Yesterday I talked about the recent ONS UK survey of well-being and how this proposal by Scottish Power Energy Networks (SPEN) could reduce the capital value (the value of our homes) by something in the order of £100m. Today I want to discuss another, potentially more important, element of this survey – that is, how we feel about … More Well-being: how we feel aboutwhere we live!

Yesterday I talked about negative externalities and I gave an example from a paper by Sims and Dent (2005) in relation to their research into determining the effect of power lines and pylons and how they negatively impact the value of adjacent homes. Today I have been reading about National Well-being, something the government keeps … More Loss of economic capital: what will SPENs proposal cost the region?

A paper by Sally Sims and Peter Dent of Oxford Brookes University explores this subject, albeit in an urban environment. They found that if an overhead line is within 100m of a property it reduces the value by up to 17% whereas if a pylon is within 250m of a property it can reduce in value … More What about the value of my home: will it fall in value and by how much?

Several concerned residents have been in touch to report problems with internet communications.  Firstly, in upland rural areas quite a number of people don’t have a land-line telephone connection and consequently don’t have broadband access.  Secondly, a number have elderly neighbours who don’t have access to a PC. Both groups, although concerned about Scottish Power Energy Networks (SPEN) proposal … More No Internet: how best to handle this?

When we first looked into creating an on-line petition on behalf of concerned residents in Dumfries & Galloway against Scottish Power Energy Networks (SPEN) Strategic Reinforcement Project the first question that came to mind was: what is the basis of the petition?  In other words, what do we want to petition about? That’s a tough question because it … More Petitioning: but what is it we want to petition about?

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines blight as “a thing that spoils or damages something” and I can’t help feeling that this is exactly what Scottish Power Energy Networks (SPEN) wants to do to the beautiful Galloway scenery with their proposal to install a 400kV ‘supergrid’ overhead network throughout the region. So by definition they wish to blight … More Blight: at what price?