OBJECTIONS to a wind farm planned for farmland close to the village of Bishopton, near Stockton, by the RAF, Civil Aviation Authority and local people brings into focus the whole need of sources of energy.

If every application for such sites was agreed they would produce less than 15 per cent of the UK needs.

Is "wind farms" the new buzzword to environmentalists along with "bio-fuel" (a food disaster in the making)?

For many years I've advocated the use of the millions of tons of coal under this country. Not the smoking, belching pitheaps, or men working in atrocious conditions, but coal cut by robotic machines and transferred to the surface to be burned in sealed generation stations whose gas and fumes are returned to the excavated mine or used industrially.

This has been done in pilot stations in the US and France. Why no programme of this nature in the UK? It could make us less reliable to the whims and rip-offs of foreign governments.

R Harbron, Stockton-on-Tees.