'The Children of Lir' and 'The Kammhuber Line'

‘Shy Ronnie’ (aka Isle of Man resident HNWI John Whittaker) has had another setback with his wind turbine plans:

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm?id=42363&headline=Wind%20turbine%2...

Whittaker of course is one of our top two HNWIs he’s worth billions but because IOM Newspapers said he eschewed publicity I’ve always thought of him as shy. Apparently he’s so shy he even uses a helicopter to get about and you can’t be more shy than that.

John has been trying to build turbines on land overlooking Port Erin bay which aesthetically is a charming area. The turbines presumably would power his housing complex which if your are HNWI can be quite energy consuming.

Initially I opposed the plans thinking: ‘Why doesn’t he get a few solar panels like anyone else’ but he’s since mitigated the design after the initial knock-back.

One of the concern was that the spread of the design would decimate the chough population so in the new proposal they were put in a straight row. This is presumably the architectural equivalent of the Bomber Harris plan to spread area bombers crossing the German Kammhuber Line in WW2 over a one mile front to mitigate losses.

Anyway most people ‘down south’ don’t seem to mind ‘shy Ronnies’ wind turbines because only 40 signed a petition against them. Presumably in the taverns of Pt Erin and Port St Mary the peasants all say; ‘Why are they always picking on Ronnie they should leave him alone he’s shy’.

Since my initial opposition I’ve also warmed to ‘shy Ronnie’ not on environmental grounds but because his empire is building a cruise terminal at Liverpool and its cheesed off TRAVELWATCH.

If there’s one thing I loath more that HMWIs its TRAVELWATCH (and PAG). Personal loathings can be irrational I have a friend who detests ‘Beach Buddies’. He even rings me up to aver as much whenever they are on the radio. However I quite like them because the more time Bill spends on air the less we get of the other pair of groups.

Anyway sometimes listening to the likes of TRAVELWATCH pontificating can be damaging for your health. I generally listen to the radio news clips on the laptop when I’m having my (Manx) Lamb chops and farm shop veg at lunch time. Last week I was listening to some ‘car crash’ in which John Moss was interviewing someone from Travelwatch about their latest gripe and Moss said: ‘Travelwatch are a well respected group’. This resulted in a choking bout from which I only just recovered without having to attend A & E.

Anyway back to ‘Ronnie’ - I hope he does eventually get his turbines. Even though he’s shy he strikes me as a man who will triumph ultimately. As for the choughs well…’c’est la guerre’....so to speak. After all they are only choughs. It’s not as if they’re ‘the Children of Lir’ we’ll just hope any of ‘Lirs feathered offspring’ are not blown off course when traversing ‘the Sea of Moyle’.

Image: ‘The Children of Lir’ lets hope they don’t get blown off course and hit Ronnies ‘Kammhuber Line’ if it’s ever built that is!

Bonus: Here’s the story of the Children of Lir it’s much more interesting than HMWIs, Wind Turbines, Cruise terminals or TravelWatch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mTqnnEYDso

Bernard Moffatt