It's official austerity is over!

Further to Cameron's pledge to spend whatever it takes when asked to divert money from foreign aid to flood victims, he was reported as saying yesterday that as a rich country with a growing economy we don't need to choose between the two. So, there should be plenty of money for NHS healthcare and books for schools. Whoopee!

Let's wait until he overturns the plan to axe a further 1,400 Environment Agency staff this year, together with maintaining a block on revenue spending – ie maintenance and repair – on flood defences – as opposed simply to capital investment in new flood defences.

The Treasury has a test for all such spending: that for every £1 spent, it saves £8 in the future. Yet while the Hastings by-pass, for which no such benefit has been shown, has been given the go ahead, that maintenance and repair has been put on hold. And this despite the government's own science advisors telling it that, in the coming 20 years, climate change will mean more events such as this, with a concomitant quadrupling of the number of homes at risk.

Its OK, Billy Pickles is waiting until he can deal with experts and then we'll be alright

Yes, but they are already questioning whether it's worth the cost of defending Somerset, East Anglia, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire! So, not an issue for governmemt.

all those big detached houses and range rovers flooded....spend spend spend!

aslong as they did they do the same for hull and cumbria

We don't need any more barrages, just lay that fat 2@ in th line of any flooding

It's a given that having your house flooded is a royal pain in the , but I can't help compare the attitudes of the Somerset people, who have been flooded for weeks, with the whinging pouty mouthed residents of the Thames valley, who were demanding help from the Army,even before their designer waders

had got wet.

It may have escaped their notice that the Army is a tad busy at the moment, and perhaps an appeal to the Navy, who have access to lots of different boats, and are not exactly run of their feet at the moment, might have made a bit more sense. In any case, if you can afford the prices being asked for a riverside Thames property, you surely can stump up 50k to install an effective flood prevention measures on your property. Even Paul Daniels had the foresight to do that!

Sky did a piece today in which they interviewed two complaining women, who were demanding to know just what had been done since the last flooding in January. I would simply have asked the pair of them, just what, if any precautions they, as the homeowners had taken to protect their property.... I suspect the answer is sweet FA!

Oh, and can we have an end to those ridiculous staged photo shoots where posturing politicians in their just bought wellingtons, gaze earnestly into the far distance.

One king Canute was enough, thank you.

I can sympathise with the rich folk bordering the Thames, it can't be nice to have your swimming pool flooded with water.

This was taken from my van, near Bradfield (between Reading & Newbury) on Friday. While many of my customers fall into the "super rich" bracket, many more do not, lots pf Thames' tributaries like the River Pang have overflowed and flooded even council houses, so you don't have to be in the supertax bracket to suffer.

Taken from another site:

They were interviewing someone from the EA on the news a few days ago and he was saying that several years ago, conditions were brought in by legislation by the last government as to how the EA were able to spend their flood defence money. The three considerations are -

For each pound spent in flood defences, they have to show that it will save £8 worth of property,

The money must first be spent on the places with the largest and poorest population, &

The money must be spent where flood defences will protect the most property.

The chap said that this is the main reason millions had been spent in large towns and cities and hardly anything in small towns, villages and the countryside.

All the blame game some days ago over dredging in Somerset actually ended up revealing that dredging down there had been stopped in John Major's time.

No government since had restarted the practise and all governments since have made cuts. Labour did boost spending after the government's own scientists warned of increasing problems, but as I said, this government has, by and large, maintained capital spending, but cut revenue spending, which covers repairs and maintenance, to the extent that, with inflation taken into account, the overall budget is down around 25%.

It may well have been Labour that brought in that test – it's a Treasury test that is applied to all spending, as I said (for clarification, I'm currently talking to people connected with the EA for a piece).

The amount of rain that's fallen means that, even with dredging, no river could have taken all the rain that's fallen. I was crossing the Sussex Downs a few weeks ago and the rivers were incredibly high, plus a large number of fields that were had been transformed into lakes.

As the PM (IIRC) said only in the last week, not everywhere can be protected and homes must come first. Applying that criteria, it would make sense to protect the places with the highest density of population. Which, of course, is what the Thames Barrier does (built between 1974 and 1982, IIRC).

In the meantime, I noticed the other day that various scientists have condemned successive governments for being utterly short-termist in looking at the issues.

It remains to be seen whether there will be any change in policy.

And obviously questions could also be asked about a variety of matters that may or may not be related, including farming practices and decisions to build on flood plains.

Fattism.



Just because you are sporting a new super lithe physique.