Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

a few of non-political questions .....
for how long has the Environment Agency been in existence?
for how long has the present head of the agency been in place?
what has been the agency's policy on say dredging for say the last 7/10 years?
has there been any fundamental changes in policy over that period?

then of course there are other aspects, especially with regard to building on known flood plain ..... the Environment Agency has little or no say in the granting of such approvals

They stopped dredging in the late 1990s.

To be fair the environment agency can help, but only up to a certain extent depending on quite a few things : first of all : is there money in the kitty ?...is it possible to keep the Somerset levels free of flooding ?....how long would it take to organise a plan ?.....how fast can emergency repairs be put into place....not easy questions to be answered in a few minutes....!..
Seas are rising....icecaps are melting.....in fact I remember glaciers in the Alps as a child being much larger,.. longer,.. bigger than they are today....this melting and flooding and extreme weather is a global trend : the South of france is having record levels of rainfall with terrible flooding !....they are not prepared either...
I don't agree with just giving up land to the seas or retreating as they call it.. if it can be saved within reason...but a plan needs to be put in place for the next hundred years on what can or shall be done because the costs are astronomical !..
Reclaiming land from the wash in East Anglia is a big possibility and at the same time would protect the fens from total flooding and destruction....the bird sanctuaries would be saved ...the seal colonies as well ..and could be recreated on the other side of the dam as well as a massive new floodfree area created with new towns...farmland...thouands of new square miles recaptured from the sea....probably creating half a million new jobs..perhaps more....big project over several decades....the Dutch do and have protected their shoreline with huge infrastructure building projects like this...why don't we do the same ?...

to remain above water, the dutch have had zero option for centuries as the land itself has always been intrinsically below sea level ......
this is not the case in somerset (i think) and the drainage of the fens was done centuries ago and, i believe, not without considerable downside though not sure what

the dutch have had plenty of their own disasters too, no doubt with more to follow in the decades ahead if they are unlucky

They are experts in protecting land from flooding....you have to say...this flooding is not going to go away...it's going to get worse...

required field - good post apart from the, "is there money in the kitty?" bit.There seemed to be £billions available when this country got involved in the Iraq debacle. I wonder how much was spent on bombing Bagdad to rubble and then trying to rebuild.

There's always money for wars!

I wonder if there is any money in the kitty for the insurance claims? Cos the insurance industry will be looking to blame someone for their losses.

What about the knock on problems of people with in effect uninsurable, and therefor unsellable/unmortgageable property?

And just wait till the legal eagles get involved.


it's going to make the 3-4 million £'s cost of dredging the waterways look cheap.

was this flooding foreseeable?
not really, i would venture, and thus effective pre-emptive work was not really a feasibility - it would have had to have been proposed, discussed and put in place at least a decade ago
as an analogy, for how long has HS2 or building new runways been under discussion?

on the other hand, Lord Whatnot's pathetic reaction to the situation is despicable at best

"David Cameron overrules Environment Secretary Owen Paterson to order urgent dredging in Somerset to combat the flooding"

attribution please, and what is the rest of the story that assuredly attaches?

was this flooding foreseeable?


Of course it was, that's why they have been dredging the waterways for donkeys years.

I live in Hampshire and the local council stopped cleaning out the drains at the sides of the roads years ago, so every Autumn when the leaves fall off the trees the drains get totally blocked up - every time we have heavy rain the roads become flooded. It's not exactly rocket science is it.

is that true?
while that used to be the case when i was a child - i was brought up on the Thames near Henley - i don't recollect any dredging for many many years
certainly there are also disadvantages in so-doing, the effects on the eco-system being secondary, as for obvious reasons it can and even will completely change flow patterns ..... thus, if water is flowing more swiftly - an obvious effect of dredging - then, apart from anything else, bank erosion will increase significantly .... so now you've created new and different problems

DD - building on flood plain is a spiffing idea too! .... not only will those houses be probne to flooding anyway, but of course there is then no "waste" area for excess water to go, whether from the river or run-off from the land side

Insurance costs are going to escalate that's for sure....and those that have had their homes flooded will never be able to get a quote again...

Minister resigns shock horror!




Immigration minister resigns for employing illegal immigrant

Prime minister accepts resignation of Mark Harper, who launched government's 'go home' campaign last year


theguardian.com, Saturday 8 February 2014 16.20 GMT



http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/08/immigration-minister-resigns-illegal-immigrant-mark-harper

One way to combat illegal immigration is to bring in a law that : all employers part-time or fulltime are obliged to check the visa number that the employee must provide to the employer, and then the employer logs on or sends by post the number to a national register at the home office who then check their database to see if that person or persons are in the uk with a proper visa or not. If that number doesn't come up...something is wrong ...if that number comes up several times, then something is wrong...

Labour have been breaking the work permit laws for some time

The Arnie Graf visa row is simmering below the surface. James Forsyth reports in this week’s Spectator:

“It would be wrong, though, to think of Labour as a totally happy ship at the moment. There is the row over the visa status of Arnie Graf, the American community organiser and a close ally of Miliband. Graf’s friends think rivals inside the Labour machine deliberately leaked the news that he had no work permit in an effort to undermine him. Miliband’s confidants, by contrast, think the leak was designed to embarrass Iain McNicol, who as the party’s general secretary might would be hurt most by any administrative failure.

employer logs on or sends by post the number to a national register
oh yes for sure ..... can you see your local small-time city restaurants doing that or any number of other low cost labour industries?

I'm not sure why this mistake is deemed a resignation offence.

He appears to have complied with the rules.


After some of the other cock ups ie waterways, why is cameroon so quick to hang his head on a spike?