Eek!

[d000hg]

Talking about having a good blow!

Please do.

[Gittins Gal]

Try this.

Hmm inneresting...

So we've known all along that deforestation in the Himalayas excacerbates those awful floods in Bangladesh yet we're paying farmers sudsidies to keep the land bare.

[darmstadt]

That guy's an arse.

The EA have had the greatest success ever this winter. The surge last year was actually greater than the 1953 surge which lost many lives as well as homes. The floods this winter caught far fewer homes than the floods of July 2007, despite the rain being much worse.

The water has to go somewhere, if it doesn't catch you it will catch the mugs further downstream.

They could have done much better if:

- they hadn't cut 550 flood prevention, warning and recovery jobs in December "with the intention of protecting frontline services concerned with flooding"
- in 2007, under Labour, the EA missed its target of keeping just 63% of England's flood defences up to scratch
- they were then told it cost 150 million a year to reach this target
- since the coalition they have in fact spent less on flood defences and a 6% overall fall in funding for 2011-2015 was in a briefing paper
- in 2012, 120 million was announced after it was found 294 flood defence schemes never received any funding they were promised
- as funding hasn't come up to 2010 levels a new scheme has been hatched: 'Flood and Coastal Resilience Partnership Funding' which is basically a PFI but private investors are not particularly interested
- by 2015 it is expected that only 38 million will be raised from these sources and the funders are firms who want to develop on flood plains
- however the via the taxpayer funded 'Growing Places Fund' extra cash can be allocated but this fund is specifically for infrastructure so really the only way to get flood defence funding is to build yet more on land at risk of flooding

The EA have known about these problems for a long time but have turned pretty much a blind eye...

Just saw this: http://www.theguardian.com/environme...funding-scheme