Sir, – Your April 4 edition contained letters headed “Fuel poverty” and “Power profits”

plus, particularly for me, an appropriate front page story beginning “Campaigners are celebrating after controversial plans for a 95ft wind turbine on farmland were refused”.

As a tenant on farmland for several years, I have personal experience of annual power cuts and fuel poverty, while my landlord profits from controversial wind turbines which sprang up (undisclosed) six months after I moved in.

On Monday, March 24, I was without electricity for nearly five hours, spending more time in bed than my health problems and fuel poverty usually dictate. One of countless local area power cuts – even in recent extreme winters. While through my windows I see wind turbines on this land. My landlord even benefits from my health problems, placing me on a priority list with the power grid.

A few years ago, when he switched energy providers, I redirected a complimentary bottle of champagne which arrived at my home for him. No, he’s never thanked me. Not all farmers are destitute heroes.

That’s just propaganda.

Local councils pay taxpayers’ money to farmers who help snowbound motorists, and freebies include surplus road-surfacing materials from suppliers etc.

As private landlords, farmers receive more taxpayers’ money from tenants’ housing benefit (most, if not all, of their rent). Then there are government and EU subsidies.

Jenny Medhurst (Power profits letter, D&S April 4) stated that “financing, producing and distributing energy”

should not be geared “solely towards maximising corporate profit.” But landowners profiting from it are hiding under the anonymity radar, particularly when this contradicts the media’s and politicians’ underdog image of farmers.

STEVE CLARK, Cornsay, Durham.