Dredge the Rivers ffs!!!!!!

[finetonive]

We need to go back to dredging rivers REGULARLY.

Those poor people.

Ego
Such a body does not exist and never will.
Whitehall would never allow that much power to be devolved out of London.

I am hoping that the cost of the floods makes the Treasury really look at the issues and get Defra and the EA to actually sort them out. If it's true that some changes to land management and upland planting would significantly reduce the risks then it's ridiculous not to follow through.

Plus Rory Stewart at Defra is a clever guy and hopefully will also engage with the evidence.

Yes indeed ego. However, it seems like quite a lot of research has been done on UK flooding over the last 10 years so hopefully some useful conclusions can be drawn from it.

Rory Stewart is a muppet who knows nothing.

The cost of the floods is less than one nuclear submarine

Evidence based policy making is noticeable only by its absence in the current government

I am hoping that the cost of the floods makes the Treasury really look at the issues and get Defra and the EA to actually sort them out. If it's true that some changes to land management and upland planting would significantly reduce the risks then it's ridiculous not to follow through.

I suspect that the short term cost of the floods (much borne by insurance companies) is easier for the government to deal with than the long term changes that would be needed to prevent flooding...

George Osborne is a twat but he is also trying to establish a Tory power base in the north. That plus the cost plus the annoyingness for Cameron of having to abandon his Boxing Day pheasant to wade round York or wherever might encourage them to look at the issues.

But possibly I am being over-optimistic.

Apologies if already linked to, but Monbiot seems to know his stuff about flooding (from previous writing)

This flood was not only foretold – it was publicly subsidised

gu.com/p/4fddb?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

"Though grouse moors stretch the definition of agricultural land to breaking point, they remain eligible for public money in the form of farm subsidies. In 2014 as essential public services were hacked back, the government quietly increased the money to which they are entitled by 84%."

• Shocking.

George Osborne is a twat but he is also trying to establish a Tory power base in the north.
Hmmm.
Have you actually read any of the devolution bid papers?
Gideon plans to hand over lots of responsibilities
but no rights or cash

he ONLY cares about the super rich like himself and his future (post politics) employers

Oh yes I totally get that, TalkingPeace. But Osborne wants the Northern Powerhouse to look good in the headlines, whatever the realities (which most people won't understand).

I'm not suggesting he cares about the North for a second. I am suggesting that he cares about looking good in the papers.

That Monbiot article says it all.

We need flood prevention as well as flood defence. This means woodland and functioning bogs on the hills. It means dead wood and gravel banks and other such obstructions in the upper reaches of the streams (beavers will do such work for nothing). It means pulling down embankments to reconnect rivers to their floodplains, flooding fields instead of towns. It means allowing rivers to meander and braid. It means creating buffer zones around their banks: places where trees, shrubs, reeds and long grass are allowed to grow, providing what engineers call hydraulic roughness. It means the opposite of the orgy of self-destruction that decades of government and European policy have encouraged: grazing, mowing, burning, draining, canalisation and dredging.

Yes yes yes. I am really hoping that Monbiot is tenacious enough to have some kind of line of communication with Liz Truss.

Trouble is she is head of a department that covers environment and farming. Conflicting loyalties are the root of this problem and even if she is aware of the nuances of this I can't see how she will implement anything useful given the aforementioned Gideon's demand to make it look like they are 'caring' about the north. She'd have to fight a lot of angry farmers int he short term and make some pretty fundamental (not before time) changes to policy and subsidy that would make a lot of people have to change their working practices fundamentally and lose money short-term.

If they don't sort this and continue to let business build on these flood plains without adequately dealing with the bigger picture we will be in massive trouble come the real impacts of global warming.

We're spending our grandkids inheritance.

Rory Stewart didn't turn up when his own constituency flooded.

I agree Girl trouble is I don't think the Tories will listen.

Rory Steward said earlier:
“Underlying the central problem I’m afraid is the weather. We have never had rain like this before. We have been dealing with this for nearly three-and-a-half weeks now. We started with more rain than had ever been seen in a day in the United Kingdom. We have had more rain than has ever happened in this month." and "In the end what is beating us is this relentless rain.”

Which begs the question.. did the rain take the Government by surprise? Because it has been very well known for decades that the consequence of climate change here in the UK was very likely to be more rain. We've had decades to prepare for this... it's hardly an unexpected surprise. To blame the weather for this disaster sounds unbelievably weak.

The Government should have planned for this, and created a resilient system to deal with this. I completely agree with the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell who has said that there needs to be a long-term plan independent of party politics, rather than a stop-start reactionary policy which changes with each government. Labour calls for long-term plan

Anything less than this just looks like shoddy reactionist politics, and it's just not good enough. I REALLY hope people will sit up and take notice of this, because I fear far too many people will be mollified by short term stop gap actions (like dredging), until the next storm... and the one after that..

Re the cost - does anyone remember the really bad snow in London a few years back, and it brought the city to a halt, and there were no snowploughs.

BoJo reckoned that not having bought the snowploughs and not having spent out on housing and maintaining them saved more money than the cost of the disruption caused by snow.

It's going to have to get a lot more frequently expensive before the Treasury sums think that spending money in the North is worth it.

did the rain take the Government by surprise? Because it has been very well known for decades
The Government should have planned for this

Shame Labour did nothing long term when they were in power.

And the usual ploy of the party not in power to bang on the table and insist something must be done ....... but not state where the funding should come from.

Isnt that the whole point of suggesting an independent body separate from party politics?? Theres always some dick playing the 'what about labour/tories/libdems when they were in power' card

The grant I receive is government issued from funds allocated by the EU. No charity involved. I have never in my life been given a grant to encourage me to clear land. Ever. If I have to remove trees for any reason I must bear the cost myself.

For clarity, I am a farmer. I get paid by the government to plant and maintain trees on and surrounding my grazing land. Not to clear trees.

www.ruralpayments.org/publicsite/futures/topics/all-schemes/forestry-grant-scheme/agroforestry/

Details of the subsidy I claim.

That site is for Scotland, not England or Wales

Yes I mentioned that above thanks. There is apparently a similar scheme in England although I'm not familiar with the details as I don't farm there.
However there isn't a giant gulf between farming on either side of the border. Surely it's not being claimed that whilst farmers in Scotland are planting woodlands, those in England are being given grants to clear them?

But the big problem is that the grants for planting trees are dwarfed by the ones for clearing trees on grouse moors - let along the ditch cutting across moors and bogs which have made the flooding in Hebden so much worse

This monbiot article from last year talks more about the single farm payment that require land to be free of vegetation (just c/p here, it isnt something i know much about)
Looks like wales doesnt have the tree planting grant either
gu.com/p/3yzb6?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

If you think Whitehall has any chance of implementing policies that would help with these terrible floods you are most sadly mistaken. Budgets have been slashed in order to meet the austerity budget. No point putting forward proposals for flood defences -Treasury will not allow the money to be spent. It's not like the plans aren't there. There's just no chance of getting funding. That's what we voted for. Austerity. And aren't we getting it!