What (new) building/local regulations would YOU enforce in 'flood plain ' builds?

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:45:49 +0100 someone who may be Owain wrote this:-

Did the Westminster government not announce that they were going to reverse this a year or two ago?

[Tim Ward]

They can announce anything they like, but, unless they actually put money where their mouth, is nothing will happen on the ground.

[The Natural Philosopher]

And even if they do, it will all get spent on consultation documents, deciding how to spend it.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 22:45:49 on Mon, 23 Jul 2007, Owain remarked:

iirc my local hospital in Nottingham (one of the biggest in the country) buys all its meals in, ready-prepared from Essex - a three hour drive away! Maybe the carbon footprint of one or two lorries up the M1 isn't too bad compared to replacing all the individual lorries delivering ingredients to the hospital, but it does make me wonder how resilient it is in very bad weather.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:42:05 +0100 someone who may be Roland Perry wrote this:-

The brave new PFI hospital in Edinburgh got its meals from ISTR Cardiff to begin with, though I think they have changed this now. Of course the ingredients didn't get to Cardiff by magic, so there was a carbon footprint in doing that before the meals could be made up. Local is nearly always best.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 12:26:59 on Tue, 24 Jul 2007, David Hansen remarked:

But if one kitchen is making meals for more than one "customer", there's an economy of scale in the delivery of ingredients.

Probably just as much local stuff in Cardiff/Essex as Edinburgh/Nottingham. And I reckon arranging deliveries of specifically local stuff doesn't always reduce the amount of transport, if you need one van from each farm, rather than consolidating it more centrally.

[Jules]

I don't see many model planes flying down high streets though :)

Getting a model plane would be fun. Building my own would be more fun. Crashing it would be less fun ;)

Hmm, true.

I suppose we'll all just have power beamed straight into our homes soon anyway ;)

[Simon Morris]

Roland Perry wrote on 24/07/2007 12:34

And it's not just consolidation among different goods, because (I'm guessing a little here) it's much more carbon efficient to transport a punnet of strawberries in a lorry with tens of thousands of other punnets than in a van with hundreds of other punnets. (Does anyone have data?). If so, nasty faceless corporations transporting strawberries from a field 5 miles away from my house, 50 miles to central distribution, then 50 miles back to my nearest supermarket, could be much more carbon efficient than having my friendly local farmer drive them from his field to a farmer's market.

S.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Lods of lovely Welsh Lamb, and leeks, onions...and potatoes..MM leek and potato soup, welsh lamp and carrots..not to mention the fish..

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:34:22 +0100 someone who may be Roland Perry wrote this:-

Only if it is the difference between say a half full lorry and a full one. Even the economy isn't much.

You are assuming that all deliveries are equal, with a big lorry being the same as a van.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 14:08:38 on Tue, 24 Jul 2007, David Hansen remarked:

Whether the vehicle is full or not, it's delivering from the farm to just one kitchen, not several. That's the economy.

No, I'm assuming that sending more than a van load to one kitchen in a lorry is better than sending several separate van loads to many kitchens.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The trouble is its a very dangerous assumption.

Traffic congestion, type of vehicle..how far it comes from its depot..all these are issues.

If you want to limit use of fuel, raise the price of fuel. No exceptions. The *market itself* will then work all these micro issues out and deliver the 'least fuel option' to your doorstep as the cheapest option.

Worried about flooding? put 3p a liter on ALL fuel - no exceptions - and use the tax take to fund *proper* water management and infrastructure development.

That's a bit too joined up though. And we know it would simply go to a load of parasitic 'consultants' and 'politicians' who would rush around in fast cars attending 'vital meetings'..

You CANNOT top down manage the micro economy: And legislation rather than taxation is a hugely costly and inefficient way to do it.

Simply slope the playing field, and the balls will run down the end you want, after they have been randomly kicked about a bit.

[Adrian Simpson]

In article , The Natural Philosopher writes

Those responsible for signing off the plans have to live in one of the houses for 5 years. That ought to go some way towards ensuring that they have got all the right precautions in place.

Adrian

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:57:21 +0100 someone who may be Roland Perry wrote this:-

That is a big assumption, not least because the journey lengths have to be taken into account.

[Tony Bryer]

Gets rid of the floodwater too

[Jules]

I'm not sure - my memory as a kid of relatives growing strawberries on their farms was that it'd be a lot more than a mere van-load per pickup from the farm anyway.

If each farm's only producing a small load of item x every time a pickup is needed then yes, it probably makes sense to roll pickups from several farms at once into one single truck load rather than doing lots of smaller van trips.

However, I suspect that the pickups tend to need a full lorry in each case anyway - I certainly remember things like grain, beet and spuds being stored locally on the farms until there was sufficient mass for them to be taken away by a local haulier using a giant artic as a single load.

A hundred mile round trip isn't *too* bad I suppose; I suspect 'sweet spot' to aim for is somewhere around 60 miles - anything more and there's too many miles covered to get materials to/from the processing point, but anything less and the processing point becomes too inefficient in terms of energy in and goods out.

That is making some hand-wavy educated guessing though, rather than running hard numbers :-) That's also assuming some processing - for certain types of goods, it's only distribution that's needed, and that probably *could* be handled on an even more local scale.

cheers

Jules

[Jules]

Only if you're at the top :)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its more complicated than that.

What tends to happen is that the developer comes along, and sya 'we'll stick up a load of chap affordable housing and get you brownie points on the local council: Give us the planning permission.

Now AFAIK the Council then has to negotiate their backhanders, which may be in all sorts of forms, as well as insisting 'well, we'll need new junction hear, rainwater catchment there, sewers etc etc tec..

In practice MOST of this is bolted onto the existing infrastructure, with as little as possible being spent on e.g. first refusal for a councillor/chief planning officer on a spanking new house below cost, or the infrastructure, whichever is cheaper..;-)

Rarely is this done from the perspective of the good of the community as such in the medium to long term: Non of the participants has any incentive to do this, and none is likely to be around when finally it all goes pear shaped.

Compare and contrast with e.g. purpose build rented properties: Here the owner has the financial muscle to get it right for a long and stable income stream.

There is in fact some argument for making a large proportion of new housing rented. For that reason. If it all gets flooded, the occupants rent somewhere else and leave the owners to sort it.

Before the wails of 'but we aren;t corrupt: Our hands are tied by central government and planning policy' comes from the incumbents here, I take it as a principal of business that *everyone* is *potentially* corrupt, and the name of the game is to accept a little, and put in place systems of incentive that make it at least in the interests of some of the planning department to make sure that things go not awry through MAJOR corruption..

The trouble is, when £50 million of someone else's money depends on a £25000 a year council official's (who may not have much in the way of formal engineering training or experience whatsoever) decision, you have a very difficult situation.

Its not helped by the fact that e.g. the news and media are not interested in this . I heard yesterday two amazingly competent people yesterday on BBC news 24, BOTH of whom were cut short by an amazingly dumb set of presenters - one was from the climate study area, and the other was someone who obviously understood land drainage issues. Even poor old George wossisname in the chopper, flying over, was only allowed a couple of minutes to give an 'overview' before it was 'but that only shows the broad picture' (It didn't: I would have preferred a picture from 10,000 feet for that) 'now lets cut back to XYZ who is interviewing yet another uninsured eejit with 3 foot of water in their house'.

The media are ONLY interest in the 'human story' (too many women managers? I dunno. and the politicians take their cue, and promise 'free handouts to the needy' whereas the real issues: What we are going to do with more and more water coming down hard and needing a place to go? goes unremarked upon.

This isn't fundamentally a story about people: They just happened to be there, thats all. Its about infrastructure, climate change and the whole boring business of creating a nation that functions at a boring but vital level. The people stories are a distraction - just as the years of relief for one African famine after another have done the square root of f*ck all to address the underlying issues. If all the money that is spent on helicopters was spent on banging a few roads and Internet connections through Africa (using local labour, and training it up)and a bit of education, particularly into contraceptives, and a few basic issues like sane farming practices in marginal land areas...oh well.

[The Natural Philosopher]

True. Now where did I put all those immigrants ;-)

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 15:42:03 on Tue, 24 Jul 2007, David Hansen remarked:

If the produce is bought locally to the centralised kitchen, there's no reason why the trip would be longer than each trip from a differently local producer to the local kitchen. So the multiplier (for the produce-in trips) is simply how many "customers" each centralised kitchen has.

Against that you have to balance the trips from the centralised kitchen to the consuming organisations.

As each meal probably needs produce from several sources, you do the maths.