When the wind blows

Sir: Clare Oxford’s piece (‘Gone with the wind turbines’, 12 April) is both timely and sad. Those who applaud the use of these infernal machines are prone to eulogise their efficiency by saying (in the same annoying, dumbed-down way in which commentators always compare the size of something with the number of football pitches it equates to — presumably on the basis that a normal person is unable to conceive of anything larger) that the number of machines to be erected ‘could provide power for x thousand homes’.