.In their battle to save the offshore Isle of Tiree from vanishing in a marine forest of onshore to offshore wind turbines – the Array being around five times the size of the Island itself, wrapped around sunny flat little Tiree from the south east to north west enveloping and towering over its glorious Skerryvore Lighthouse.

The determined No Tiree Array campaigners, reports  ForArgyll with a planning decision on the near horizon, have quickly made use of the battle the American tycoon, Donald Trump, has just carried to Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond.

Trump, developing a golf resort the size of a small town at a 200 hectare stretch of the beautiful Balmenie dunes on the northern fringe of Aberdeen. It will have two golf courses – one an international competition standard course, the other a second 18 hole course, both pay-to-play.  The resort will have a club house, hotel, apartments and  several hundred houses.

This  huge investment for the north east, with Scotland’s golf courses – built upon the country’s claim to have given birth to the game itself, is a successful emblematic marketing feature and  Trump incensed by a plan for an offshore 11-turbine test farm which will be in view of the Menie resort.

Saying  he was given private assurances that it would not get permission,  and the government now refusing to stop the test site wind farm Trump has opened hostilities. His letter to the First Minister  Trumps letter to Salmond is being circulated by the No Tiree Array team to all  concerned about offshore wind farms in Argyll waters, saying that Mr Trump’s anxieties are of considerable relevance to Argyll and to the Argyll  economy.

The Tiree campaigners say that the Trump letter resonates with many issues they themselves have raised in the last 18 months. They say: ‘When Trumps states in this letter  ” ..it will be looking through the bars of a prison …” please look at the Tiree image (top) and you will come to the the same conclusion  with regard to the SPR (Iberdrola) proposed development off Tiree of  a  180-300 Turbine  wind farm, each approx 160-200m high, the closest of which will only be 3 miles from Tiree’s shores and its community.’

The overall pan for the waters around Tiree, include this massive offshore windfarm running SE to NW, another to its north, and a wave farm and marine turbine farm to its east, ringing an island majoring on its naturalness with an artificial environment whose impacts no one has seriously measured.

Then there is the scale of the landside infrastructure to handle the power coming ashore and its transmission. How long would the immediate economic uplift last? And what would be the legacy when the last lumberjack, so to speak, left town? Who knows?

A problem, says the Argyll report  is that there is no contra-campaign putting its views widely in the public domain.  (Although Artistisagainstwindfarms  has some interesting support. ) We cannot therefore know whether this is because  the pro-lobby is quite small or because it is, as islanders culturally can be, quiet.

In what we openly recognise to be an unresolved conflict in our own stance on renewables and on energy provision, it has been the brutalist overall plan for the Tiree marine area which has driven us, unimaginably, not to dismiss the nuclear option.

NORTH EAST THE FIGHT APPEARS LOST

In December, two wind farms potentially generating 198MW in the north east of Scotland were approved by Energy Minister Fergus Ewing reported BBC News

Dozens of jobs will be created with the approval of the 177MW Dorenell wind farm on the Glenfiddich estate, near Dufftown, Moray. The 59-turbine farm will have the capacity to power 84,000 homes. Ewing said the project involvedmore than £250m capital investment and would generate at least £93m in direct benefits for the Scottish economy.

Owned by Christopher Moran, a self-made financier from London, the 40,000-acre Glenfiddich and Cabrach estate on Speyside south of Dufftown have one of the worst records for wildlife crime in Scotland, according  to environment reporter, Rob Edwards.

Moran stands to make more than £20m from the wind farm over the next 25 year. Edwards notes of Moran that in 1982 he was expelled from Lloyd’s of London for “discreditable conduct”. Four years later he was censured by the Stock Exchange, and 1992 fined $2m in New York for insider dealing.

Developer Infinergy has  committed to delivering "long-lasting community benefits", worth about £350,000 a year, including a new visitor centre. Moray Council, which had objected to the original application because it conflicted with its strategy for wind farm location, said it had no plans to appeal the minister's decision.

The  six-turbine, 21MW extension to the 104 MW Muaitheabhal wind farm (right) in Lewis will power an additional 9,000 homes.

In the second project, the Muaitheabhal Community Windfarm Trust will receive a share of revenue generated by the privately-owned element of the wind farm and extension Developer Crionaig Power will also pay a portion of its annual revenue to the Western Isles Development Trust.