I WONDER if I may gently challenge your rather defeatist position on these vast solar panel sites?

I am so pleased the Houghton Down site has been rejected, and thank you for bringing good news so clearly.

I think that a whole rash of these terrible applications for factory-style developments are due, the one at Barrows Hill having been unfortunately allowed to proceed. They want to make an eyesore of 45 acres near Abbotts Ann. We are all very worried about the plan.

I hope that the preservation of the countryside will always come first and foremost in councillors’ minds and not some silly notions of renewable energy and saving the already doomed planet.

The massive overpopulation factors alone (often tied up with religious matters) have long passed that tipping point or end game figure.

Nothing we do now in Britain can reverse that. Also bearing in mind that China opens three coal fuelled power stations every week of the year, so why on earth are we sacrificing our beautiful Test Valley countryside when Britain’s actions can now have no effect on the world balance of global warming or population?

Of course the silly green lobby doesn’t want to admit any of these simple truths and your defeatist “white flag” also sounds like a death knell for our countryside.

Mrs Marion Childs, Bulbery, Abbots Ann.