HAVE we become a nation of moaners and complainers or are we now simply more aware of our ‘rights’?

There is no doubt that the advent of social media has made it much easier for disparate groups of people opposed to, well just about anything, to organise themselves into actual physical action and by the means of the internet to mount cyber campaigns for or against, well just about anything.

I suppose we should be happy at the democratisation of protests. Now, anyone can have their say. It’s just a pity some protesters don’t sit down and think through what they are actually saying before they rush into cyber print.

You only have to look at the anti-fracking protest at Balcombe in West Sussex.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for the villagers there and can well understand why they mounted their protest. But within days, thanks to the power of the internet, the protest camp had grown to the size of a tented village in its own right and the TV interviews proved that the protesters in Balcombe were from all parts of the country.

We had a similar situation when Manchester Airport wanted to build its second runway, which brought about a massive eco-warrior campaign and thrust protester Swampy into the national news spotlight.

I don’t really have a problem with people mounting protests. I have been a protester in my own small way, fighting plans to turn a disused factory near my house into a ‘waste transfer station’ (a scrapyard by any other name).

Happily, we won that particular battle.

There is a general principle in law which says something like: If you elect to live near a nuisance, you have no grounds for complaint; if a nuisance moves in near to you, you do have grounds for complaint.

So if you’re living a nice, semi-rural existence in leafy West Sussex and out of the blue, Cuadrilla moves its drilling machines in next door, you’ve got the right to say something.

The second runway was, in my opinion, a more complex case. There is no doubt the airport, if you consider it a nuisance, has been there for a long time. Anyone buying a detached mansion in Mobberley or Knutsford would have got the ‘benefit’ of that reflected in the purchase price of their home.

You have to ask if there is any real cause for complaint, then, about aircraft taking off or landing from either runway.

Where the nuisance/protest problem really seems to cause the most grief comes with the issue of power generation.

There can be little doubt that energy generation is an issue. As a country, we have more or less stopped using coal and our supplies of North Sea gas aren’t what they were to an extent we now have to import it, both to use domestically and for gas-powered electricity generation.

But the minute a company comes up with an alternative energy source, out come the protesters.

In Northwich, the plans for an energy from waste plant sparked fervent protests that have been well documented in this newspaper, and the same has happened in Davyhulme with plans for a plant to generate electricity by burning biomass.

And it’s not just incineration that causes protesters to rally round. It is only a year since the campaign to stop a wind farm at Frodsham Marshes was called off after Government gave the go ahead and the extravagantly named Chester West and Cheshire Council had to admit defeat.

And any mention of incineration to deal with waste is enough to turn mild-mannered people into latter-day Swampys.

But, and here’s the problem, when I walk into my kitchen, I expect there to be power at my fingertips to boil a kettle. I want my lights to come on at a flick of a switch, I want power for my smart TV. I also want my rubbish taken away and disposed of (after I have carefully sorted anything that can be recycled).

But the protesters don’t want energy creating from the waste my household produces. They also don’t want landfill sites, fracking, biomass generators or windfarms.

I also assume, like me, they want to be able to light and heat their homes and have their rubbish disposed of, not and for the foreseeable future. This is a circle that has not been squared.

So what’s the answer?

I would be delighted to hear your views, especially from those opposed to these schemes, because unless we come up with one, before too long, you will be writing to me by the light of a tallow candle.