To feel that the South West has been abandoned (long and ranty)

[zeezeek]

My family still live in Cornwall and they have been completely battered by the wind and the rain for weeks now. Last night they had to be evacuated from their house. The main train line down to Cornwall (in fact also half of Devon) is completely destroyed and a lot of prime agricultural land in Somerset is under water.

People are losing their livelihoods and they have been lucky that there have been no loss of life. In a region where there is already high unemployment - the impact on the farming, fishing and tourist industries will just make the situation worse. Freight trains can no longer get down past Exeter.

The EA are effectively blaming the poor buggers who are affected by this and seemingly forgetting that people and homes are also affected. The government doesn't give a shit and the Environment minister didn't even bother taking a pair of wellington boots with him on his photo opp visit. Our future King made silly comments about how a disaster beings people together while his waste of space daughter in law spends taxpayers money jetting off to the Caribbean. Comments in sensible, intelligent newspapers are also blaming people for daring to live on a flood plain (which has never flooded to this extent) and by the sea.

I know that I am BU, but tonight - when my parents are still not allowed home and my brother has had his fishing boat sunk - I am feeling very, very pissed off with the media who seems to be making such a big deal out of a 2 day tube strike - there are buses.

Sorry, but needed to vent. Have nothing against Londoners - I lived there for years.

[stubbornstains]

(ahem) Quite a lot of actual people live and work in Newlyn. I don't think there's anywhere on the Cornish coast that doesn't have tourists.

[clam]

Instead of being cynical about tourists wanting to come and visit in the summer, how about remembering that those tourists provide a livelihood for thousands in the West Country.

And the main reason this has become even more high profile is, as they've just said on the news, there's been the biggest fire and rescue operation since the second world war and water levels on the Severn at Worcester, for instance, are the highest since records began. No one knew how big a thing this was going to become. The scale of the flooding is immense.
Bitching about Cameron et al going to visit certain areas is not going to help. You can imagine the flak they'd have got if they'd have stayed in London.

[clam]

I was making a general point, as there have been a fair few snippy points made on here in the last few days about people expecting Cornwall to be looking pretty again by summer.

I don't think any particular area has been over-looked. It seems to me that the news channels are dividing their coverage quite fairly around all the main rivers that are flooding at the moment.

[clam]

No one's been given funding for repairs yet. It's just a media sound-bite at the moment. And I suspect that the army support in some areas might be connected to whether there's a barracks nearby.

[clam]

What an unpleasant post brokenhearted.

[bochead]

Things that will affect the whole nation wherever you live:-

1/ Food prices - some very high quality farmland is now contaminated with sea/salt, planting will be delayed on waterlogged soils.

2/ Despite the insurance industry "act of God" nonsense, all our insurance premiums will go up, as they WILL claw their money back from the hapless consumer.

3/ House prices - some areas will now have a higher proportion of people in negative equity, impacting on risk assessment for all mortgages in an already fragile economy. Government bail-ins, already under discussion as a potential event before the floods just moved a step closer for us all.

4/Respect for our leadership. I think the voting public's report on the official response will read "could do better". This attitude filters down and leads to a general sense of "us & them" - never good for national unity and community cohesion at any time.

5/ Money is no object - are taxes not high enough already? The welfare bill will inevitably rise, again having a knock on effect on consumer spending and confidence.

6/ In many areas raw sewage is becoming a public health concern.

I'm hoping as I said at the beginning of the thread everyone, everywhere will ask hard questions of the doorstep campaigners at the next elections about our national infrastructure. We need a cultural shift in this country whereby politicians progress not on flash, bluster and soundbites but on the basic job of running the country being well done, even though boring and non-sexy though updating the sewers and getting the trains to run on time may be.

[OneEggIsAnOeff]

This might be of interest, especially to those who dismissed George Monbiot's piece in The Guardian as rubbish.

CIWEM (Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management) have issued a report also stating that dredging is not the solution. They are not saying that it doesn't have a role, but that it is not the panacea so many seem to think.

[zeezeek]

What has become clear in the SW this week is that our politicians are obviously using this to canvass for votes: Cameron - visited Somerset, Devon and bits of Cornwall - true blue areas. Clegg - visited Cornwall - lib dem bits. Milliband - visited Exeter, which actually isn't even flooded at the moment presumably because it is the only labour seat in the SW. None of them care about the people, they are just starting their canvassing for the 2015 election!!!

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Exeter is where the Met office is based.

[zeezeek]

It is, yes, but he was at Cowley Bridge which - amazingly, hasn't flooded this year (yet) - even though the money that was promised for it last year hasn't materialised.....

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Fair enough :) I didn't see it.

[OneEggIsAnOeff]

Ed Milliband was at Millers Crossing on the bit i saw, not that it makes any difference. Complete opportunism by the lot of them. Though, if he hadn't brought up about LAs charging people for sandbags that may not have been addressed (not sure it has everywhere but i think ccc have revoked the policy). When i flooded my local council told me to get down b&q or to stuff my tights with soil!

[LoveSewingBee]

I posted this already in AIBU as well. The Dutch government department of Infrastructure and Environment and more importantly the Dutch Waterschappend (independent bodies directly tax funded who have extensive powers and responsibilities to protect their allocated area in the Netherlands) have offered extensive practical help to the UK government in the form of emergency dykes, high powered sand bag filling machines, more very powerful pumps etc - UK government has turned the offer down as they do not need practical help. They are only interested in expertise.

It has also been reported on Channel 4.

[LoveSewingBee]

Channel 4