Looks like a Sea around the Mump

No OK not all farmers do their ditches Jiffy but they do round by them, put it that way.. A lot more could & should be done.. The Levels were "managed" years ago & they need to manage them again..

 

I notice Mr Owen Paterson spent more time in front of the cameras than he did actually talking to the people who are flooded out or isolated by the water when he visited a Pumping Station today.
While dredging is not the complete answer to the flooding problem flooding is certainly acerbated when it's not done regularly on certain rivers. As an Fresh Water Angler I have noticed that for several years the Environmental Agency had ceased to clear out weed and dredge the rivers that I fish. That must raise the water level because of the raised river bed and also the masses of weed that I see must slow the mass of water causing it to spread into fields etc. The fact that the Agency has had it's finances from the different Governments and therefore is reluctant to spend money on dredging has not helped but no one in the Agency has had the strength of character to turn around and criticise them.

 

Can someone explain something to me? This screen grab from the BBC video linked above shows pipes that have been bolted together to allow the water to be pumped into the river; earlier in the video, a network of the pipes can be seen surrounding a house - yet at that point they seem to disappear under the road, and conveniently reappear on the other side of the road; what is really odd, is that there appears to be no difference in colour to the road surface at that point, which would suggest that it hasn't been dug up recently.....

Were these pipes installed under the road, ready and waiting?

 

So they have tunnelled under the road through the banking to install the pipes, or were the pipes installed in readiness?

 

But equally suggests that there was an indication that they would be needed on an ongoing basis - perhaps due to lack of maintenance of ditches and water courses

I know I am cynical when it comes to stuff like this, but it smacks of 'savings' being shown on one budget sheet, without considering that the expenditure has simply been shifted to another budget sheet.

 

Sure as apples fall from trees, as part of the 'austerity measures' that vast savings will have been declared to much approval from nodding dogs of councillors; and then a further announcement of huge 'investment' in flood prevention schemes to more approval from nodding dogs of councillors.

The governments and councils really must think we are thick.