Wind lobbyist Marcus Rand among Country Life's top ten most influential people

Pop star Madonna, the Prince of Wales, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) chief executive Marcus Rand; all are among the top ten people who wield most power over the UK countryside, according to lifestyle magazine Country Life. The pro-hunting and shooting publication, favoured by the well-heeled country set, has drawn up a top 100 of those who, for good or evil, most affect Britain's rural areas. The magazine bitterly opposes wind farms, which it dubs "the modern equivalent of the Klondike gold rush." Rand is ranked number seven on Country Life's list of the most feared and cheered-higher than Madonna at ten and government chief scientific advisor Sir David King at 11, whose warnings of the impending disaster of climate change have influenced government thinking. Rand's high ranking is a result, says Country Life, of the efforts of the BWEA's 310 corporate members who have built 1317 wind turbines on land since 1991, with a further 959 awaiting construction. It adds that the BWEA's lobbying "has reinforced wind as the principal means by which the government wants Britain to achieve its renewable energy targets, despite wind power's associated issues of unreliability and landscape depredation."