Knabs Ridge Wind Farm, Harrogate

Front page headline in our paper today was "Wind Power to Generate 100,000 new jobs", so I thought I'd have a look at our local wind farm.

Commissioned in 2008 it has a potential to produce 16 MW of electricity. Today the wind was light and the live feed from the site gave an actual output of a mere 185KW, that is only 1.15% of it's target output.

Now, I know we have to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, but I'm not convinced this is the way to do it.

We already spend £1 billion a year subsidising the electricity companies, and this will only rise.

Also the Dutch are now saying wind power actually increases CO2 output, for the simple reason coal/gas power stations have to be kept running at fluctuating levels of output, to balance the wind, and this is inherently very inefficient.

But hey, our politicians know what they're doing, don't they?