Erotic Dancer Miami Erotica 2009. J Chang from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Lap Dance for Wind Turbines? British Green Energy Developers Accused of a New Low

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… The clean energy company strongly denies this allegation, saying that no such offer was ever made.  …”

Farmer claims he was offered lap dance if he agreed to wind turbine on his land

Energy company offering Welsh landowners incentives to sign up to green schemes denies the allegations

Telegraph Reporters8 January 2024 • 11:09am

A farmer was offered cash and a trip to a lap dancing club in exchange for allowing a company to build a wind turbine on his land, according to a council document.

The apparent bribe was made as part of an alleged “dirty tricks” campaign to use financial incentives as a sweetener for more turbines across the Welsh countryside.

During an emergency meeting of Nelson community council near Caerphilly, South Wales, to discuss controversial new green power installations, minutes show a member of the public claimed that Bute Energy, a Scottish company focused on green power schemes in Wales, had made the offer to a local farmer.

The clean energy company strongly denies this allegation, saying that no such offer was ever made. 

Read more (paywalled): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/08/farmer-claims-he-was-offered-cash-and-trip-to-lap-dance-clu/

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of interesting incentives being offered, though offering an erotic experience in return for allowing wind turbines, if this is what happened, is a new low.

I was at a power line protest a few months ago in which one of the participants accused companies of offering $500 shopping vouchers in return for signing away land rights. The extent of the land right giveaway was allegedly obfuscated in the small print.

I don’t know what actually happened in this particular case, but I am getting a strong sense that some renewable energy developers are getting desperate, especially in places where a future change of government is on the cards, and their short term payoff is proportionate to hitting progress milestones. Most of the low hanging fruit has been picked, and remaining landowners who haven’t already accepted offers are in some cases proving to be a significant obstacle to renewable developers receiving their next tranche of taxpayer cash.

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January 9, 2024 10:09 am

Now if it’d been a sheep giving the lap dance Tavey would’ve taken the deal. 😉

bobpjones
Reply to  Mumbles McGuirck
January 9, 2024 11:42 am

You rotten swine! I had exactly the same thoughts. 😂😂😂😂😂

Aye, a good ole bit o’ ogitaggin on the dance floor, would go down well. 😄

Reply to  Mumbles McGuirck
January 9, 2024 12:54 pm

That is a Llap Dance in Wales. and should only be done intermittently.
Define a recreation centre in Cardiff. A sheep tied to a lamp-post.
Would you prefer a Polish lap-dancer or a Lappish Pole Dancer

Reply to  alastairgray29yahoocom
January 9, 2024 1:26 pm

Would probably end up with a bearded trans lap-dancer of the very ugly kind !

Scissor
Reply to  bnice2000
January 9, 2024 4:23 pm

Might need a crane after that.

sturmudgeon
Reply to  Scissor
January 9, 2024 7:24 pm

At my age, I’d be happy with one.

Michael S. Kelly
Reply to  sturmudgeon
January 10, 2024 9:39 am

A great Rodney Dangerfield line: “At my age, I envy a stiff wind.”

Reply to  Scissor
January 10, 2024 4:20 am

Presumably the crane is only using “clean energy” to do its job.

Jim Turner
Reply to  alastairgray29yahoocom
January 10, 2024 5:05 am

Alastair, is your joke about just putting the Welsh guttural ‘ll’ in front of ‘lap’, or did you know that llap is actually a real welsh word, meaning scrotum? I am not a Welsh speaker and only know this via Monty Python’s Welsh martial art – ‘llap goch’ – red scrotum. For more information, see this link: https://www.llapgoch.org.uk/

Bryan A
January 9, 2024 10:14 am

They might buy more interest if they offered 5% of the subsidy payments over the life of the turbine and 1¢ per KWh produced

Bryan A
Reply to  Bryan A
January 9, 2024 10:34 am

Better yet, if they really want to bribe the land owner, give them their electricity usage for free over the life of the turbine

JamesB_684
Reply to  Bryan A
January 9, 2024 11:53 am

So … 15 years of intermittent electricity and then a huge bill to remove the broken tower?

Reply to  Bryan A
January 9, 2024 12:12 pm

A pair of smart suited Londoners (Sean & Jamie) visited me, in the far NE corner of Cumbria, having spotted my 2 toy turbines (Sammy and Wang Wang)

My farm seemed ideal, it had a 35 mile uninterrupted vista to the prevailing south west and a nice phat 11kV 3-phase line running across it.

They asserted that if I let them plant a 500kW turbine in a far corner of a field, I’d get one pence for every kWh it produced.
At the time, the ‘going rate’ for retail electric was about 18 pence so there’s your 5%.

They weren’t very clued up on the process, the largest turbine that could connect to my transmission line was ‘only’ 250kW

I knew of and often visited (to artificially inseminate his cows) a dairy farm 24 miles away as the crow flies from mine. With binoculars I could see his windmill, one of a group of 3 spread over 2 adjacent dairy farms.

Each turbine was rated 500kW and he always reckoned that the one he had doubled the income from his 90 cow dairy heard

Reply to  Bryan A
January 9, 2024 3:12 pm

How about 1 cent per kWh promised?

observa
Reply to  Bryan A
January 9, 2024 7:16 pm

I figure 1c per nameplate kW times 24 hours daily would do me fine and the bigger and more the merrier.

observa
Reply to  observa
January 9, 2024 7:37 pm

PS: They said they’d get back to me so I told them don’t leave it too long as we’re all on TikTok together and understand the marketplace-
Labor committed to wind power after project blocked (msn.com)
Robbins Island wind farm appeal heads to court as activists and community members launch one last attempt (msn.com)

Reply to  observa
January 9, 2024 11:35 pm

£43.8 million a year?!

Did I do the math right and is 1 pence 100th of a pound sterling?

500,000KW nameplate (always base the deal on the flat rated output, not the actual production or the lack thereof) x 24 x365 x 0.01

mikeq
Reply to  PCman999
January 10, 2024 1:35 am

you multiplied the 500kW by 1,000 tpo get 500,000kW before you started your calc.
For a 500kW turbine, at 1p per rated kW per hour for the full year, the full calc is:

500kW x 0.01GBP/kw x 24 hr/day x 365 day/yr = GBP 43,800

(US keyboard, no Pound key 🙂 )

Reply to  mikeq
January 10, 2024 3:41 am

Here, £, borrow mine. 🙂

January 9, 2024 10:16 am

Well the offer is firmly within wokey ends- justify- the- means- philosophy, and Epsteinian proclivities that A-list Wokies prefer.

January 9, 2024 10:19 am

Can’t have happened. Nothing about it on the BBC website.

Richard Page
Reply to  general custer
January 9, 2024 11:42 am

Sarc tag. There are sarcasm impaired in the vicinity!

Sean2828
January 9, 2024 10:42 am

Reminds me of a joke I heard recently.

What do wind turbines and strippers have in common?

You have to throw money at them to get them to perform.

Bryan A
Reply to  Sean2828
January 9, 2024 10:51 am

At least the strippers return something of perceived value for the money

Editor
Reply to  Sean2828
January 9, 2024 10:58 am

At least strippers perform when the wind blows! Except I’m not sure that’s such a good idea!!!!

bobpjones
Reply to  Sean2828
January 9, 2024 11:45 am

There’s gotta be something about a blow job in all of that!

Editor
January 9, 2024 10:56 am

Was Ed Militwat the lap dancer?

Reply to  Paul Homewood
January 10, 2024 3:43 am

Lap-dog dancer.

bobpjones
January 9, 2024 11:43 am

Now a certain ex Prime Minister’s father-in-law, makes around £300Kpa. out of renting out his land.

Reply to  bobpjones
January 9, 2024 1:52 pm

You mean our illustrious Foreign Secretary?

Martin Brumby
Reply to  bobpjones
January 9, 2024 8:11 pm

Just to expand that, “Dave Boy”, “Hug a Husky” Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK 2010-2016, now Lord Cameron, Foreign Secretary, famously said that “we need to get rid of the green crap.”

However, his lovely wife Samantha’s father, Sir Reginald Sheffield, allowed BigWind to erect eight modest sized (by today’s standards) whirligigs in a corner of his ancestral estate.

For this, Sir Reginald, trousered £1,000 per day, rain, hail, snow or blow.

It has been suggested that the old sofa in the attic didn’t appeal and most “green crap” was consequently retained and, in fact, hugely expanded, entirely at the expense of the plebs who face the consequences also of unreliable energy.

Note also that Cameron was faced, when Prime Minister, with such opposition to the continued membership of the UK to the insanely corrupt, green and incompetent European Union, whose laws allowed vast numbers of unwanted invaders into the Country, regardless that almost none were “refugees” in any sense, but were largely excitable young male adherents of the Religion of Peace, that Cameron agreed to a referendum on leaving the EU. Despite spending millions campaigning to remain, the British People voted to leave. Cameron’s response was to resign in a sulk.

It is fair to say that the Uniparty that rules us has only got worse since 2016, we still haven’t been allowed to leave the EU properly, invaders are everywhere to be seen and Big Wind is lavished with hundreds of Billions of taxpayers’ and energy users’ money to despoil our once pleasant land.

Reply to  Martin Brumby
January 10, 2024 3:45 am

“Dave Boy”, “Hug a Husky” + Pig porker……

January 9, 2024 12:20 pm

So totally childish and self-tittivating, what has become of this world?
(Don’t answer that)

Even before the offer was patently made as a joke and the world has lost its sense of humour, if any UK lap dancing club ever actually delivers or supplies ‘sex’, it would be closed down, permanently, the day before yesterday.

Reply to  Peta of Newark
January 10, 2024 3:46 am

You need to get off your farm more Peta.

Bob
January 9, 2024 1:41 pm

Wind and solar have nothing. Their products don’t work, they aren’t long lasting, they are expensive, they aren’t dispatchable, they are ugly, they kill wildlife, they aren’t recyclable and they aren’t sustainable. Who in the hell would think they are a good idea?

Disputin
Reply to  Bob
January 10, 2024 3:14 am

A politician?
Oh, sorry, that’s after they get to Hell.

dk_
January 9, 2024 3:09 pm

Caveat emptor. Hope that he held out at least formovign the whole club to his property, and transferrable free electricity.for his entire property for thirty years (regardless of the lifetime of the turbine).

mikeq
January 10, 2024 2:01 am

Getting a fee based on the nominal power output of the turbines would be good, however, there are several caveats to be considered:

  1. Better to base the fee on nominal capacity at GBP x kW x 24 x 365, let the turbine take the market risk of sales.
  2. Access for maintenance may incur damage to crops due to use of trucks and heavy equipment. Landowner must be promptly compensated for this damage at market rates.
  3. Turbine owner may go bankrupt, or the turbine may catastrophically fail. Insurance required for both cases.
  4. Turbine owner should provide a bond of sufficient value to provide for decommissioning, demolition and disposal of the turbine and reinstatement of the land to its prior use either at failure or end of service life so that the land owner can get this done at no cost to himself if/when the turbine owner is no longer around to get it done.
  5. Penalties for failure to pay maintenance damage to crops, fees as scheduled, or obtain and/or maintain required insurances, and failure to provide the required demolition & reinstatement bond.

I wonder how many landowners have 3, 4 & 5 in their contracts?

I would not want to be a landowner who, having spent the loadsamoney, is then lumbered with the cost of demolition because the special purpose company set up to build and operate the turbine has suddenly and most unexpectedly gone bankrupt just before it is due to be decommissioned!

January 10, 2024 9:01 am

Interesting way to “save the planet” – trade carbon emissions for other more organic emissions.