Some things are irreplaceable

Does anyone seriously believe the Scottish Government when it says that “We are committed to protecting wild land in Scotland"? Seriously? When every trip up north which Calton makes reveals yet more turbines dotting our hillsides, not to mention the construction site that is the Beauly-Denny power line? There is almost as much windfarm capacity in the planning pipeline as we have already built and almost four times as much is in the process of being scoped at the moment. If all is approved, we will go from the 4.4GW currently installed to nearly 30GW. How many more turbines will that be? More to the point, where will they be situated? Current proposals drawn up by SNH designate pockets of protected wild land but many truly wild areas have been left out and windfarms will be visible from many of the protected areas because the pockets are so small in size. It is a patchwork approach designed to satisfy the SNP's energy policy, not protect Scotland's scenery and related tourism industry. It's time the Scottish Government called a halt to large-scale windfarm development in Scotland's wild areas and looked instead at unobtrusive schemes such as the underground hydro generator at Inverlael near Ullapool. Because if we trash our countryside, we won't get it back.