YOU can never keep a good protester under wraps – as owners of the wind farm at Coldham discovered.

John Stoneman, from the Cambs Environmental and Wildlife Protection, has for nearly a decade campaigned against wind turbines which he describes as “dead end technology”.

He’s become a one-man ‘wind watch’ and so Brakespeare was not in the least bit surprised to hear from him that two turbines at Coldham are standing idle.

He reckons the delay in fixing them is a “tremendous betrayal of public support. These are �2million machines that have been subsidised by the consumer.

Mr Stoneman, pictured pointing to a turbine at Coldham which he says has not moved for five months, said: “While they aren’t running it is a complete waste.

“Now that we have got them here they should be doing their level best to squeeze all the energy out of them that they possibly can.”

Owners Scottish Power Renewables tell me work on repairing the turbines is ongoing “and we hope to be completing them shortly. One of the turbines is offline with a minor fault and scheduled to be returned to service this week.

“A specific, complex issue has caused the other long-term turbine fault and detailed investigations are continuing with the aim of returning it to service relatively soon.”

Not that this reassures Mr Stoneman who believes that “if this turbine failure were to manifest itself in similar models, you could end up with a �22million site that’s actually producing nothing. It does not justify what has been done to our environment”.

His killer punch that “we are being duped by these things that are based on

30-year-old dead end technology” will no doubt be echoed at a 10-day public inquiry next month into more turbine applications for Fenland.