MADAM - How can anyone have the audacity to criticise the appearance of windmills? One has only to look back at the colossal damage to the environment that we British have achieved as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution .

MADAM - How can anyone have the audacity to criticise the appearance of windmills?

One has only to look back at the colossal damage to the environment that we British have achieved as the birthplace of the "Industrial Revolution". We have succeeded in polluting the sea, the air and the land.

Air - with coal-fired generators, smog, acid rain; sea - with oil spills, nuclear waste; land - by burrowing underground for coal, tin, oil.

Years ago, where were the voices of protest when the beautiful valleys of Wales were desecrated with mountains of filthy black slag?

The 'Coal Barons' of yesteryear cared little for this desecration but only for profit. History is, sadly, repeating itself in the way we are being ushered towards the nuclear option, with the attendant waste products, which will take hundreds of years to dissipate. Also the danger of leakage.

If this is so unlikely, how is it that the French authorities have sited their nuclear power stations all along their coast with the implication that, should there be a leak, the prevailing winds would take a nuclear cloud away from them towards - guess who?

Where we once had oil and coal barons, we now have nuclear barons, who are telling us that nuclear is the only route to take.

If, for one moment, they were to search their souls they would know the right way is for wind and wave, which produces non-polluting power.

What are the alternatives?

Coal: re-open mines and let men carry on dying in explosions, of sillicosis and smog.

Carry on extracting oil: which must be leaving huge caverns of emptiness underground, ie London transport alone consumes 100,000 gallons per day.

Common sense tells us this cannot be sustained, therefore, let us move to a wind and wave future.

Ted Butler

113 Woolbrook Road

Sidmouth