I hope, like me, your readers are scanning the pages of the Banffshire Journal for the turbine planning applications. It is the only way that you will know, unless you frequent the planning office, if there is a wind turbine planned close to you.

Turbines can go up near you and neither the land owners nor the developer has to inform you. A structure more than 20-metres tall could be installed as close as 140 metres from a dwelling place. Industrial (more than 50 metres high) or domestic, there is never an OS Ref in the paper, meaning that it is hard to pinpoint where exactly the turbine is planned.

Unless you keep a close eye every week, one could go up not very far from you. There will certainly be one affecting your view if the current plans proceed at the present alarming rate.

These turbines are going up everywhere. The landscape is changing and becoming industrialised. If they were efficient and produced enough green energy, maybe I could cope with the detrimental visual impact, but turbines are not efficient (less than 30%). People who are joining the wind turbine scramble are doing it because it makes them money.

If their values were 'green', they would check out the environmental credentials of turbines and find them questionable. There are many websites that can verify this.

I used to support wind energy, and there is a place for the technology, but not littered around the North-east for personal financial gain.

We are paying for the turbines through our ever-increasing electricity bills, but I'm more concerned about how we will pay for them with the emotive impact of huge structures appearing in the landscape.

Most weeks in the 'Banffshie Journal' there are planning applications for wind turbines, yet also articles extolling the beauty of the area in the hope of encouraging visitors to Aberdeenshire. When will the disparity be acknowledged?

Our elected representatives seem to be doing a great ostrich impression concerning the turbine issues; and there are so many to discuss. When will they get their heads out of the sand? - Yours etc,

CAROLINE HOBBS

Rothen Farm Cottage,

Cornhill.