Wind farms a smokescreen
YOUR editorial, 'If not wind farms, what else, Mr Evans?' (LET, December 14) hit the nail on the head. Just as Tony Blair's concern over duty free goods is an obvious smokescreen to draw attention away from the real agenda (tax 'normalisation' and the surrender of our sovereignty and our EU rebate), so Nigel Evans tries to divert attention from the real agenda.

In Ribble Valley and elsewhere in the UK this means conditioning us to the 'normality' of incinerating our cast-offs, especially hazardous toxic waste too far gone to recycle. Profit and poison before people.

Mr Evans is adamant that "there should be no incinerators in Ribble Valley," but isn't that precisely what we do have - and without the rules governing true incinerators, which Castle Cement's kilns cannot meet?

Many readers will know of Castle's recent application to burn Cemfuel again in kiln 7, with the hint that kilns 5 and 6 will be closed down. But will they?

How long before we see Castle apply to burn tyres and who knows what in all three kilns? And where do you imagine Monsanto's cast-offs will end up? They did not provide the plant's scrubber out of charity.

Elsewhere in the UK, Fibrogen has asked the Environment Agency to license burning meat and bone meal (non BSE, of course) in its Glanford power startion.

The disposal industry, encouraged by successive governments, sees incineration in cement kilns, power stations etc as "the bright spot on the horizon," conveniently ignoring the fact that incineration in non-incinerators is an incomplete process, creating rather than destroying the conditions under which lethal substances pour into the atmosphere.

And that is what Nigel Evans would much rather we did not discuss. As you say, he may crow about 'dead duck' wind farms, but a farm in the right place is a far better alternative than the Ribble Valley 'alternative,' a trio of unofficial incinerators half a mile from a hospital and one of the finest grammar schools around.

J MORTIMER (Mr), Green Drive, Clitheroe.