If you would like to buy a picture by a little boy who wants to help, the following link has been set up by his mum. Funds going to be amalgamated with above fund raising appeal.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle
If you would like to buy a picture by a little boy who wants to help, the following link has been set up by his mum. Funds going to be amalgamated with above fund raising appeal.
Yup!! Normal people need to help those people suffering.
Cameron is a disgrace! The cuts to the Environment Agency, Army and Fire Brigades are coming home to roost. There are still major cuts for all these bodies to come. How the hell are we going to able to respond to more extreme weather in the future? Cameron should promise to restore their pre-election budgets or resign [preferably both].
Too many places to point fingers at the moment.. but the National Rivers Authority was disbanded in 1996 replaced by the Environment Agency, since when there has been little or no work maintaining the infrastructure.
I think the people of Somerset are more concentrated on getting through these dreadful times at the moment, as one said, the mud slinging can come later. I think we should respect that view and give them support that they need right now.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle
How the hell are we going to able to respond to more extreme weather in the future?
Assuming there IS going to be more extreme weather in the future?
And that's the key word - "assuming". Bad storms happen on average once every hundred years. But we've had two.
That's the thing about averages - they're just that - but people seem to think that because they happen on average that they should only happen in these defined time frames.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle
the website for the environment agency ends in .gov.uk.So they are just blaming themselves. They will be blaming the EA for all the rain weve had. As soon as possible we should charter coaches down to somerset and other flood hit areas and do our shopping down there and have a jolly good meal and drink in some of the affected hostelries to show support.
The insurance companies are in it for the money, so let them pay. They may carry more weight with the EA, in respect of having the rivers dredged, which ever part of the uk it is. I heard it was due to EA policy that was the result in St. Asaph in November 2012. More pics of Somerset. Hardly believable.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle
Great sensible blog from BBC Weatherman Paul Hudson relating to the rolling media coverage and southern bias:
Quote
The pictures of extensive flooding in Somerset, and the battering our coast has received, particularly in Cornwall, have been breath-taking.
But it is worth putting the current flood in context, and as distressing as it is to be flooded, the number of properties affected in the south of the UK is tiny compared to other floods in previous years.
For example, up until this weekend the total number of properties affected by floodwater in Somerset in the last few weeks is 40.
But during the coastal surge in early December last year, 688 properties were flooded along the Yorkshire coast alone, and according to the Environment Agency, flood defences protected 66,000 properties in the Yorkshire and Humber area at that time.
Since last week, between 800 and 900 properties have flooded in the UK, primarily in southern Britain.
Although this number may rise significantly in the next few days, particularly with the Thames now at record levels in relatively highly populated parts of Berkshire and Surrey, it is still comparatively small compared to the last big flood to hit the UK.
That was In June 2007 and far more people were affected; in the Yorkshire and Humber region alone, a staggering 23,479 homes were flooded, along with 3,718 businesses.
What are you trying to say Gibbo? Is it that the farming community (less houses in farming communities) and the undoubted ongoing problems for farmers and livestock in the Somerset levels are of no concern? That the SSSI of the levels and moors is of no concern, or that the homes being flooded don't count because they are south of Birmingham? We all remember the floods in Yorkshire and elsewhere and they had equal support from the public, although you may not have contributed, so what is your point and what are you concerned about ?
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle
Devastating evidence has now come to light not just that the floods covering 65 square miles of the Somerset Levels could have been prevented, but that they were deliberately engineered by Labour ministers in 2009, regardless of the property and human rights of the thousands of people whose homes and livelihoods would be affected. Furthermore, that wildly misleading Met Office forecast in November led the Environment Agency to take a step that has made the flooding infinitely more disastrous than it need have been.
The “smoking guns” begin with a policy decision announced in 2005 by Labour’s “floods minister” Elliot Morley, later to be jailed for fraudulently claiming more than £30,000 on his MP’s expenses. Under the heading “Saving wetland habitats: more money for key sites”, Morley directed that, to comply with the EU’s habitats directive and a part-EU-funded study involving the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the WWF and the Environment Agency, flooding in Somerset should be artificially promoted, because “wildlife will benefit from increased water levels”. The 13 local drainage boards, responsible for keeping the Levels properly managed, were all to be co-opted into implementing this policy.
The Environment Agency had already stopped proper dredging of the River Parrett, which provides the main channel draining floodwater on the Levels to the sea, because of the exorbitant cost of disposing of silt under EU waste regulations. And Morley had vetoed a proposal to build a new pumping station at Dunball, at the end of the massive Kings Sedgemoor Drain, which would have allowed much more effective, 24-hour pumping of flood water into the mouth of the Parrett estuary,
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle
