablesUK figures), an average of 128 accidents per year have occurred from 2007-2011, up from just 6 a year back in 1992-1996 due to the growing number of wind turbine installations.
Among the most grisly tragedies was that of John Donnelly, a worker killed in Oregon in 1989 when a lanyard that as supposed to prevent falls for turbine workers became entangled, dragging him into the spinning machinery.  According to Paul Gipe, an advocate of wind power who authored an article on fatalities, the medical examiner described Donnelly’s demise as death by “multiple amputations”, witnessed by a horrified coworker.
Another Oregon worker, Chadd Mitchell,  young father of two, was killed when a wind turbine tower he was in collapsed to the ground in Sherman County after the turbine’s rotor went into “overspeed,” the Oregonian reported on February 6, 2010. Siemens Power was fined for safety violations, and the family filed a lawsuit.
Other deaths have included electrocutions, falls, crush injuries, construction accidents, and a Minnesota man who was nearly cut in half by a chunk of ice knocked off a turbine tower in 1994. Three suicides have also been linked to turbines, including a worker who hanged himself, a parachutist, and a farmer who killed himself after neighbors protested a turbine he put on his property.
Caithness also has documented 221 separate incidences of blade failure, with pieces of blades documented to have flown over 1,300 meters—or 4,266 feet (4/5 of a mile). Blade pieces have gone through roofs and walls of nearby buildings.
At least 121 structural failures have been recorded too, including entire wind turbines that have crashed to the ground. The website www.windaction.org documents many of these. Turbines have crashed to the ground in school yards, near homes, roads and walking paths where only by sheer luck was no one underneath when the multi-ton structures collapsed. In the Palm Springs area, a turbine spinning out of control forced closure of a major highway. There are also concerns about many turbines still standing –where failures such as cracked foundations and sinkage have been observed.
Wind turbine fire, Australia, WindWatchAround 168 wind turbine fires have been documented. Some sparked brush fires and left some fire departments helpless to watch as oil in turbine components burned hundreds of feet in the air—out of reach of hoses—whirling burning debris across the landscape.
There are also many instances of ice throws hurling chunks of ice off blades—94 times in 2005 alone. Another 93 transport accidents involving turbines have been reported, including one turbine section that rammed through a house and another that knocked a utility pole through a restaurant.
Disturbingly, EnergyBiz Magazine reported in its March/April 2011 edition that “More troubling for wind fleet owners and operators is that many turbines are coming off warranty. The end of last year marked the first time in U.S. history that more wind turbines were operating out of warranty than were covered, according to Wind Systems magazine, while many more are approaching the end of their warranties. Hidden costs of maintenance have climbed sharply, though some promising technologies may help reduce those costs, Energy Biz noted.
Still the issues raise troubling questions: who will be responsible for catastrophic failures when warranties have run out? Are local boards making decisions regarding turbine placement sufficiently educated on the risks?  Farm surrounded-IllinoisHow far away from a wind turbine is a safe setback distance? Locally, some proposed industrial wind projects would place turbines within a half mile of homes, on up to three sides of the dwellings, in Ocotillo. In McCain Valley, Iberdrola’s Tule Wind proposes setbacks from roads of only 1.1 times the height of the turbine – or around 455 feet maximum.
In Kansas, Rose Bacon, a member of the Governor’s Energy Task Force, became so concerned about lack of teeth in regulations and vulnerability of inexperienced local officials in small towns facing proposals from international wind companies that she likened the scenario to the “wildcatter days in the oil business,” the McPherson Sentinel reported in 2005.
Below are some specific examples of serious incidents  documented through the above websites, where many more incidents can also be found.
A wind turbine crashed to the ground at a wind farm near The Dalles, Oregon in August 2007, killing one worker and injuring another, Associated Press reported.
  • A blade from a wind turbine at Lister Hospital in the United Kingdom flew off and hit a car just one month after becoming fully operational in September 2011, the Comet reported.
  • California Highway Patrol shut down Highway 58 for several hours to protect motorists from a runaway wind turbine in the Tehachapi area.  “The runaway wind turbine, when it deteriorates or explodes, can send scrap metal and steel up to a mile away,” CHP Officer Ed Smith said, the Tehachapi News reported.
  • A wind turbine plunged nearly 200 feet to the ground near I-10 in North Palm Springs after going into “overspeed”,  KPSP news reported on May 1, 2009.
  • An Iberdrola wind turbine caught fire on May 14, 2009 at Locust Ridge wind farm in Pennsylvania; the fire was blamed on a gear box problem.
  • A 187-ton wind turbine crashed to the ground at the Fenner wind farm in  New York after breaking off at its base. Enel shut down the entire 20-turbine wind farm in Madison, County New York in June 2010 for at least six months, the Oneida Daily Dispatch and other newspapers reported.
  • Large chunks of seven turbine blades broke off at the Allegheny Ridge Wind Farm in Pennsylvania, with pieces flying over 500 feet, the Patriot News reported in May 2007.  Spanish wind-energy company Gamesa blamed insufficient glue for the failures.
  • In Dolfor, United Kingdom, a turbine exploded and fell to the ground near walking tracks, leading the Shropshire Star to conclude In January 2012, “Turbines should be nowhere near public footpaths.”
  • At Perkins High School in Ohio, blades on a month-old turbine broke apart while spinning, sending fiberglass pieces up to 40 yards (120 feet) away in February 2009. In December 2010 a blade again detached; fortunately school was not in session.
  • A wind turbine crashed down near Western Reserve High School in Berlin Center in April 2011 in Ohio, WKBN news reported.
  • At Fakenham High School in the United Kingdom, students witnessed a 40-foot wind turbine crash onto the school’s playing field and crush a contractor’s van in December 2009, Windaction.org reported.
  • Redriven Power recalled blades after turbines therw blades onto an Ohio high school and an organic fig farm in northern California, Eastern AgriNews reported in May 2009.
  • A General Electric turbine collapsed at an Altona, New York wind farm, the Press-Republican reported, after neighbors heard explosions and the turbine caught fire.
  • In Norway, a blade from a Suez Energy North American V-90 wind turbine was hurled about 1,600 feet, landing near a home’s back door, the Journal Pioneer reported in December 2008.
  • A turbine blade crashed through the roof of a neighbor’s home in Wallaceburg, Canada, the Chatham Daily News reported in February 2009.
  • In November 2009, the Press & Journal reported that a wind turbine collapsed at Rasssay Primary School, forcing children to be sent home after it landed in their playground.
  • A damaged transformer leaked 491 gallons of mineral oil in 2007 at the Maple Ridge Wind Farm’s substation in New York; in 2009 a transformer at the same site was destroyed by fire, the Watertown Daily News reported.
  • A turbine near a highway twice lost blades, the Huron Daily Tribune reported in December 2010.
  • Offshore wind farms in the North Sea are in danger of tumbling down, Wind Energy Update reported on March 18, 2011, noting that dissolved grout had shifted turbines within their foundations at around 600 of Europe’s 948 offshore turbines.
  • Renewables UK has warned that hundreds of offshore wind turbines could be suffering from a design that makes them sink into the sea, the Times Online reported on April 13, 2010.
  • Two men were injured while constructing a wind turbine tower in Rochester, Minnesota, the Post-Bulletin reported on January 14, 2011.
  • Proven Energy told owners of over 600 smaller turbines to shut them down due to fears of catstrophic mechanical failure, the Press and Journal reported in September 2011; the manufacturer suspended sales.
  • Five U.S. wind projects owned by Australia’s Infigen Energy have been engaged in legal actions with turbine manufacturer Gamesa over repair costs and lost production due to various warranty-related disputes, Recharge News reported in December 2011. The largest of those cases involves the Kumeyaay Wind Farm in Campo, where all 75 turbine blades had to be replaced due to storm damage at a cost of over $34.5 million.  Kumeyaay has “vigorously” contested a Gemsa claim and was pursuing warranty-related claims of $10 million against Gamesa, the story added. [Note: This project is listed by Pattern Energy as a “success” story in its application to the California Public Utility Commission for the Ocotillo Wind Express project)
  • Texas state representative Susan King had a wind turbine on her ranch that caught fire and burned two acres. She described it “throwing fire balls on my property”; KTXS found that despite pledges by Next Era Energy t o support volunteer fire departments, no funds had been provided in the past four years.
  • In Hokkaido, Japan, firefighters found hoses were too short to extinguish a fire in a 66-meter-high wind turbine, which took four hours to burn itself out.
  • Huge blades from three turbines in Huddersfield, England “were blown across a busy road and could have hurt wildlife or caused damage to property as well as endangering life,” theLondon Telegraph reported in January 2012.  Gale force winds were blamed.
  • In Western Illinois in 2008, a 6.5 ton blade sailed about 150 feet away, the Associated Press reported.
  • One month earlier, a 330 foot turbine “burst into flame in Ayrshire” during a 165-mph storm on the Scottish border and crashed to the ground near a road, the Telegraph reported.Oil stains, Campo-Andy Degroot
  • A Sheffield, Vermont wind turbine spilled 55-60 gallons of gear oil, spraying it out 200 yards; each turbine generator holds about 110 gallons of hydraulic and lubricating oils, the Burlington Free Press reported.
  • An Abilene, Texas wind turbine erupted into flames and spread to grass around the tower, KTXS News reported on August 26, 2011. The turbine was owned by NextEra Energy.
  • Iberdrola, the Spanish wind energy producer, blamed falling Suzlon Energy turbine blades on a one-tie accident, the Bloomberg News in North Dakota reported in May 18, 2011, suspending operations at its wind farm in North Rugby, North Dakota. The same model, however, suffered cracked blades starting in 2007, prompting a $100 million global retrofit.
  • Three blades came off a turbine at a residence and farm in Forked River, New Jersey, causing the state to shut down its entire onshore wind turbine program in March 25, 2011, the NJ Spotlight reported.
  • A lightning fire at a wind turbine in Peterson, Iowa in August 2010 was  the “third or fourth” turbine fire that the Peterson Fire Department had put out in a dozen years, the Sioux Cit Journal reported.
  • In White Deer Texas, News Channel 10 reported oil seeping down the sides of multiple turbines.
  • In Iga Mie Prefecture, Japan, the Asahi Shimbun reported in January 2008, “malfunctions and accidents involving wind turbines have occurred repeatedly across the country, leading to suspended services and even the scrapping of one facility…Slipshod surveys of wind, flawed designs or sheer incompetence have dealt a blow to the reputatin of wind turbines…”
  • Hundreds of motorists near Sunderland in the UK witnessed a turbine fire that caused rotor blades to break off; two more turbines by Vestas later fell over in high winds in Scotland, the JournalLive reported in 2008.
  • Clipper Windpower had to spend $300 million to fix faulty blades after cracks appeared at multiple facilities, Enviornmental Finance reported in May 2009.
  • A $6 million wind turbine caught fire at the Cathedral Rocks Wind Farm, starting blazes on the ground from falling embers the Adelaide Now newspaper covering Australia/New Zealand reported in February 2009.
  • In Florida, the Desert Valley Star reported in January 2009 that FPL/NER operates 60 wind turbines—and reportedly 40% were “malfunctioning, in disrepair, or need maintenance.”
  • Windtech International reported that a survey of 75 wind farm operators in the U.S. in 2008 found that 60% of turbines may be behind in critical maintenance due largely to a shortage of qualified turbine technicians.
While there are certainly many wind turbines that have never malfunctioned, the dangers cited above are real and have led many municipalities to adopt setback requirements from homes, roads, campgrounds, walkways, playgrounds and any inhabited buildings.
The wind industry has resisted setbacks, however. In Wind Energy Comes of Age, published in 1995, wind energy advocate Paul Gipe contends that setbacks of 500-1000 feet from residences are “more than adequate to protect public safety” and notes that in Europe, windmills have often been installed in places frequented by the public. Gipe insists that despite many accidents, the odds of being injured by a wind turbine remain less than that chance of being struck by lightning.
Setback distances vary widely. Some California communities use a multiple of size, such as three times the height of the turbine. Other areas have larger setback requirements. For instance, in Victoria Precinct, Australia, the government has adopted a 2 meter (1.24 mile) setback requirement for wind turbines to protect residents from risks of mechanical collapses.
In Brown County, Wisconsin, the Board of Health in January passed a resolution seeking emergency financial aid for residents near wind turbines who suffered serious health impacts including some families who abandoned their homes due to health concerns.
The Board called for adoption of the Wisconsin Citizens Safe Wind Siting Guidelines which would require setbacks of at least 2,640 feet from property lines, with further restrictions on shadow flicker, noise and other factors. Developers would also be required to submit a report with blade and debris throw calculations to protect public safety.

http://eastcountymagazine.org/node/9238

Germany has Realized That Wind and Solar Are Not A Viable Solution!—Shale Gas is!

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SHALE’S GLOBAL TOUR – Germany May Finally Be Ready to Frack

Berlin is preparing a new set of rules that will permit—with restrictions—the controversial hydraulic fracturing drilling technique. Fracking, as it’s more commonly called, allows drillers to profitably tap previously inaccessible reserves of oil and gas trapped in shale rock. Germany had imposed a de facto moratorium on fracking over the past two years, citing environmental concerns and pending new regulations, but it looks like Merkel’s coalition government is ready to get the shale ball rolling this summer. The FT reports:

Applications to carry out the controversial process for extracting the country’s estimated 2.3tn cubic metres shale gas reserves will be subject to an environmental impact assessment under new legislation to be discussed by the cabinet before the summer recess. […]

Details of the new regulations emerged in a letter from Sigmar Gabriel, German economy minister, to the head of the Bundestag’s budget committee. In the letter, Mr Gabriel wrote that permission to carry out fracking would be subject to approval from regional water authorities and that “further requirements for the fracking permit process are still being considered”.

Germany isn’t flush with gas by any means, but Russia’s meddling in Ukraine has made it clear to Berlin that it needs to exploit more of its domestic resources. Add to that the fact that German consumers already pay some of Europe’s highest electricity prices (as a result of the country’s ill-conceived Energiewende), and this decision makes even more sense.

Like every other country that has tried to replicate America’s success, Germany will still have to clear a number of hurdles as it races to catch up to the shale bandwagon. But fracking could help Berlin lower it’s dependence on the much browner coal, and in so doing become the green energy solution the country has been searching for.

Published on June 4, 2014 5:09 pm

Please Support “the Original Charter Challenge!”

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United We Stand!!

 Summary

Support The Original Charter Challenge legal case defending people’s rights not to be subjected to the untested effects of living too close to industrial wind turbines.

Mission

We are residents of rural Ontario who have tried our best for years to show our provincial government that living too close to industrial size wind turbines can make people sick and ruin the enjoyment of their family home.

All efforts have fallen on deaf ears as small independent groups were forced to raise money, hire lawyers and sound emission experts, all in an effort to oppose local wind projects at unwinnable environmental hearings.

The time has come to take the government policy to real court.

The Ministry of the Environment has played judge and jury with rural Ontarians’ lives for too long trapping those harmed in a circle of suffering with no remedy at law. It’s Ontario’s dirty secret and meets all criterion for social injustice.

All across Ontario there is a pent up anger as small groups watch their best efforts ignored. It’s time to fight as a big team with the right legal case that has the best shot at making a difference in real court. That’s The Original Charter of Rights case due in court within the next few months.

Sun Media showed us the untapped power we have raising $30,000 from us in 3 days for Downwind their hard hitting documentary going public June 4/14.

Let’s put fear into the eyes of the wind industry and our government by standing together and donating as one big team. Imagine what we could do in 60 days building on the momentum created by Sun Media who will support and help us reach our $300,000 goal! All other media outlets have ignored our pleas of help.

All our goal money donated will go to The Original Charter Challenge legal fund ensuring this case can be taken by Canada’s top human rights lawyer to the Supreme Court if needed.

United we stand. Don’t let the wind industry divide us.

A made in Ontario legal wedge driven into the wind scam will have ripple effects felt around the world.
Urban and rural Ontarians let’s lead this uprising!

Let’s show the world how a mad as hell unified crowd can raise funds to defend their charter rights in court where any win is a win for all.

We have all worked hard and raised money for our hometown projects and we’ve learned a lot about the David and Goliath struggle we are in.

Now it’s time to put our strength in numbers into action with the help of our partner Sun Media who will promote our fundraising efforts because we rose up and helped them and they believe in our cause.

Even if you can’t contribute we all can make noise, get our own copies of the documentary on disk to show our friends and get the word out.

The Original Charter Challenge fund raising campaign is being kick started by the release of Sun Media’s Downwind documentary on June 4, 2014.

Wind Turbines Destroy the Fabric of Rural Communities!

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Wind Farms & “Community Division”: Tales

from Rye Park (NSW) & Northumberland (UK)

June 4, 2014 by 

Money Wasted

Naked greed, institutional corruption and State-sanctioned corporate bullying and thuggery are part and parcel of the wind industry, wherever you go. We recount below a tale from Northumberland that could have been written anywhere giant fans have been slung up anywhere in the world.

In tales like these the phrase “community division” often appears. However, the term appears to suggest the rural communities concerned are equally divided – in the same way that 18 players line up against each other in the AFL. Nothing could be further from the truth. Communities set upon by wind industry goons divide roughly (and unequally) into three groups.

The first is the tiny minority who hope to profit directly: farmers in contracts with the developer paid to host the turbines; gullible local business people who (foolishly) believe that they’ll snaffle work surrounding the project (construction and engineering work is almost exclusively the preserve of large, well-oiled outfits like Transfield or Leighton – the fans are built in China, India or Denmark); the local volunteer firefighters (CFA/CFS) promised a brand-new fire-truck by the developer (never mind that the fire unit will be reserved to look after the developer’s fans ahead of local properties); and the local footy club, promised a little cash and brand-new footy jumpers (featuring the developer’s “stylish” logo, of course).

The second group is by far and away the majority and includes those whose lives will be the all worse for the short-sighted greed of the few mentioned above. This group obviously includes the many who will end up as neighbours, whose homes will become sonic torture traps: hard-working people who will be driven mad by shadow flicker and the incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise, night after merciless night. As part of the so-called “green” energy “bargain”, the value of their properties will be smashed, if it were even possible to find a buyer for their (soon to be uninhabitable) homes (see our post here).

A pretty fair example of the division outlined above was given a week or so ago at a “community consultation” held by Epuron – an outfit hoping to develop what it calls the “Rye Park” wind farm (north of Yass and east of Boorowa, NSW).

Epuron sent a “pretty young thing” equipped with not much more than a Marketing Degree and the developer’s “spin sheet”. This young lass found herself way out of her depth, as locals grilled her on the wild and unsubstantiated claims she made about her bosses planned giant fans. You know, the usual stuff about “powering” 100,000 homes; reducing CO2 emissions; creating thousands of wonderful “green” jobs; and, best of all, lowering retail power prices. Locals hammered her on all of these classic furphies: in trying to defend the indefensible, she didn’t get off to a great start – it quickly became evident that she had no idea what a Renewable Energy Certificate was, let alone the cost impact of RECs on retail power prices or the (critical) benefit of that subsidy to her employer. Oops!

On a show of hands, the 32 present “divided” as follows: 23 locals, firmly against; and 9 in favour – 4 of whom were employed by Epuron, 2 were contracted as turbine hosts and 3 were “unknowns” (check out this video of the count).

And that brings us to the third group. Quite often a few “unknowns” turn up at “community consultations” to voice their loving support for giant fans. These aren’t “locals” and, even if they live in the vicinity, will never actually live anywhere near that (or any other) wind farm. They’re pretty easy to spot: beards are essential, as are socks and sandals. They turn up to the meeting, rant about the mortal perils of “climate change” and disappear into the ether, never to be seen again. Think Dave Clarke of delusional “ramblings” fame. You know, the type that says having a couple of hundred giant fans speared into YOUR backyard is a sacrifice that THEY’RE willing to make.

Take out rent seekers (like the developer and hopeful turbine hosts) – and rent-a-crowd ideologues – and the “division” in communities set upon by plans for giant fans soon disappears.

Remember, that it’s only ever been about the money.

Chop the fat pile of taxpayer and power consumer subsidies directed to wind power outfits and “community division” will soon resolve. The developers will disappear in a heartbeat; the prospective hosts will go back to doing what they were doing before they entered contracts they neither read nor understood; and the locals will return to the peaceful and untroubled lives they deserve.

Here’s The Daily Mail on how mountains of pointless subsidies fuel the utterly rotten and corrupt wind industry; and sustains its parasites.

Dirty tricks, greed and a ruined idyll that proves the wind turbine plague ISN’T over after all: ROBERT HARDMAN on the stormy issue of green subsidies
The Daily Mail
Robert Hardman
24 May 2014

The last time tempers were this high around here was almost exactly 500 years ago at the Battle of Flodden — the biggest Anglo-Scottish punch-up in history. And not much has changed in this stunning corner of Northumberland since then.

The big house is still Ford Castle, where James IV of Scotland spent his last night alive, carousing on the eve of battle. A couple of miles down the road is Etal Castle, where the English army celebrated victory.

Going back further still, there are 60 sites of prehistoric interest in a three-mile radius — including the Geordie answer to Stonehenge.

The views are much the same, across to the Cheviots, the Scottish borders and what is now Northumberland National Park.

But, this week, all that has changed. The diggers and pile drivers have just arrived, along with a lot of heavies in hi-viz jackets.

By Christmas, a great swathe of this ancient and enchanting border country, including the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, will be overshadowed by the Barmoor Wind Farm — six wind turbines, each 360ft tall and with a blade span the size of a Boeing 747.

Thought we’d heard the last of the onshore wind farm? Remember last year’s ministerial pledges to ‘roll back’ those barmy green subsidies for landowners and companies which desecrate the countryside?

As this week’s scenes in wildest Northumberland testify, it’s business as usual.

This racket, which already adds £3billion a year to all our fuel bills, is as lucrative as ever. The planning applications are pouring in, even though Britain has comfortably met its wind energy targets for 2020.

Oh for the days when the worst to fear was a wall of leylandii. It’s a story familiar to rural communities all over Britain. And, with just six turbines, Barmoor is actually at the smaller end of the wind farm spectrum.

But it’s important for several reasons. First, it shows that nowhere, however beautiful, is safe from the predations of developers masquerading as environmentalists.

Second, even the energy company now building these things acknowledges that ‘amazing’ tactics were used to ram through this development in the face of overwhelming local opposition.

Third, the bulldozers have started tearing up the soil here in the very week that Britain’s only overtly anti-wind farm party — UKIP — has made giant strides across the political landscape.

Down on the edge of Brackenside Farm, I find a building site, a digger and several men in hi-viz jackets scratching their chins. It’s the new site for EDF Energy’s Barmoor sub-station. A security guard becomes rather aggressive the moment we start taking photographs, even when I point to the public footpath sign next to me.

‘It’s a hard-hat area and it’s dangerous,’ he shouts.

Three EDF officials appear and say the same, though two must be in mortal danger for they are without hard hats, too.

Eventually, they concede that they have no powers to shut down a public right of way and choose not to engage in further conversation. We go about our business.

A mile further on, I meet another digger ripping up a field to create a new access road from the B6525 to the wind turbines. The sight of our cameras prompts two men to jump in to a van and race over the field to confront us as we stand on the public road.

‘Can I help?’ asks one, in tones presaging the answer ‘no’. He marches off when I explain I am from a newspaper.

As soon as I start exploring the background to this project, I begin to understand why these EDF contractors are so jumpy.

It has taken 11 years of legal battles, bad blood and festering anger to create a hideous eyesore which will, ultimately, generate just 12 megawatts — on a windy day.

That’s enough electricity to power a few villages in the right weather. Yet, as I shall explain, it will pay out a £50 million jackpot over 20 years.

The Barmoor saga began when wind farm developers Force 9 Energy and Catamount persuaded three local farmers to sign up to a deal, which was all sorted before the public had any inkling of what was going on.

The locals, as locals do, formed an action group called Save Our Unspoiled Landscape (SOUL) and produced a few leaflets.

To their astonishment, Force 9 hired a swanky London PR firm and then made a formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority arguing that the locals had exaggerated the threat from the turbines.

Quite why it was the ASA’s business to adjudicate on a planning dispute is anyone’s guess, but the judges ruled in favour of the developer.

Meanwhile, the action group bought a bright orange helium-filled blimp which they tethered at the proposed site to show people across the region just how visible the turbines would be.

Soon after it was raised aloft, its moorings were mysteriously cut and the local authorities spent several days warning North Sea air traffic to be aware of a large orange UFO with ‘NO!’ written on it.

The local council threw out the project after receiving more objections to this plan than any it could recall.

But, shortly before the 2010 election, the Labour government ruled in favour of the development on the grounds that ‘it involved proposals of major significance for the delivery of the government’s climate change programme’.

Job done, Force 9/Catamount started looking for a buyer and sold the project for an undisclosed sum (thought to be around £10million), via Duke Energy, to EDF Energy Renewables in March. And now work begins.

Politicians love to bang on about ‘vibrant communities’, but this one has just been torn in half. How can the footling energy output from a minor get-rich-quick scheme justify the long-term pain felt by so many?

People who wouldn’t get planning permission for a garage extension must now see their views desecrated and the value of their homes slashed in order to enrich a handful of their neighbours.

Based on the projected output of the plant, the highly respected think tank, the Renewable Energy Foundation, expects the wind plant (how can anyone call this thing a ‘farm’?) to receive a £1.15million annual subsidy on top of £1.4million a year for electricity generated over a 20-year contract.

How is it shared out? The terms are always confidential, but the going rate for a landowner in this situation is £10,000-£20,000 per turbine per year, plus a slice of the pie every time the site is resold.

The locals now realise that there is nothing more they can do.

Nick Maycock smiles grimly outside his comfortable guest house, the Friendly Hound, which overlooks the site. He doesn’t even want to contemplate the effect on his trade.

‘Those farmers have been offered a goldmine. How can they turn it down?’ he asks.

I find only one of the farmers today. Sandy Rievely will have two turbines on his land, but will only say he is not allowed to discuss it under the terms of the contract. So what do his neighbours think?

‘I’d prefer not to say,’ replies Dr John Ferguson, 73, a former GP whose retirement has been consumed by the 11-year battle to stop his cottage being dwarfed by these monstrosities.

‘Well, I will then,’ says his wife, Ann. ‘It’s just completely wrong that a handful of landowners can do this to all their neighbours. I avoid even talking to them now because I’ll lose my temper . . .’

Her voice cracks, the conversation halts and we all look awkwardly out of the kitchen window across the sheep and the fields to the distant treeline. In a matter of months, six giant fans on six masts many times the height of the trees, will look back at her.

Now is probably not the moment to remind Ann of the immortal words of the former Energy Secretary who inflicted much of this unhappiness on the countryside in the name of fluffy Polar bears and saving the planet. ‘It is socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area,’ declared Ed Miliband the last time Labour was in power, ‘like not wearing your seat belt.’

The very man who now attacks grasping energy bosses for fleecing the poor is none other than the Minister who thought it would be a wise and noble idea to make the rest of us pay dukes and developers an overall £200,000 annual bonus for every single skyscraper-sized windmill they planted in the middle of the countryside.

For these things really are the size of skyscrapers. Each one of the wind turbines going up by the Fergusons’ home near Flodden Field is going to be the height of a 30-storey office block — taller indeed than anything in, say, Edinburgh.

If they were buildings, they would automatically enter the list of Britain’s top 50 highest.

After more than a decade of sleepless nights and legal battles costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, the residents are well-used to the arguments: that they are simply Nimbys, that it is our duty as human beings to place the greater needs of the environment ahead of selfish local considerations.

They’ve heard all this stuff. And they know it’s tosh. These landowners and EDF wouldn’t be doing any of this if it wasn’t for the staggering inducements.

I go for a drive with local farmer Andrew Joicey, 58, whose elder brother runs the family estate covering 15,000 acres in this area, including mighty Ford Castle (now leased to the local council).

He points out that the estate was offered the usual big bucks to sign up for the scheme, but rejected it. And Andrew has devoted a large part of the past 11 years to fighting local wind farm proposals, seeing off three others — but not this one.

‘What is particularly galling is the way these things are just bought and sold without any regard for local feelings,’ he tells me.

Just this week, he had a long meeting with a senior EDF ‘director of construction’ as part of the company policy of ‘engaging’ with the community.

To his astonishment, the executive admitted that he had heard how the developers had persuaded local farm workers to sign meaningless contracts for a few hundred pounds (wind farm noise restrictions do not apply to people deemed to be ‘financially involved’). Force 9/Catamount was unavailable for comment yesterday.

The EDF executive also agreed that it was ‘incredible’ that the local action group had been reported to the ASA.

As for the Government’s claim that this 12 megawatt site was of ‘major significance’ to Britain’s climate change programme, he shook his head and admitted: ‘It doesn’t even feature.’

So there we have it. Lives and livelihoods are being blighted by a project which even the owners concede is of little consequence.

An EDF spokesman points out that it will give £60,000-a-year to community schemes as a gesture of goodwill.

But it’s a gesture which impresses no one, any more than the latest Tory promise, four weeks ago, to cut wind subsidies after the next election.

For these locals are already having to fund yet another legal battle to stop yet another wind project. In January, a government inspector approved a scheme to put a turbine in front of Northumberland’s ancient Duddo Stone Circle.

Next month, they are taking the Government and the farmer concerned to the High Court in a bid to overturn the decision.

As UKIP — with its clear anti-wind farm agenda — toasts its council successes and looks forward to tomorrow’s Euro election results, there is a clear message here for the eco-zealots in all the main parties.

But is anyone listening?
The Daily Mail

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