Our crofters have had years to consider the "lucrative" income that we could "enjoy" if this wind farm were granted, and we have said no each time we were asked. Sixteen surveys or ballots have all yielded overwhelming opposition to this project, comprehensively backed up by more than 13,000 objections submitted to the government - with only 77 letters in support - hardly the "widespread support at both national and local level" which he claims this project has. We are not for sale, at any price. We are not the "needy" yokels that Mr Maciver claims, nor will we be bought by dangling "lucrative" carrots as bait to encourage us to capitulate. We most certainly do not share his views that building 181 giant turbines, digging miles of roads, drains and ditches, pylons, excavating five huge quarries (each up to a mile long) would be "managing the moorland to the benefit of our environment".

I am astonished that Iain M MacIver, factor of Stornoway Trust Estate, is questioning the integrity of the crofters of the Galson and Barvas estates (Letters, January 18). The 730 crofters who publicly declared their intention to challenge this proposal are from these two estates, a fact made quite clear in our press release of July 2007.

Mr Maciver has no authority, therefore, to claim I presented misleading information in my letter (January 16), or attempted to "distort the truth". Our crofters have had years to consider the "lucrative" income that we could "enjoy" if this wind farm were granted, and we have said no each time we were asked. Sixteen surveys or ballots have all yielded overwhelming opposition to this project, comprehensively backed up by more than 13,000 objections submitted to the government - with only 77 letters in support - hardly the "widespread support at both national and local level" which he claims this project has.

We are not for sale, at any price. We are not the "needy" yokels that Mr Maciver claims, nor will we be bought by dangling "lucrative" carrots as bait to encourage us to capitulate. We most certainly do not share his views that building 181 giant turbines, digging miles of roads, drains and ditches, pylons, excavating five huge quarries (each up to a mile long) would be "managing the moorland to the benefit of our environment".

In any case, Mr Maciver would do well to hark back to comments he made on the BBC TV programme Cunntas (recorded in Barvas in 2005), where he stated: "Furthermore, none of this could ever go ahead, and still can't, without the crofters' agreement. It won't go ahead without the agreement of crofters."

 

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