James Delingpole, scourge of renewables everywhere, has announced his candidacy for the Corby by-election in this week’s Spectator, writing, seemingly in all seriousness, that:
The stench from the wind industry and its many leech-like hangers-on is overpowering and it’s a disgrace that so few people are speaking up for the thousands of victims affected by it. But I am. I hereby announce my intention to stand in the Corby by-election as the anti-wind farm candidate. Not in my back yard. And not in yours either!
Yes, Delingpole is seriously attempting to reclaim the phrase “NIMBY”. Good luck to him with that; currently, Ladbrokes has the odds at 8/11 for him to lose his deposit, so he’s got an uphill battle ahead of him.
But if he’s running as a single-issue candidate, then surely he has latched on to a massive local issue, right? Richard Taylor, for example, famously won two straight terms as an independent candidate running against the closure of Kidderminster Hospital in his constituency of Wyre Forest. Delingpole presumably has realised that the scourge of wind farms in Corby is at least that bad.
Corby Borough Council tell me there are zero (0) wind farms in the borough of Corby, which holds three quarters of the population of the constituency. East Northants county council tell me that there are zero (0) wind farms in the electoral wards of East Northants which comprise the rest of the constituency. And an ordnance survey map of the constituency confirms there are zero (0) wind farms in the overall parliamentary constituency of Corby. There is one nearby – it’s marked on the map as the little windmill to the easy of Burton Latimer – but that’s actually in the neighbouring constituency of Kettering.
There is, however, one planning application for a wind farm in the rural part of Corby constituency, midway between Corby and Oundle, outside the village of Brigstock. Well, I say wind farm; it’s more like a wind paddock, with five 125m turbines being proposed on land currently held by the Duke of Gloucester.
Dellingpole dismisses anyone who supports the development as “in the pay of Big Wind”, so by that definition he presumably sees 100 per cent opposition; but the electoral commission works on different rules. We shall see how successful Delingpole is, but hopefully he hasn’t quit his gig at the Telegraph too hastily.
Updated 8:10pm with confirmation from East Northants county council
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