RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Attack of the killer pylons!

Have you observed how little self-styled ‘environmentalists’ appear to care concerning the precise surroundings?

They spend their time banging back-to-nature jungle drums whereas concurrently ripping up the countryside, planting War-Of- The-Worlds windmills within the identify of Net Zero.

Our green-and-pleasant is being destroyed by these monstrous generators, which make Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North, which towers over the A1 at Gateshead, look positively restrained.

(Turbines? Angels of Death, extra like, on condition that they shred to bite-sized items something as much as 100,000 harmless birds yearly.)

When I used to be in Scotland earlier in the summertime, travelling alongside the M8 hall between Glasgow and Edinburgh, I used to be horrified on the extent to which the proliferation of those ghastly windmills had ruined one of the crucial stunning landscapes on Earth.

For the previous few years, there was a moratorium on onshore wind, one thing Keir Starmer has promised to tear up if, extra doubtless when, Labour wins the subsequent election.

Expect, too, an extra growth of offshore wind, which can deliver with it nonetheless higher wanton desecration of rural and coastal Britain. And coming quickly, alongside the forests of wind generators, a whole lot of big electrical energy pylons must be constructed to hold the electrical energy generated at sea.

There’s already an enormous groundswell of opposition to plans for a 120-mile lengthy community of pylons stretching throughout East Anglia, from Dunston in Norfolk to Tilbury in Essex. Only areas of pure magnificence, the place the strains will run underground, will escape.

In Norfolk, there are legitimate protests that it will result in the ‘annihilation of the countryside’.

Quite proper, too. (That windmill subsequent to Waitrose at Swaffham is hideous sufficient already.)

Tomorrow, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will try to purchase off opponents by promising anybody who lives close to one among these pylons as much as £10,000 off their power payments over the subsequent decade.

That’s 20 quid every week, tops, to have a 120ft tall steel construction carrying reside electrical energy caught in your again backyard.

Ministers are promising they’ll ‘seek the advice of with stakeholders’ earlier than taking a remaining determination. Where have we heard that earlier than? And when did any ‘session’ ever cease them?

Pylons are mentioned to be the most affordable and quickest solution to meet Net Zero targets and guarantee there’s sufficient provide to energy charging factors for electrical vehicles when petrol and diesels are banned. Although Rishi Sunak pushed again the deadline 5 years, Starmer has pledged to revive it to 2030 when he turns into PM.

The East Anglian scheme is simply your starter for ten. Within just a few years, ‘this different Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress constructed by Nature for herself’, may have been buried beneath forests of artificial monstrosities.

In pursuit of their deranged Net Zero targets, eco-mentalists and the opportunist politicians who capitulate to their calls for are ready to destroy the very factor they declare to be preserving. 

Rather than embrace new technological options, they insist we should return to the longer term – pylons, windmills, pushbikes in all weathers.

The first electrical energy pylons went up in Britain a century in the past, even then within the face of robust native opposition. Like immediately, they have been an inexpensive and environment friendly means of transmitting power.

But though many discovered them ‘stunning’ – the identical being mentioned by admirers of contemporary wind generators – they have been broadly seen as blots on the panorama.

Wherever potential, transmission strains have been rerouted and cables buried underground in areas of pure magnificence.

Until pretty just lately, a restored panorama with out pylons and overhead electrical energy cables was on the horizon – simply as cellphone strains have been buried years in the past.

In September 2022, the Mail reported that 22 electrical energy pylons in Thomas Hardy’s Dorset have been being pulled down in a ‘world-first’ £116 million scheme, and cables relocated underground.

The supervisor in command of the demolition mentioned: ‘It’s nice to see the panorama afresh, much less cluttered by fashionable infrastructure.’

You needs to be so fortunate.

One brief 12 months later, the lever has been thrown into reverse and pylons are going to begin sprouting up once more all over the place, marching throughout the countryside like an invading alien military.

And all that is justified within the identify of defending the surroundings. These Net Zero nutjobs are like that American Major who, after a fierce battle throughout the Vietnam battle, was quoted as saying: ‘We needed to destroy the village as a way to reserve it.’

Ed Sheeran, who performed the Albert Hall on the weekend, has put 450 gadgets of clothes – together with worn underpants – up on the market on eBay to lift cash for charity.

How instances change. Screaming ladies used to throw their knickers at Tom Jones. Sheeran is flogging his pants to the viewers.

Now that’s uncommon. I am unable to see Tom doing the identical.

Y-, Y-, Y-fronts, Delilah!

Pro-Hamas head-bangers allege the Israel Defence Force is mendacity about discovering a command and management centre underneath Gaza’s primary hospital. The IDF ‘solely’ uncovered weapons, rockets and ammunition. Given that Hamas travels gentle, wants little greater than a laptop computer and makes missile launchers out of drainpipes, what have been they anticipated to seek out? A White House-style state of affairs room, full with a financial institution of screens and state-of-the-art satellite tv for pc communications? 

Ever since she first got here to my consideration, I’ve been calling Suella Braverman Sue Ellen, after Linda Gray’s character in Dallas.

Now Braverman, in an interview with The Mail on Sunday’s Glen Owen, has confirmed her actual identify is Sue-Ellen, with a hyphen, as a result of her mum was a giant Dallas fan.

Sometimes, even I am unable to make it up.

Let me in – I’m British

Every time I journey again by Heathrow, I change into more and more irritated at having to queue at immigration behind a whole lot of EU residents.

Despite Brexit, because the BBC would say, there is not any ‘fast-track’ for UK passport holders, which ought to have been an early advantage of ‘taking again management’.

And then there’s the e-gates system, which by no means appears to work.

Nine instances out of ten, I handle to get a ‘search help’ message after a number of makes an attempt, like these infuriating self-service machines in supermarkets.

Unexpected passenger in baggage space.

The similar factor occurred on Saturday on coming back from the U.S. The excellent news is that we have been proven right into a separate, fast-moving queue to have our passports inspected manually.

At the desk we have been greeted by a captivating Border Force officer, a chap of a sure age, who spoke English, requested the place we would come from, hoped we would had fun and waved us by with a cheery ‘welcome residence’. Pleasure doing enterprise with you, guv.

Which gave me an concept. Some supermarkets are already ripping out their self-scanners and reinstating checkout workers, typically sixty-somethings searching for a job post-retirement. Why cannot Border Force do one thing comparable?

If they need to maintain the e-gates, go away them there for the EU mob to deal with. Then rent just a few extra useful, grown-up immigration officers – UK passport holders, unique for using.

You by no means know, it would catch on.

Never thoughts working from residence, it has been revealed that civil servants on the Net Zero division can work from the seashore, sinking pina coladas. And, presumably, to hell with their carbon footprint on the flights there and again.

Elsewhere, the WFH cult continues to be in full swing, with different Government departments solely insisting workers flip up three days every week and HMRC places of work maxing out at 55 per cent attendance.

I assume it would not matter whether or not Jeremy Hunt raises or lowers taxes tomorrow. Sounds like there’s unlikely to be anybody at HMRC to gather them.