There are areas of somerset that have been under water for six weeks. Two weeks ago I was listening to a BBC local radio broadcast in the area of the Thames that is currently flooded and the Nimby's were saying that 'it serves them right for living in a part of somerset that could flood'
Well quite frankly I hope that the floods have washed out the mouths of the stuck up nimbys and they have as much, if not more misery than the people they showed no compassion for.
Should one go further rob, and condemn the fact that the British government still sees fit to send billions of £'s in aid to despots and ne'er too good dictators with their own space programs and allow the West Country to become a third world sink hole without a second thought?
Without a need to touch the foreign aid budget as outlined by Messrs Cameron and Pickles, what message does it give to the tax payers of Britain who are suffering considerable hardship at the hands of government austerity measures to learn that the money is/was there all along to prevent this catastrophe?
I feel very sorry for the poor people of the West Country and my heart goes out to them whilst at the same time remembering just how the British establishment shags its people rigid, as clearly evidenced in the uncomfortable shiftiness being witnessed in TV interviews with politicians - particularly that creep Smith.
An image of his ugly head on a spike with his pretty little dog stuffed up his arse is even more alluring than the Level's local MP's suggestion about flushing his head down a toilet.
How on earth are these people going to be able to recapture their lives when the flood waters subside?
It is true, the Germans are responsible for most of the hardship the flooded population is enduring, albeit in an in direct way.
Those lowlands were used for grazing for thousands of years, no farmer in his right mind planted crops in the area, cattle and sheep were simply moved to higher pastures when the ground got too wet, the grass recovered and life went on, then came WWII and the Government encouraged, cajoled and even forced farmers to turn the pastures into crop producing fields to feed a nation that was struggling to bring in imports of foodstocks, the convoys that did cross the atlantic brought vehicles, weapons and oil.
After the war the farmers continued to use the lowlands and flood plains to produce crops, the very act of which made the land even more vulnerable to flooding, it was only a matter of time before this current problem got worse, it could have been prevented had successive governments invested in making the lowlands safer by dredging rivers and planting more trees in the surrounding area to aid drainage but it never happened on the scale that it needed to.
The same can be said and has been said about building houses near to rivers, building houses and roads has exasperated the problem more-so than planting crops.
The longer implications of these floods could be a crash in house prices in lowland areas, a shortage of home grown produce and a loss of areas we have come to think of as normal land.
Climate change is affecting us more than some people like to think, weather patterns are surely changing and more severe rainfall is just one of those changes, the lowlands are going to be the worst hit by increased rainfall.
The people of the Netherlands have been worried about climate changes, over the years they have seen a drastic increase in the drying out of their soil, some believe this is due to climate change whilst others believe it is due to the vast amounts of wind turbines that have been erected in flat areas.
Nobody has all the facts but some say that whilst not being a good thing the drying soil has helped their land absorb the increase of rainfall they like us, have been experiencing.
That and the fact they do manage their land because they have always known the dangers and importance of managing it, they agree that climate change is having an effect but unlike the UK they do something about it before it gets to the state it has in the UK.
I agree and said, our successive governments and local authorities and water companies have been criminal in their management not only in general but moreso knowing that climate change has been taking place since the end of the ice age and is getting worse because of such things as greenhouse gases making the natural changes more rapid than before mans industrialisation of the planet.
Not this government, nor any that will follow can afford to pay to protect every individual in this country from every kind of weather related issue.
12 months ago, we had wall to wall news coverage of our country being brought to a standstill by snow and the government being berated for failing to prepare for climate change and an under investment in snow ploughs. I wonder if they bought them and what use they have been this year?
Today the government is being berated for failing to prepare for climate change - which now seems to include mild winters as well as cold winters, as climate change has now become a one size fits all catch phrase.
Watching the residents whose homes are on the Thames fllodplain bitterly complaining that, "it has not happened for 60 years." - Indeed very true....
The same people are saying that it would not have happened had the river been dredged but they are forgetting that in the intervening 60 years almost every other river in the UK has flooded and we are just not in a position to dredge every river and its tributaries on an on-going basis. Ironically, dredging rivers will NOT actually help because dredging simply moves the problem faster downstream and the problem quickly becomes someone elses problem.
I would also like to spare a thought for the very many northern towns who suffer flooding on a regular basis but get nothing like the sort of hysterical news coverage that we are seeing at the moment.
One last point about Somerset - in ancient times it was called the land of summer because most winters it was underwater. Its fertility is BECAUSE it has spent so much time underwater.
Buy a riverside property at a premium all well and good.
However by their very nature rivers carry water
When there is too much water, rivers flood hence the term 'flood plain'
You make your choice and buy them at your own risk in the knowledge that just because it wasn't flooded when you viewed it doesn't mean it never floods.
So don't come bleating to the rest of us when it does flood.
A sea view property also usually charges a premium.
Guess what, the coast is exposed to tides, gales, and storm surges.
So don't come bleating to the rest of us when it happens.
The Somerset levels is basically a man made environment of about 160,000 acres consisting of marine clay "levels" along the coast, and inland often peat-based with people draining the area since before the Domesday Book. The Moors and Levels being formed from a submerged and reclaimed landscape.
The Levels are about 20 feet above mean sea level (O.D.) and the general elevation of the inland Moors is 10 to 12 feet O.D. and with peak tides of 25 to 26 feet O.D. recorded at Bridgwater and Burnham-on-Sea, respectively, the Moors therefore lie below peak tides.
The Levels were frequently flooded by the sea during high tides, a problem that was not resolved until the sea defences were enhanced in the early 20th century. In addition, the problems of high fresh water floods are aggravated by the unrestricted entry of the tide along the Parrett, which is the only river in the Levels and Moors that does not have a clyse on it (the local name for a sluice). Discussions on whether a clyse is needed for the Parrett and whether it should be sited at Bridgwater or nearer the mouth of the river date back to 1939, at the start of World War II, and have not been resolved.
So despite all this being known, people continue to move into the area.
So don't come bleating to the rest of us when it does flood.
Harsh ? , maybe.
Want to change it ?
Then time to put hand in pockets and papers into ballot boxes so as to effect a change. You want effective water management, then it will cost.
Just ask the dutch just how much they spend each year
For example, The Second Delta Committee or Veerman Committee (officially State Committee for Durable Coast Development) gave its advice in 2008. It expects a sea level rise of 65 to 130 cm by the year 2100. Among its suggestions were:
to increase the safety norms tenfold and strengthen dikes accordingly,
to use sand replenishment to broaden the North Sea coast and allow it to grow naturally,
to use the lakes in the southwest river delta as river water retention basins,
to raise the water level in the IJsselmeer to provide freshwater.
These measures costing approximately 1 billion Euro/year, never mind their usual infrastructure spend.
I agree we cannot afford to prepare for every weather condition that may arrive, times they are a changing, we have witnessed earthquakes in the UK, winds so strong they start to register as hurricane, tornados albeit smaller scale than in tornado prone areas and so on..
But the flood plains are a different matter, the Government pushed the farmers to change their usage from grazing land to arable farming land during WWII as I said earlier, the Government through it's subsidiary councils granted planning permission for buildings in areas that are now flooded. They have to take responsibility and do something about the problem they created.
For a start they can make the water companies invest more of their profits back into the business instead of paying huge dividends to shareholders, now I know they need shareholders but the dividends being paid have been way higher than the predictions promised that made people buy those shares in the first place.
To say it has nothing to do with climate change as has been said on this thread is naïve and dangerous, I accept that the biggest problem is lack of investment by water companies, lack of action by Governments but that is so much more of a dereliction of their duties in view of the climate changes, small as they may be they are having an effect.
Areas currently flooded are being told to expect a months standard rainfall in one day tomorrow, this is not a one off, it keeps happening, can anyone say that this has nothing whatsoever to do with climate change, dare we take that chance and put it down to a freak season ? doesn't that give the government and water companies an excuse to say "we will compensate you this time but it won't happen again anytime soon".
Oh come on it was a tongue in cheek comment, we did turn a lot of grazing land into arable farming land during WWII but yes much of it was farmed long, long before then especially in the wetlands of Norfolk and Suffolk amongst other areas, I have seen the programs about the reed material boats (coracles ?) from medieval times that are still in use today and I watch wartime farm, during the war years though little effort was put into drainage for the areas that were being changed as people had other things on their time and a lot of people involved saw it as a short term measure that became long term, if you want my serious thoughts it is simply that the current situation is down to a multitude of actions or inactions as it is with all man made disasters.
Does it have to be anybody’s fault? Could it just be that we are impudent in the face of Mother Nature? Rivers are naturally un-dredged, it is us who have dredged them, if we have artificially increased the carrying capacity of water courses to stop them flooding as often does not mean we haven’t stopped them flooding ever.
We are having a prolonged period of heavy rain, this has been compounded with very strong winds, that does not mean we are going to get these conditions on a regular basis. Next winter we may have a very cold period of weather, what are we going to say when the powers that be say we haven’t any grit because we spent all our money on dredging rivers!
There is only so much money out there and there are only so many things you can prepare for, if you don’t agree with that next time you vote (if you can be bothered to vote) don’t vote for a party that is going to control spending which I am afraid limits you to the Socialist Workers Party and then watch all the money leave the country flooded rivers or not.
It’s no wonder the Aussies call us whingeing poms! It was not any government that dredged the rivers in the first place, it was the people who wanted to settle there and for centuries it was the people who worked on this land that managed it. Why has that changed? Why does it have to be anybody’s fault?
If we want to blame anybody, as a nation why don’t we collectively look in the mirror? And instead of trying to find someone to blame just perhaps realise that if we want our home grown organic meat and veg, if we want our lovely homes close to the river with views over the valley, if we want to up root trees that via their roots, aerate the ground and attract scores of other species that make up nature, that deflect the winds and replace them with bricks and mortar that are not noted for their absorbent qualities then when we get the largest rain fall for god knows how many years realise it is us who have f*cked it up! Mother Nature is going to win, every time!
What we have done and where we have done it is done! Do you think in the future we may learn a lesson and adapt our expansion? Ye and pigs might fly!
All this rain and flooding, and I'm still getting communications from Southern Water telling me we live in a "water stressed" area. Apparently I should be glad they've forced metering on us, stop using my hosepipe, and fix my drippy taps! :-x
Are you one of the water company shareholders taking excessive and unexpectedly high dividends from the water board profits ? is that why you think it is right for the water companies to pay these OTT dividends instead of investing some of the money back into the product we pay them to provide ?
True the Government has only so much money to go round, our money, our taxes, so the government is to blame, to blame for not making the water companies do their job and ensure the work we pay them for is carried out, instead they are now facing a huge bill to the taxpayer to compensate for the problems we are experiencing.
Of course we have to blame somebody, now we have a bill that we shouldn't have had if the Government had done it's job in the first place and made others do their job.
Fact, the water companies are declaring massive profits, shareholder dividends are way higher than promised and expected, investment into the business is by their own admission not enough, out of date sewers are failing, no new sewers are being built, no new resevoirs are being built and so on.
Dredging rivers would have been good for the environment and wildlife, dredging rivers would have prevented much of the problems in some areas, dredging rivers would have created jobs for the economy, dredging rivers would have cost very little compared to the cost the government is now facing in sorting the problem and then they will still be asked afterwards to dredge the rivers. The same applies to building flood defences in the most prevalent areas as they did in parts of Worcester.
When there is only so much money to go round it is prudent to spend it wisely, prevention is usually less expensive than the after the event costs with the PM now saying "money is no problem there is all available that is needed"
I do not hold and shares in any water company, think you have to be French to own them!
I am not too good with computers but hope you can read the link which lays down who is responsible for the upkeep of the rivers.
The problem with creating water storage in this country is nobody wants it in there area. I can see the comments now when we are threatened with a hose pipe ban in June but unfortunately we do not have the storage capacity to harvest the vast majority of the rain that has swept Britain this winter. It has been muted that a "national grid" of clean water should be built but for 9 months of the year there is no appetite for it. Red Ken scuppered the idea of a de-salivation plant at the mouth of the Thames.
But back to the floods, I do not believe what the sensational news reports are telling me about this being the worst ever winter for 200 years.
I appreciate that modern communication has saved lives this winter but in 1947/48 we had blizzards that affected large parts of the country. In 1953 we had storms that killed hundreds of people directly. 1962/63 snow, frost and ice from November to March and every year hundred of people die each year from cold and living in properties not fit for habitation!
A lot of flooding at the moment is not from rivers bursting there banks but from rising ground water. It does not look dramatic so they don't report it.
The sea levels have been effected by the strong winds so when we get very high tides they flood coastal areas. They also run into estuaries and up river mouths, this stops rivers flowing into the estuaries, the rivers back up and burst there banks.
I ask the same question, why does it have to be anybodies fault?
People may do not have the choice in where reservoirs are built, we have plenty of places to put them, such as vast uninhabitated areas of Cornwall, the Derbyshire Dales, National Parks all over the UK, and since it is the job of water companies to provide water for its customers they should be made to foot much of the bill for constructing them.
From thier profits, Water Companies are declaring far higher profits than were forecast when the privatisation took place and shareholders are being paid dividends way above those that were forecast when they invested in the water companies.
If the Government have to pay some of the costs surely it would be cheaper and wiser than paying billions in compensation after the floods as they have promised to do and the Government is still facing the costs of doing something about future flooding so it is obvious that had some action taken place before the event it would have actually saved water companies and the government money.
I aslo pointed out that the Dutch who have a greater threat of flooding and who are experiencing the same rainfall problem are not suffering in the same way as the UK is because they took action before the problem started
I think you would have to have your head buried in soft peat if you didn't agree that minimal investment could have prevented the flooding on the Somerset levels. Today was my misfortune to visit the levels, and whilst minimal homes are affected the loss of livelihood and grazing land is immense. But hey-ho these aren't stockbrokers or media types so who cares. Well not the government or the EA!
