THE draft Local Plan has caused alarm over the thousands of homes planned, but another side seems to have gone largely unnoticed, namely the wind farms.

I urge readers in the villages outside York to find out what is in store for them by visiting the council website and calling up the local maps, where the turbines are marked as patches of red crosses.

They are not named as wind farms but that is what they are, and the scale is appalling. Virtually every village outside the city has one on its doorstep and some are almost surrounded by them.

All routes into York from any point of the compass will have to run a gauntlet of these turbines. In my village, a wind farm planned about 400 yards due east from us will completely wipe out our open view of trees and woodland receding into the distance topped by the Wolds on the horizon.

How can a major tourist city such as York ring itself with these eyesores in the name of ideology?

Visitors will lose the dramatic view of the Minster tower rising out of a vale as they approach and instead be confronted by a sea of turbines, most not working because the Vale of York is notorious for still air.

Many years ago a Labour Party general election manifesto was so plain barmy it was described as the longest suicide note in history. Our Labour council seems to have the same death wish.

Peter Flanagan, Stockton-on-the-Forest, York.