Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

[Mick Harper]

You keep on missing the point. "In the field empirical science", "evidence-based practices", "centralised policies based on ideology" are all sometimes right and sometimes wrong, sometimes they clash, sometimes they don't. It's you, Boreades, that is constantly wrong by taking one bunch of people's views over another bunch of people's views at the outset.

Yes, I am sure you are going to say that you judicially listened to all the viewpoints and formulated your own independent view but anybody following these exchanges knows perfectly well that you didn't.

[macausland]

The Department of the Environment produced a plan for management of the River Parrett area in 2008.

Its central policy is encapsulated in the following extract.

'Policy appraisal
We and our partners have developed policies to manage flood risk in the future. These policies set out our vision for a more sustainable, cost effective and natural approach to managing flood risk in our catchments. These policies are:

1. No active intervention (including flood warning and maintenance). Continue to monitor and advise.
2. Reduce existing flood risk management actions (accepting that flood risk will increase over time).
3. Continue with existing or alternative actions to manage flood risk at the current level of flooding (accepting that flood risk will increase over time from this baseline).
4. Take further action to sustain current scale of flood risk into the future (responding to the potential increases in flood risk from urban development, land use change, and climate change).
5. Take further action to reduce flood risk (now and/or in the future).
6. Take action to increase the frequency of flooding to deliver benefits locally or elsewhere, (which may constitute an overall flood risk reduction, e.g. for habitat inundation). Note: This policy option involves a strategic increase in flooding in allocated areas, but is not intended to adversely affect the risk to individual properties'

It seems from this that they accept flooding and welcome it. This fits in with their repetition throughout the document of their support for various wildlife agencies and that their policy is based on directives from the EU.

http://www.tauntondeane.gov.uk/irj/go/k ... 20Plan.pdf

I believe they were also instrumental in the deliberate flooding of farmlands in East Anglia where they allowed they destroyed sea defences so that the farmland could be returned to its 'natural' state where birds could thrive.

They also object to the building of coastal defences in parts of Yorkshire and other areas on the grounds that it is not natural to fight the sea. I'm not sure what the Dutch would make of that one.

The idea that the Somerset levels have been deliberately flooded on EU orders is proposed on this site which has links to the various statements and directives coming out of Strasbourg and other such places.

http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84683

I think that when local people could manage their area to the best of their ability they knew what they were doing in terms of agriculture, fishing and whatever else was important to them in their local economy. With power over localities being transferred hundreds of miles away to government bureaucrats and even further away to Europeans, the realities of day to day living and coping with the landscape and environment have been lost.

Anyway whether it is a 'right' versus 'left' debate whatever that means is irrelevant. I believe those terms originated in the French Court to describe those who were in favour and sat to the right of the king and those who were not in favour and who sat to the left of the king.

Here is a policy document from the people who produced it. It has not been filtered through left or right leaning third party brain cells.

[Mick Harper]

The nub of your argument, Mac, and the source of your error, lies here

I think that when local people could manage their area to the best of their ability they knew what they were doing in terms of agriculture, fishing and whatever else was important to them in their local economy.

This is entirely true. Rationality operates in exactly this way. You pays your money and you make damned sure you get the results you are paying for. However

With power over localities being transferred hundreds of miles away to government bureaucrats

the position has changed but not the way you are implying. It is no longer the locals' money, it is 'our' money ie the national exchequer. And this is not a mere book-keeping exercise, I doubt very much whether the cost of the Somerset Levels is in any way commensurate with the local output of (as you call it) 'agriculture, fishing and whatever else'. If the national piper is calling the tune, 'we' are entitled to say, "Sorry, bubs, but the taxpayers of Bridgwater far outweigh a few local yokels, so we shall design the flood defences with them in mind, thank you very much." Despite the sentimentality engendered by nightly film of crying flood victims, we shall make damned sure that the national interest will be served. And that means townies getting protection uber alles.

and even further away to europeans the realities of day to day living and coping with the landscape and environment have been lost.

Now, at last, you have arrived at a valid point. Generally speaking, the money is not generated by Brussels so they are not, in rational terms, likely to ensure it is spent well. But there might be a higher rationality at work here. The European experiment proceeds apace. It is far too early to say whether it is delivering the goods or not.

[macausland]

'... we shall make damned sure that the national interest will be served. And that means townies getting protection uber alles.'

The assumption here is that the national interest means town dwellers. Anybody else is not considered part of the 'national interest'.

Country bumpkins therefore have fewer rights than the inhabitants of the 'Bantustans' in South Africa. Nominally at least they had control over their own affairs.

Do these country dwellers and assorted yokels pay no tax? 'No taxation without representation' is often a popular rallying cry.

The question then arises as to whether there is need for a choice in the first place. This leads us to the question of money. The fourth richest economy in the world cannot afford the money to protect its own farmlands and citizens even though the Dutch, I'm sure, could tell them how to do it.

It does come down to the fact that we are just an outpost of Europe who take orders from Brussels one week and Strasbourg the next. We got rid of our railways, coal mines, engineering works, merchant marine, fishing fleet and even our military capacity to become a service economy as part of the deal to get us into the Common Market, er sorry, European Economic Community, er sorry, European Community, er sorry, European Union, er sorry, The United States of Europe. Even Heath admitted as much long after he had taken his bung for the fait accompli.

Speaking of which as we pay £53 million a day to remain a subservient state in this Greater Europe uber alles I'm sure they wouldn't miss a couple of weeks' payments so that we could start dredging rivers again would they?

[Mick Harper]

I was merely pointing out that townies outnumber bumpkins by about ten to one, and pay taxes in proportion even greater. Since you raise the point, the 'national interest' actually takes the countryside into account rather more than its numbers justify. No doubt this is mainly sentiment and tradition but also because most townies (unaccountably in my view) regard themselves as country people at heart and are always either waxing lyrical about or actually tramping about the green acres.

I will pass over your theory that we are drowning our fellow countrymen (excuse the pun) at the behest of Brussels in silence.

[Boreades]

Mick, please stop painting yourself into a corner.
It's embarrassing.

[Barquero]

Virtually nobody's taxes pay for the services consumed. Towny or Bumpkin is therefore irrelevant. Value of assets under threat from a flood is relevant and on this basis town scores over country. Flooding is made worse with neglect of water management. It is ironic that dredging has been downplayed because it is alleged to speed up river flow while surface efforts have been made to straighten many rivers and clear their banks which probably has more effect on river flow than dredging. Dredging does have the effect of increasing the carrying capacity of the river which is on the whole a good thing in reducing flooding and speeding up the drainage after floods.

[Barquero]

I saw a mention of a conversation with Bryn Walters and remembered a bit of a paper I did for him on Roman era water transport. Certainly there seem to be small boat docks at Littlecote House on the River Kennet and the Og could have carried small barge traffic perhaps using flash locks. However this is about a period when the river levels weren't much different from today, streams on the chalk fuller because of no extraction to serve Swindon.

However this has nothing to do with post ice-age flooding the melt water from glaciers did carve out some valleys but we are not talking about continuous open water following this deluge. It ran away.

[Mick Harper]

Very sensible, Barquero. You won't last long. Re dredging, Chris Smith claimed that no-dredging (in the Levels) was a policy decision ie the cost of dredging was out of kilter with the benefits. I don't think any of us here can enter such a technical debate, even though we might suspect some degree of post facto rationalisation. (Not just by Chris Smith but by the government, post-cuts).

PS Here's a pub quiz question for you all: Chris Smith holds a world record. What is it?

[Boreades]

Re dredging, Chris Smith claimed that no-dredging (in the Levels) was a policy decision ie the cost of dredging was out of kilter with the benefits. I don't think any of us here can enter such a technical debate, even though we might suspect some degree of post facto rationalisation.

Post facto rationalisation is an key requirement in the training of all that pass through the Civil Service Staff College. The essential thing (in the Art Of Doing Nothing) is to maximise the costs while minimising the benefits. Having food fit to eat or a safe place to live is not a benefit within the scope of the Environment Agency. Out of scope = not a benefit they have to contemplate.

PS Here's a pub quiz question for you all: Chris Smith holds a world record. What is it?

I've been holding my breath for over a year now.
Are you going to tell us or not?