Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Current topics

Re: Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Postby hvered » 5:09 pm

Wouldn't dredging increase the rate at which river water flows and result in even more flooding?
hvered
 
Posts: 855
Joined: 10:22 pm

Re: Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Postby Boreades » 5:59 pm

hvered wrote:Wouldn't dredging increase the rate at which river water flows and result in even more flooding?


On the Somerset Levels, a lot of ground is below sea-level, and the main rivers are built-up with embankments. So that water falling on higher ground can usually flow through the Somerset Levels, and out to sea, without flooding the plains.

Like the Mississipi Levees or the Dutch Dykes.
Megalithic connection alert!
The Roman chronicler Tacitus mentions that the rebellious Batavi pierced dikes to flood their land and to protect their retreat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levee

But due to neglect by the UK's Environment Agency, which has reduced the amount of dredging it does, the capacity of the rivers has been critically reduced.

For an analogy, think of the gutters on the roof of your house, collecting the rain that's falling on the roof and carrying it away. If (say) you had a gutter six inches wide (therefore three inches deep with a cross section of (Pi * 3 * 3) / 2) it can carry a goodly amount of water. But if you fill most of the gutter with moss and debris from the roof, it will only be able to carry a small fraction of that water before it starts spilling over the edges.

If you routinely clear out the gutters, with a bit of preventative maintenance, all is fine. On the Somerset Levels, if routine maintenance had been used, the dredged material would have been usefully used to build up the height of the banks or farm land. But with the floods we've got now, the flooding has flooded septic tanks and sewage works, and the crops under water are dying, so the flooded areas are polluted. So when they start dredging the rivers again, they will have a more difficult job finding somewhere to put the dredged material.
Boreades
 
Posts: 2081
Joined: 2:35 pm

Re: Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Postby Mick Harper » 1:30 am

If it is so cut-and-dried why are there voices opposing this?
Mick Harper
 
Posts: 910
Joined: 10:28 am

Re: Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Postby Boreades » 2:55 pm

Mick Harper wrote:If it is so cut-and-dried why are there voices opposing this?


It's human nature, there are always voices opposing things. In this case, it seems to be the intellectual and Guardian-reading classes, living in towns, who would like everything outside their towns to be "natural". As this website's forum has so frequently pointed out, humans have been manipulating the UK "countryside", for at least 5,000 years. How much of what we can see from our cars and trains is really "natural"?
Boreades
 
Posts: 2081
Joined: 2:35 pm

Re: Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Postby Mick Harper » 10:46 pm

So it wasn't these people who were responsible for doing the dredging all those years ago? As usual, Borry, you are a coupla orthodoxies behind the eight-ball.
Mick Harper
 
Posts: 910
Joined: 10:28 am

Re: Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Postby Boreades » 11:41 pm

Mick Harper wrote:So it wasn't these people who were responsible for doing the dredging all those years ago?


You are completely correct, it wasn't these people who were responsible for doing the dredging all those years ago.
Boreades
 
Posts: 2081
Joined: 2:35 pm

Re: Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Postby Mick Harper » 1:10 am

You are quite wrong. There is no right or wrong way of dealing with the Somerset Levels, only the current orthodoxy (which is designed for whatever is considered the best set of objectives at that time). This orthodoxy is normally established by the Guardian-reading class, that is the moderate left intelligentsia who are normally tasked with these kinds of innovatory thinking.

The locals might not like the policy -- it is seldom designed with their interests entirely in mind -- but over the years they get used to it and, as good farmers everywhere, eventually learn to exploit it. When a new orthodoxy comes along (that is when the Guardian-reading intelligentsia puts together a new set of desirable objectives) the famers go mental and the cycle begins again.

The dredging policy was just another modish (but not necessarily wrong for that reason) policy of, at a guess, the 1980's when food production was relatively low on the list of priorities, bird sanctuaries were fairly high and elaborate land protection schemes were on the way out. Just because the inhabitants of the Levels are in favour of it is not a particularly good reason why the the rest of us should be.

No doubt dredging will once more have its day. Actually, this time round, because of the furore the moderate right intelligentsia -- who are tasked with actually running the country -- will probably decide on dredging just for a quiet life. Something leftists often overlook is that most of us want a quiet life.
Mick Harper
 
Posts: 910
Joined: 10:28 am

Re: Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Postby macausland » 10:59 am

The 'Today' programme, moderately 'left' leaning I believe, quoted Margaret Beckett as saying that Britain doesn't need farms, what we need is houses.

She was quoted as saying that we should import our food from abroad. Which perhaps helps to explain why the government of the time not only failed to pass on hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies to British farmers, as per instructions from 'Europe', but were then fined hundreds of millions of pounds by the same 'Europe' for not passing those subsidies on.

The Telegraph, moderately 'right' leaning I believe, has this series of quotes from the good caravanning lady in July 2002:

'There's a general acceptance that things have to change," she says. "The subsidy structure has divorced farmers from the marketplace, and that is not in their long-term interest."

Does she think farmers have been "molly-coddled", as the Government's rural adviser Lord Haskins has claimed?

"I wouldn't use that kind of language, but I'm sure there's a better way of running things than we have now," she replies. "I don't think most people would think that farmers should be there to produce goods that nobody wants."

Many farmers, though, are struggling to make ends meet after the foot and mouth outbreak. Next week, the results of the official inquiry into the handling of the crisis will be published.

Does Mrs Beckett think mistakes were made? "There must have been mistakes - that's life. But it's not fair to say it was a total disaster. People did their best in very difficult circumstances.

"It's a bit like being overwhelmed by a tidal wave, then saying you therefore didn't have any flood defences. You may have had perfectly good flood defences, but there are no adequate defences against a tidal wave."'

In recent years we have been told by the experts that the 'countryside is racist' and as for the 'failed towns of the north', they should be closed down and everybody moved to London.

Given that London itself is scheduled to sink beneath the waves at some time in the future and given that their flood defences were built by northern engineers who no longer exist, it will be interesting to see what will be the response from Westminster and the 'moderately left and right leaning' of that wonderful city when they take to the waters.
macausland
 
Posts: 339
Joined: 3:17 pm

Re: Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Postby spiral » 9:34 am

There is going to be a lot of new risk assessments produced on the non-dangers of Fracking on flood plains in the next few months.............
spiral
 
Posts: 228
Joined: 8:10 pm

Re: Keeping your feet dry, 8,000BC

Postby Mick Harper » 12:48 pm

Nice confluence! The trouble with fracking is that because it ticks all the boxes that liberal-left intelligentsia (currently) hate ie oil multinationals, carbon burning, messing with the picturesque countryside and so on, it has been handed over to the right to push for. Of course the right itself has its problems in this area because it contains the Countryside Alliance and other mugwumps.

One of the good things about Cameron is that, after initial weakneedism, he shows some signs that he can provide proper government ie stand above this debate to represent the 'national interest' (or even 'the world interest' -- one of Britain's traditional roles). Presumably though this will only become fully realised after the next election when he has rid himself of the haplessly mollycoddling Liberal yoke. Unfortunately this risks Rampant ie selfish Toryism once the beneficient liberal moderating influence has been removed.
Mick Harper
 
Posts: 910
Joined: 10:28 am

PreviousNext

Return to Index

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 109 guests