Voters will have to accept pylons or higher taxes, says Starmer

As usual Starmer has little idea of what he is talking about. There is at least one UK based company that installs underground cables by cutting a very narrow trench laying the cable and backfilling in one operation with very little disruption and at a cost comparable to overhead cables.

You voted for this - are you enjoying the sunlit uplands?

I would happily pay a bit more in tax to make sure the cables were put underground. I would be even happier to pay much more in tax to fund winter fuel allowance for OAPs, a fully funded NHS, and to have rail, mail, water and energy all re-nationalised!

The photograph illustrating this news item certainly looks ominous and even somewhat intimidating, but despite that I do wonder if the reality in most places would turn out to look as formidable as this accompanying photograph suggests. I say that because I was born and brought up in south Manchester within barely more than a mile of the points where suburbia ended and open rural countryside still persisted. The whole area had lines of electricity pylons stalking the countryside, and in all honesty I never saw them as any sort of abominable blight: I just accepted them as a feature of the landscape, and, indeed, one which even had a sort of gaunt elegance. Maybe I'd have felt differently if I'd been old enough to remember a time when they hadn't been there; but the fact was that I wasn't old enough and as I'd never known anything different I never saw them as any sort of significant blight on the countryside. The hard reality is that we all want and need electricity to power our homes, and we'd quickly whinge if our access to it was restricted. Having by chance come across some past records of distant controversies, I read that back in the mid-19th century there were numerous folk who bitterly opposed the expansion of the railways on the grounds that they defiled the beauty of their local rural landscape. Whereas now we're all entirely used to them, and we moaned spectacularly when, back in the 1960s, Richard Beeching's cuts deprived so many of us of our local rail services. Which leaves me wondering whether, fifty years on from now, we - or, perhaps, our descendants - will take as little heed of the increased proliferation of pylons as I did as a teenage kid way back in the 1960s.

"We want cheap green leccy!!!!" "Wotchamean, it doesn't appear by magic?"

Has starmer actually read the costings comparisons between pythons and trenches or has some lobbyists told him its expensive?

Er, does Sir K know that electricity infrastructure is not paid for through taxation?

The real fight should be :- "No unreliable erratic ineffective Wind Turbines = No Pylons and No Cables"

Power lines underground are more secure when war breaks out so cheaper in the long run!