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.

FYI this situation is getting coverage in American newspapers:
www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/amid-ceaseless-downpours-a-plea-grows-in-britain-cant-somebody-stop-the-rain/2014/02/06/fe095e40-8b84-11e3-833c-33098f9e5267_story.html?hpid=z4

You know it is dire when it makes the Washington Post!

The SW have hardly been abandoned by the media, I've seen coverage of the floods in the SW on prime time national/London news today and yesterday, in-depth sympathetic local interviews, not just a token mention.
Whether the government is doing enough is another story.

I have a lot of sympathy (I have family in Cornwall) but the anti-London sentiment is getting a bit tedious to be honest.

Far more interested in whether more can be done to prevent flooding. Thx for the link specialsubject.

It's a bit ridiculous when the pictures in the WP are more telling than those on the BBC website.

The Guardian piece talks a lot of sense. I was brought up in hill farming country and now live surrounded by lowland arable.

All through my childhood we had different grants for different things, non of which seemed very well thought out. Replacing native trees with fast growing soft wood and ploughing and reseeding upland grazing being two especially misguided ones.

Since living here the intensity of arable activity has increased enormously, we have winter wheat planted the second last years crop is harvested. and acres of irrigated polly tunnels. growing asparagus and strawberries.
Fields used to be left fallow or do a turn growing potatoes. Now its plastic, wheat or oilseed rape. All tended by enormous tractors that destroy the verges and must compact the fields.

The field drainage gets worse and worse each year, yes it's worse this year than ever, but the amount of water pouring of the fields has been increasing for several years.

I was flooded when i lived near Bridgwater in the late 1990's so am not lacking in sympathy with anyone affected this time round, but i hope everyone shouting 'dredge the rivers' reads the article specialsubject linked to. There are solutions which will help alleviate flooding but there is not the political will to implement them.

The obvious solution to the rail problems is to reopen the line between Exeter and Plymouth via Okehampton, especially as most of the track bed is still in place. I think the cost of doing this has been estimated at £100 million though, so i won't hold my breath on that one, though finding substantially more for HS2 doesn't seem to be a problem. That connects to London though, so maybe the op has a point?

I'm really not sure how this could be bigger news. It's the headline every day and has been for ages. Awful about the Dawlish rail and the impact on people down the line and it should have been tackled before but I assume there's a huge planning issue with bringing the line inland and across people's land and homes. That's not a reason not to do it but it's really not something that can be fixed easily, I imagine.

Every sympathy with those affected - but I wouldn't make an "us and them" thing out of it not least because this has affected the SE too. Sorry for the DM link but the pics are vivid - although I doubt anyone wants to see any more water anyway. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2529138/Tis-NOT-season-jolly-thousands-Britons-flooded-left-without-power-storms-batter-UK-Many-homes-without-electricity-Boxing-Day.html Much of the affected transport network is yet to be reinstated.

I think that extreme weather is far more than an excuse. It IS extreme. How many people can seriously remember rain on this scale, this relentlessly for this long? I live in Bridgwater and am thanking the gods of rain that we are OK personally but the devestation round about the area is very distressing.

There are two schools of thought re the dredging. Some seem to imply it's the only cause of the flooding whereas others question whether it would really have solved the problem. TBH looking at the vast amount of water involved I do not see how the Parrett (which isn't all the big, even when dredged, around Moorland and Fordgate) could have possible carried all of it without some flooding. Not to mention that most of the land is below river level so it would always have required a massive pumping operation to clear it even if the river could take it all away.

I don't know the answers but I do beleive that someone took their eye off the ball but I don't think it was done through a malicious desire to place voles or waterbirds above humans in the hierarchy. It was a mistake and a failure to understand the needs of a weird and wonderful place like the Levels.

When we first moved here we used to pay a small fee once a month to the Dunball and Pawlett drainage company (or some such name) to keep the drainage systems clear. They went the way of things many years ago. Maybe there's a place for them again.

Ormirium - re the drainage company, it may have been amalgamated into the Parrett Internal Drainage Board a few years back. When i was there part of my council tax used to go to the IDB. Interestingly, even the IDBs accept that dredging is not going to solve the problem on its own (though they are keener on it than other involved organisations). Their own plan includes measures like moving those in the most vulnerable properties, and relocating intensive farming practices off of the floodplain altogether.

Quangle - re planning for a different railway line. There wouldn't need to be a wholly new line as most of the old route along the north of Dartmoor is still in place. Some of it is now the Granite Way cycle track, some is the Dartmoor Steam Railway. There are i think some issues with the line through Tavistock where parts of it have been built on, but otherwise it would be (relatively) straightforward in planning terms to implement.

With respect, I don't think there is any lack of understanding just a lack of political will and money. Catchment management is nothing new it's just bloody expensive (in the short term), takes time and is not a quick fix. So not a political winner.

I agree with BarbarianMum, who said this is just the result of years of cuts and ignoring. Dredging would help, but is not the total answer.

BUT, once this rain goes away, people forget and the issue will not be pressed with the politicians to actually 'DO SOMETHING' about this serious issue.

I agree with BarbarianMum, who said this is just the result of years of cuts and ignoring. Dredging would help, but is not the total answer.

BUT, once this rain goes away, people forget and the issue will not be pressed with the politicians to actually 'DO SOMETHING' about this serious issue.

Well, I think that this EXREME weather will contine and we will get a lot more of it in the next decade.
So rather than seeing it as 'extreme', how about we actually look at the practicalities of what we are actually going to DO.

Ormirion How many of us can remember rain on this scale? Well, me. The levels were under water for 13 consecutive months between April 2012-April 2013. There was very little press about it until the very end - when the track was swept away outside Exeter just before Xmas 2012 and the peninsular was completely cut off, it didn't even make the news despite near riots at Paddington. Right at the end of the Atlantis period, the stink was so vile that people on the trains going through the levels were gagging. Michael Eavis and a few others made a fuss (about the dredging, again) but nothing was done. We have actually had no proper train service since the beginning of January when they began work fixing the tunnel between Taunton and Tiverton which was collapsing (as a result of all the rain in the last 2.5 years) and what should be 2 and a bit hour journeys from Exeter - London have been taking more like 4. There are not enough coaches in Devon to actually service the need from the train companies right now. The situation has been chaos for weeks and this last thing is most definitely the straw that has broken the camel's back. Last year, just after the levels drained, we had the additional problems of the Reading station rebuild which also caused out train journeys to be increased in time by >50%, we were told we would benefit from this - BOLLOCKS. People in the south west will benefit from neither a sprauncy new station at Reading nor HS2 nor cross rail. What we need is new rolling stock (ours is ancient) better lines (perhaps electrification as far as Exeter - currently it is planned only as far as Bristol but we are told 'that's the south west. No it bloody isn't) and more frequent services. The transport situation in Devon and Cornwall (and to an extent, Somerset) has been atrocious for years and instead of sorting it out, successive governments have focussed on train connections in the north and HS2. Which is not even wanted by most of the people who could use it!

metebelis - when I said 'before' I meant before this and last year both of which had been more extreme. Last year there were plenty of floods around this area too.

oblomov - agreed that extreme weather may well be on the cards a lot more - I think I said as much in my post. However 'what to do' might involve accepting that long term some parts of the Levels are not a sustainable place for living on all year round

The levels and the train line are two different issues really. However I suspect that the levels will see more government financial help than the train line will because Somerset votes predominantly Tory and Devon/Cornwall don't (there are pockets of extreme blue, but also pockets of Red and far too much whatever colour the libs use these days). :(

Tis true metebelis - plenty of true blue farming stock outside of the town.

The weather may have been extremely wet, but it's only highlighting long standing under investment.

The railway at Dawlish has been out of action loads of times, not just in the last few years.

The main road into Gloucester floods on spring tides, every time there's lots of rain in Wales. There is lots of rain in Wales every year.

The same bridges and dips on our lanes flood every year, it doesn't have to be exceptionally wet.

Yes this year things have flooded more often and for longer, but non of these annoyances are new!

Last year, just after the levels drained, we had the additional problems of the Reading station rebuild which also caused out train journeys to be increased in time by >50%, we were told we would benefit from this - BOLLOCKS. People in the south west will benefit from neither a sprauncy new station at Reading nor HS2 nor cross rail. What we need is new rolling stock (ours is ancient) better lines (perhaps electrification as far as Exeter - currently it is planned only as far as Bristol but we are told 'that's the south west. No it bloody isn't) and more frequent services. The transport situation in Devon and Cornwall (and to an extent, Somerset) has been atrocious for years and instead of sorting it out, successive governments have focussed on train connections in the north and HS2. Which is not even wanted by most of the people who could use it!

YY! The rail network from Gloucestershire (where I am) towards London is shockingly slow with no improvements in sight. The only time it ever makes the news (and only the local news) is when the thousands of drunken louts racegoers descend en masse. This is a very minor point and not related to the floods though.

We do get South West news though so I'd consider us South Western.

Well - you're neither south nor west but I do feel your pain regarding the train services. I'd say, if anything, that yours are worse than ours. Sometimes our trains get rerouted via Bath and Chippenham and it takes FOREVER. Very pretty line though :)

Anything north of Bristol is the north

The person who mentioned Wales is right - communications links into Wales are very poor too. The only thing that stops it being completely cut off is that the border is so long, if there are troubles down one end you can normally escape by going up the other one - not terribly practical though.

Bristol is the midlands. It;s far closer to Birmingham than it is to Truro.

Nooo its not . We get South West news, I'm sticking to it. We never appear on any weather maps for midlands news

Bath is a very pretty line. Just not when you've been stuck for hours and you want to go home.

Bristol is in the South West, one of the nine official regions of England:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_West_England

Bristol is really close to Cardiff - using that reasoning it must be in Wales.