WITH a cry for all cars to go electric, it has to be contradictory to object to ‘passive projects’ that satisfy this huge new demand.

Solar panels do that! But wherever they are proposed – like at Rhosygadfa, near Gobowen, and now at remote 1,159ft Cefn-y-Maes, above Rhydycroesau – there’s massive objection.

Engena Limited wants 2,588 solar panels, plus an energy storage facility, sited high up the hill there.

Last Tuesday Oswestry Mayor Vince Hunt, at the North Shropshire Planning Committee, cleared the way for access to the site by proposing it be agreed, while declaring being against the project itself!

The final say for this self-sustaining scheme, just a smidgeon within Wales, now rests with neighbouring Powys.

But it has generated serious objections from Selattyn and Gobowen Parish Council. Clerk Amy Gregory said the community largely objected to it because the electricity generated was ‘not going to the locality’.

Quite what that has to do with it fails me, as long as it boosts resources. And interestingly, when the Advertizer posted it on Facebook, there was not a single dissent from the near-dozen postings.

Solar panels make no noise or smell, produce power for heating and lighting and utilise areas of little other use. Remember the alternative free power source is fracking.

DESPITE health secretary Jeremy Hunt urging NHS trusts three years ago to slash their car-parking charges, Shropshire ignored the plea and from this month dropped the 30-minute free parking to just 20 minutes, while it upped two hours of parking to £3, three hours to £4, four hours to £5, five hours to £6 and for 24 hours a wicked £8! Such a tax on the sick is wicked and half the UK’s 147 hospitals have now raised their charges in the past three years, with some charging £4 an hour. It’s a stealth tax for falling ill.

DO WE detect a bit of bribery during a visit to Shropshire by shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth? He not only called for a halt to the county’s controversial £300m Future Fit shake-up of hospital services, but contrary to the proposal, pledged he would keep Telford’s A&E open!

I TURNED blind bend approaching tiny Weston from Morda last week and had to do an emergency halt, when a double- decker Arriva bus filled the whole narrow road ahead! What on earth was it doing there? I’d just got over that shock when an out-of-service single Arriva bus appeared over the top of the old railway bridge in the village. What was it also doing there?

MEMORIES of being a teenager, and powering a canoe through Thomas Telford’s World Heritage site Llangollen Canal’s 174m-long tunnel at Chirk, have come flooding back. An inspection of how the one million brick tunnel is still faring 200 years on is under way.

Heaven knows what they’ll discover in this vintage structure, as it was in a terrible state, with missing bricks and loads of scary water voles, those 50-odd years ago!