AT a time when local authorities are trying desperately to attract and keep new tourists, it is ironic that there is so little protest about the proliferation of wind turbines turning our beautiful county into a vast power station.

Now, there is also a National Grid project to put a line of enormous electricity pylons across the Lincolnshire Wolds.

The "wide skies" promoted by county tourism chiefs are gradually being filled with gigantic plastic propellers.

While we should help counter global warming, it is unfair that this area, with some of England's lowest CO2 emissions, should bear such a grossly disproportionate share of the environmental and economic burden.

With honourable exceptions, local politicians seem simply not to care about this destructive project.

It is not enough for councillors to say "we have to do what London tells us." If this is so, why bother having a council at all?

Local councils' powers are admittedly limited but there are tactics they could employ to delay, minimise or avert unwanted projects.

At the very least, they could and should make a corporate protest on behalf of the area they are supposed to care for and the people they are supposed to serve.

Other parts of the country, where the local authorities are braver and more imaginative, have not had these installations inflicted on them.

Such resistance as there is comes from individuals whose horizons are being deformed by monstrous machines and small groups like the Baumber Windfarm Action Group, whose excellent "Tennyson Turbine Trail" leaflet shows just how disastrously the county's skyline has been altered since Tennyson's time (copies available from www.bwag.co.uk).

It is about time that councillors thought about this hugely important issue and spoke up for Lincolnshire's beauty and best interests before it's too late.

Derek Turner

Chairman of the Lincolnshire Marsh Protection Group, Theddlethorpe All Saints.