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Sins of Emission

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The MoD is forming contingency plans to repel Russian attacks on UK energy infrastructure. These will cover cyber defence, rogue oil tankers and no doubt major substations, 20 of which have been taken out in Ukraine. Imagine a cheeky nest of anti-missile batteries on the Fanellan braes; that would set off the development nicely, complementing the razor wire, watchtowers, security lights and alsatians defending a strategic energy hub.  Dialling back from the prospect of sudden death under a Putin ICBM, there are the more insidious health effects of Fanellan, Field Beauly's BESS and pylons to consider. The elephant in the room, disguised among hulking grey transformers, is the cumulative effect of all this on the mental and physical wellbeing of surrounding communities. For unexplained reasons, as CB4PC has pointed out, The Highland Council has scoped out health as a competent objection although planning authorities are required to consider public health and wellbeing under National ...
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They're Called Boobs, Ed

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Trekkies will recall the Borg cyborgs who resembled schlock eye patients with a random lens over one eye. Never great conversationists, the Borg limited themselves to telling Kirk, Spock and co: "We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships... Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile". The last phrase was on repeat.  This has a familiar ring to opponents of green energy extremism in the Highlands. It's the mantra of the SSEN, Westminster and Holyrood Borg. Ed Miliband's eyes already shine with that insane Borg glow. Remove his hair, zip him into a suit of kinky plastic armour and Ed's a regular cyborg and right on message too.  Most public meetings  and social media forums tackling the energy infrastructure debate have their Borg element. Theirs is a message developers love to push. Look, the battle is lost already, they insist. Give up, make peace and get the best surrender terms you can. You might persuade SSE to pay for mendin...
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Assault By Battery

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Back in August 2021 Gloag Investment Properties, of which Dame Ann Gloag of Beaufort Castle, Kiltarlity, is a director, received planning permission to erect 50 lodges in a holiday park on the banks of the River Beauly. This lies at the eastern end of the property that forms historic Beaufort Estate. Then in 2024 along came an application from a battery storage firm no-one had ever heard of with an application for 792 lithium battery units on Dunballoch Farm, bang next door to her proposed holiday park in the close vicinity of Beaufort's listed designed landscape. Suddenly, a bucolic prospect of frolicking otters, beavers and fishermen was threatened by an armoury of ticking bombs inside a steel container terminal. Ground has yet to be broken on the holiday development but in March 2024 Beaufort Highland Lodges, which is 75% under Dame Gloag's control and represents the holiday park now, wrote to The Highland Council planners saying it had 'great interest in fully understan...
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April, The Month of Fools

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It's April, and Beauly Community Council has just got around to publishing its February meeting minutes. Normally this wouldn't matter but in amongst the important stuff about spring clean-ups in the village it is difficult to avoid the concern that another clean-up of sorts is going on. Are we being taken for fools? Time is of essence in responding to planning matters but it is only now that we hear from the minutes that remarkably the community council decided to make no response to the battery storage (BESS) application lodged on behalf of Field Beauly to the Highland Council. While technically this application sits just outside the boundaries of the community council, it has the potential to have a considerable effect on residents. Hardly a week goes by without a lithium battery explosion somewhere in the country. Such an event at Field Beauly could be catastrophic with the potential to pour large quantities of chemical run-off into the River Beauly, threatening the endange...
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Too Well Connected?

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Interesting times in the Highlands. Life there these days might give a Highlander an inkling of how it felt to be an citizen of the sub-continent in the C18th Century. - for the East India Company, read Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks. All levels of Government - Westminster, Holyrood, local council - appear to have been occupied by SSE, its subsidiary SSEN and its cohort of allied BESS, wind turbine and other 'green' energy developers. While they're busy changing the Electricity Act in Westminster to excise any part in the planning process   for Scottish local democracy , they're giving kiddies wind turbines to play with in primary schools. From top to bottom, at all levels of society, the big green tentacles are wriggling. And maybe at Community Council level too. The douce little village of Beauly in Inverness-shire, gateway to National Scenic Area of Glen Affric, is threatened by a multiple whammy of energy developments. Already living next to the debilita...
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