DURING the recent period of very cold weather and very little wind, caused by high pressure over the UK the many hundreds of land-based wind turbines have stood motionless producing zero electricity.

When will a member of the Government have the courage to announce that wind turbines in the UK are a failure and that they are no more effective than the windmills of yesteryear that were used to drain the wetlands of East Anglia – windmills that were eventually replaced by pumps driven by more reliable diesel engines?

Moreover, the failed wind turbines would never have been built without a subsidy from the public purse and one must wonder how our leaders could have been persuaded, at a time of economic restraint, to impose this financial burden on those who can ill-afford the significant increase of £400 per annum in their energy bills.

The subsidy for wind turbines should be cancelled immediately and re-directed at proven technology such as hydroelectricity, gas and nuclear power stations.

Sadly, however, it may now be too late to avoid the shortfall in electricity that is forecast for 2015.

In the meantime the energy minister, Chris Huhne plays his fiddle while Rome burns.

James A Cowan, Durham.