recycling clichés

A long time ago John Cleese said in an interview that he wished he could be paid £1 for every time a newspaper article said that 'comedy is a serious business'. It would be a nice little earner.

It would also be nice to get £1 every time a columnist (of a certain age) compared environmentalism with religion. Today's £1 would come from the Guardian's Simon Hoggart on the subject of recycling:

'Like so much associated with the green movement, this procedure has a religious quality. It even takes as long as the average church service. '

Hoggart goes on to compare wind turbines with church spires. He says they both have 'no practical value except as symbols of faith, visible to all.'

You'd have to be fairly incurious, or simply unable to google, not to find wind turbines that have practical value. Here's one, the Moel Moelogan Wind Farm in North Wales (above), which was an Ashden Award Winner. The text runs:

'Faced by the catastrophic decline in farming incomes, three Welsh hill-farming families set about harnessing their greatest natural asset - wind. Between them they formed a cooperative called Cwmni Gwynt Teg and have since developed, financed and built a wind farm on their own land.

Moel Moelogan now has two operational wind turbines that are producing electricity for the local grid system in Conwy County, Wales. The combined output of these turbines is 2.6 megawatts per hour - enough to supply 1,600 homes. Moel Moelogan is the first community project of its kind in the UK, being 100% locally owned and with all income generated remaining in the area.'

A lot more practical than recycling clichés.