So deregulation and spending cuts lead to disasters? Who could have known?
Scientists rounded on the Government on Monday over its “kneejerk” handling of the flooding emergency following stinging criticism by Eric Pickles of the Environment Agency’s performance.
Water specialists condemned ministers for aggravating the crisis by cutting spending on environmental work and warned that dredging overflowing rivers in the Somerset Levels, which is now advocated by the Government, would make little difference to the problem.
The comments by Mr Pickles, the Communities Secretary, also provoked a Cabinet rift with Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, who complained to Downing Street over his Tory colleague’s “grandstanding”.
He protested after Mr Pickles attacked the Agency for providing poor advice on dredging and making clear he believed its chairman, Lord Smith, should resign.
Interesting area. Very low, flat, very little gradient, and even from the days of the Romans projects were underway to change the land from a marshland estuary to try to get more farm land.
http://www.avonwildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife/project_nslm.htm
“…The Somerset Levels and Moors is a landscape largely created by human activity.
The Romans constructed the first artificial flood defences to keep out the tides of the Severn Estuary, and created a network of inland channels to drain large areas of floodplain marsh. This expanded the agricultural potential of the levels and, although engineered, it is now in these drainage channels that the remnant rich marshland biodiversity remains…”
Sounds like an area where so long as you have a reasonable “truce” with Nature, you might manage to have agricultural activity in an area Nature would otherwise declare to be marshland subject to tidal and wave action. But if the seas and waves were to rise, then it does sound like a very vulnerable area.
It may be another of those instances where we think we are in charge of the situation and can make Nature bend to our will, and find out we cannot do that.
Between 2009 and 2012, 90% of the increase in consumption came from the top 20% of income earners. So…….70 million rich Americans spent like drunken sailors, while the other 280 million of us were practicing austerity. NOTE: The 2010 census pegged the U.S. population at between 318 and 325 million people. That has grown by ‘x’ number of people over the past three years. Add to that total between 14 and 25 million undocumented immigrants living, working and consuming in America. Counting people is not an exact science.
The Brits are rabidly committed to austerity. Flooding’s only the most visible plague inflicted on the nation by the vampire class. Health care, law enforcement, transportation all on the ropes through ‘privatization.’ The only booming part of the economy is the sale of CCTV equipment. Big Brother, indeed.
So the Brits have a top-ranking Secretary named Mr. Pickles.
I rather like that.