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.
AIBU?
To feel that the South West has been abandoned (long and ranty)
zeezeek · 05/02/2014 18:44
So if Kate wasn't on holiday, should she visit? I'm confused because lots have said Charles' visit was pointless etc etc. and if she wasn't on holiday, should she give the money she saved to the flood relief because £50k is like a penny in the sofa, I'm confused again because surely the cost of her family holiday can't be much more than a few pennies down the sofa so... What precisely is it you want the royal family to do?
YANBU op, but it's not just the sw. Right now there's more snow in Scotland than there was during the whistler Olympics. The Shetland and Orkney ferries have barely run since before Xmas. Fair isle (a place most people probably think of as mythical) has had no boats for weeks and nothing looking likely for another 2. The shelves at tesco are bare on Shetland and today both freight ferries were cancelled.
Fuxking tube strike. 
The thought of the money they are planning to spend on HS2 makes my blood boil 
. The irony is that in Germany they found that high speed rail actually had the opposite effect than was intended. Instead of taking business out into the regions it concentrated it in the big cities even more than before. If you can get out into the regions, do what business you need, and get back home to the city in a day, no more need for regional offices!
zeezeek DH is from the SW too, but went to the SE to work (what other choice was there). We moved back down 17 years ago, but within two years the company he worked for was closed and it's operations hived out to India and China, and he has done the weekend commute since then - as do most of the other people we know. DS was born down here too, but if things continue as they are, I see no future for him down here either 
.
Missabs, presumably you're not in glencoe, the Nevis range, Cairngorms or further north.
I'm in holland right now and it's not been too badly hit at all, keeps skewing us and hitting Denmark. Mind you, we pay 250 year "waterways tax" to keep the dykes strong - any of you want to pay more tax?
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