I HAVE recently returned from Nepal, an independent kingdom, which has been a friend of Britain for almost 200 years.

Many thousands of its young men have and are serving in the armed forces of this country, the bravest of the brave - the Gurkhas.

Nepal has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world. It has taken in many Tibetan refugees, it has no social services and its capital city, Kathmandu, is heavily polluted without a pure water supply.

The Nepalese are forced to import very expensive fossil fuels from the Middle East and deforestation for fuel is a major concern to the government.

And yet there are a number of rivers flowing from the Himalayas and the Annapurnas which could provide sufficient hydro-electricity not only for Nepal's need, but for sale to North India, which has similar problems.

If the power conglomerates of this country were to invest in our friends, instead of destroying our beautiful, fragile moors with expensive, inefficient, noisy and erratic wind turbines, it would have a massive effect on the world's global warming issue and fossil fuel depletion.

Maybe they would make substantial profits - which is, of course, what they are really interested in.

Harold Snape

Carus Avenue

Hoddlesden

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.