Floods and blame shifting

Lights keep flickering here, too . I do hate high winds, the noise makes me very uneasy

I'm surprised we still have electricity. I don't know whether the high winds are more scary at night when you can't see what's going on outside or in the daytime when you can.

My chimney is wailing like a banshee at the moment, the lights are flickering occasionally too.
There was a largish tree uprooted outside Sainsburys this morning, and another blocking a road.
A fire engine has just been down to the end of my road, (cul-de-sac).
I'm just glad that I don't live on the other side of the road as the houses back on to a huge field with a row of enormous trees behind the gardens! [scary]

Wind has been horrendous today, and we just had a violent hailstorm.

DIL heard a loud crack as she was driving home earlier, another tree down, luckily higher up the hillside and not near the road.

The lights are flickering here too and the rain is just heaving down and blowing a gale - I hate high winds too, particularly as our home is trembling!!

www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/129472.aspx

Just heard about this on the radio this morning. It sounds good and it seems to work.

Yes there was an excellent piece on The One Show earlier in the week durhamjen it seemed ideal didn't it? They have also created a kind of eco defence system using fallen trees and logs to divert the water before it becomes a problem. I know Belford very well and they did have terrible problems with flooding.

We need more schemes llike this I think as well as the more traditional defences. Was the One Show piece about reed beds and marshland being constructed near new developments, or did I read that somewhere?

The interesting thing, Gillybob, is that they said that it would work in places like Morpeth, and would have been much cheaper than the flood defences they now have there. On the same programme this morning the man that was from the university was saying that some of the farmers were complaining that the soil was still washed away and they wanted to know where the money was to reimburse them. So it was suggested that they got their tractors out and collected it from the holes and put it back in their fields, thus saving them having to buy so much fertiliser during the year. Sense spoken at last.
Come to think of it, it could work in this village as well, because when it rains the water just pours off the fields down the lanes into the centre of the village. Yesterday morning we had an inch of snow. The lane was like an ice rink. This morning I stood on my doorstep for ten minutes to get my vitamin D fix. Then the wind came back. No snow today, though.

Yes durhamjen I can't remember the exact figures quoted but the savings (when compared to traditional flood defence systems) were huge and the results are much more aesthetically pleasing too. A win win situation.

We had a little bit snow yesterday but living so close to the sea the salty air does help get rid of it quickly. (she says with fingers crossed) .

I presume, Gillybob, that as the money for our flood defences is from both the County Council and the Environment Agency, they have actually considered this scheme. We are only twenty miles away from Newcastle University.
Apparently we have emergency equipment called hydrosacks, improved design sandbags, so presumably they are filled with water rather than sand, in sheds in the village.

Interesting article about the determination to maintain bare uplands, eU subsidies etc contributes to flooding

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/flooding-public-spending-britain-europe-policies-homes

Was that the monbiot report you (or someone) mentioned earlier? Very interesting.

Surprised the D. Moan Mail has not caught on to this.

Thank you JessM - a very interesting article with lots of information. I wasn't aware that large amounts of money were being given to clear hillsides or to maintain them as bare uplands - what a crazy situation. Instead of working with nature, we seem to be working against it and sleepwalking towards disaster.

Thanks JessM; excellent article. It demonstrates the difference between the long-term strategic thinking needed and the quick fix beloved of press and politicians. I hope people will take the time and trouble to read it.

I visited the Basque country a couple of years ago. The hilly land used to be covered in a huge oak forest. The oak is nearly all gone (over 99% I'd say) but the farmhouses are all incredibly solid, substantial stone buildings in the local alpine style (the kind of design that used to house livestock on the ground floor and house a large extended family - make 6 big apartments these days.)
Initially I wondered where the money had come from to replace the original wooden buildings. After a few days it dawned on me - one off bonanza about 150 years ago, when Spain was having in industrial revolution. Landowners flogged the oak in a brief but highly lucrative bonanza.
It all comes down to money doesn't it.

Yes - the EA has introduced a number of these schemes like reintroducing oxbows and bends in rivers - there was one done in the Cuckmere Haven in East Sussex a few years ago against a large amount of protest at the time. We can all now see the sense in what has been achieved there.
There has been realighnment (that's not the correct spelling!) on the coast further west where the EA has retreated the sea defences inland and allowed the sea to breach the old wall, this has resulted in hundreds of houses caravans etc being saved and as an added bonus created a saltmarsh for wildlife. There was a very large amount of protest when this was first suggested but the people living there have since been delighted with the result and can't praise it too highly. Further work is being carried out in Kent with a large amount of flood defenses being put in as well as ensuring that the environment is a delight for the population and a haven for wildlife.
This is where the "too much money spent on wildlife" mantra comes from - largely a lack of understanding as to what the EA is achieving. Money comes from and is tightly controlled by the government - channeled through the EA and Local Government. Money is also applied for from the EU by the EA - I know of one application in the process of being looked at by the EU which will hopefully provide a couple of million for further defenses.

With the floods at last receding (hopefully) no doubt the blame game will begin in earnest. The head or heads of the various agencies and quangos will retire gracefully, their pockets filled with a golden handshake, and within a month or so take up a new and equally lucrative post elsewhere.
And the politicians will claim it is all the fault of a) the Labour Party, b) the Tories c) the Lib Dems for not letting someone or other doing what they wanted to do in order to prevent the disaster.
Yet I'm left wondering whether we all should admit to some of the blame.
Yes, you and me I mean.
let us recollect the twenty years or more during which we all denounced each other for being so nasty to Nature. Let us recall the houses not built because someone - inevitably - discovered the existence of a hitherto unsuspected community of plants or insects. A community moreover, not to be found anywhere else in the entire world and therefore doomed to extinction if a single homeless family was rehoused.
Let us recall the diseased trees, in imminent danger of collapsing on the heads of some playing kids yet which must not be felled or interfered with in any way simply because it had been there for a long time.
In such a universal climate of Nature first, humankind nowhere, is it any wonder that reports of a tree falling or a section of bank falling into and partially blocking a stream has met with the response, leave it, it's only nature doing its thing, and if we interfere for our own selfish reasons we will probably disturb the balance of Nature - which would be unforgiveable?
And if anyone should protest against the probability of their home being flooded- why, they were just being selfish, weren't they?

Twenty years ago we were getting much drier weather and the big worry was whether we would have enough water for our day to day needs. Remember all those hose pipe bans? The idea of floods did not even occur to us.

The reason environmentalists were encouraging us to develop wetlands and river and ditch maintenance was often neglected was because drought was the worry not excess rain.

Over the last 5 years the weather has done a 180 degree turn. No more warm summers and warm winters, this winter apart we have had freezing winters and cold wet summers. The rain this year has been the heaviest on record.

This year's floods have been exceptional, but in the current unstable weather situation the chances are that in 10 years time, we will be worrying so much about flooding we will fail to notice that we are in a period of drought again.

We planted lots of Medit. type plants because of the droughts! Lavender, Rosemary, pinks etc. All just about dead now because of the soggy soil. DOH! You can't win!

saw the end of a program where to stop the flood water overfilling the salt march they have a 'drain' that when used takes the water away from the area and stored in what sounded like a underground store, to be used in times of drought

I have just heard on the local news that Whitehaven in Cumbria is being given £300,000 to repair its harbour from the storm surge.
In todays paper, Hull City Council has been given £320,000 to help all the businesses that were affected by the storm surge in December. One pub claims that it will cost £100,000 to repair the damage. She is insured, but the insurance company is dragging its feet. She has applied for help but the council has not been sent the forms by the government yet.
Money no object?

You must have been listening to Monty Don, rosesarered

Posted before I think - the promised compensation for the riots (in which, arguably, the authorities were not wholly blameless) has not been paid to some who applied.
This money is obviously not meant to pay businesses that are insured. But what then is it for? Predictable muddle beset with argument lies ahead.

www.opendemocracy.net/node/79966
Interesting article about the recent flooding and climate change.