Byreman's bar-room spat with Klondike

THE Byreman hates wind turbines; ‘Klondike’ Barry is all for them. Two farmer friends with views which not only divide the bar of the Red Lion but also illustrate the great gulf in public attitudes to renewable energy.
Where do I stand? Well, I’m instinctively in favour of energy production which, where possible, doesn’t depend on polluting fuels like coal and wood and dangerous elements like nuclear. On the other hand, I sympathise with many folk in north Northumberland who fear the march of wind turbines across one of the loveliest parts of Britain is driven by developers aiming to rack up huge profits without properly costing the damage to our quality of life.
But a new factor has intruded into the equation: freedom. Russia’s dispute with Belarus which temporarily disrupted gas supplies this week was a repeat of the crisis of 2008-2009 when, in that bitterly cold winter, Moscow’s pricing dispute with Ukraine left much of Europe short of gas.
How does that affect Berwick or Belford or Bishop Auckland? As North Sea gas expires, Britain depends more and more on gas imports. By 2020 an estimated 90 per cent of our supplies may well be coming through a pipeline from Moscow.
We’re already in hock to the Middle East and America for our oil supplies, to Australia and Canada for our strictly controlled uranium rations and to countries like South Africa, Russia and Columbia for our coal.
The idea that a spat in the old Soviet bloc could lead to someone in Minsk or Kiev turning off the gas should send a chill down all our spines.

ALWAYS look on the bright side: at least raising VAT from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent makes the maths calculation a whole lot easier!

FAREWELL to the magic number sixty-five, we’re all going to have to wait a little longer for our pensions. Future generations might even have to work beyond seventy if we’re to dig ourselves out of our recessionary hole in the ground.
Humbug! Some of us have been ignoring retirement age for years. My illness-enforced disappearance from the workforce means I’m busier now with my writing, broadcasting and voluntary work than I ever was when officially ‘employed’.
I’m not alone: consider the energy and ambition of two remarkable Northumbrian women I bumped into this week as they helped launch a fantastic tourist enterprise on our glorious coastline.
Gilly Banyard, founder of the Penny Plain chain of clothing stores, started looking round for a new project as soon as she ‘retired’. She quickly found one: three derelict farm buildings staring across the causeway that separates Holy Island from the mainland.
They are derelict no more: with all the energy that built Penny Plain into a leading catalogue clothing company, Gilly has created in her Lindisfarne Bay Cottages three ‘Homes and Gardens’ havens of luxury with the finest views in the county.
Celebrating the launch her friend Mary Manley, another ‘swinging sixty’ who turned Alnwick’s railway station into the massively successful Barter Books, scoffed at the idea of retirement as she raised a champagne toast.
“Retire? Not a chance!” they chorused. “Work’s too much fun!”

APPARENTLY the company which makes those annoying little St George World Cup flags that motorists insist on clamping to the front windows has received complaints that they are blown away by the slightest breeze (a bit like the team they support, you might say!).
Indeed a London pal claims he counted more than a dozen broken pennants littering a two-mile stretch of dual carriageway last weekend, although he admits that was immediately following the Algeria fiasco.
Still, he believes it was due to a design fault. Despite my eternal optimism I feel forced to point out another, equally damaging design problem: there is no way of flying these flags at half-mast!
First published in The Journal, Newcastle, on June 25, 2010