In message , at 15:41:14 on Tue, 24 Jul 2007, Adrian Simpson remarked:
I take some comfort in the fact that if the Trent floods in Nottingham the first two places which will get their feet seriously wet are the District and County Council offices. When I mentioned this to my friendly local county councillor, he was not very amused.
In article , Roland Perry writes
But that only means that they can't go to work (some might say that would be of general benefit to the community).
Adrian
That would conflict with the Building Regulations that mandate a loo on the entry level (Part M) :-)
No doubt the planners would object to all proposals for stilts, floating houses etc simply because they wouldn't be "in keeping with the local vernacular" :-)
In message , at 22:21:50 on Tue, 24 Jul 2007, Adrian Simpson remarked:
They will also have a lot of "drying out" to do afterwards. And of course the three main sports venues (cricket and 2x football) are right next door, and not ideally placed to act as makeshift community centres as has happened in some other flooded areas at the moment.
Indeed. And because you have to have proper access from disabled dinghys.
I have a better idea than all of this.
Since we have those who are supposed to know what to do and don't and those who do know what they should have done but didn't or chose not to for other reasons; I think that the whole problem should be outsourced to this organisation:
On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:54:07 +0100 someone who may be Roland Perry wrote this:-
Emergency planning, what used to be called civil defence, has been a council function since at least the 1930s. How seriously councils have taken it has depended to a large extent on the councillors, plus how much central government has been pushing it. In the Cold War some councillors seemed to believe that planning for emergencies was to give in to the military/industrial complex and so did nothing. Indeed the Home Office abandoned some exercises, as the lack of participation by councils would have been embarrassing in party political terms.
No matter what one's views on the Cold War, it always seemed to me that it was worth planning for emergencies that would affect large areas. Given climate change it seems that there will be more of them. There may even be a role for a reactivated civil defence organisation, alongside the other voluntary organisations. What is clear is that sitting back and waiting for the council (in their various forms) and other "professional" organisations means waiting for a long time for anything to be done (this is no slight on the "professional" organisations, they just don't have enough people to deal with large scale emergencies). Far better for people to do things themselves, as has been happening. A civil defence organisation could provide expertise and equipment.
It has been tried once before - who do you think was brought in to drain the fens.
Marcus
In article , CWatters writes
The best arrangement is don't build on areas prone or at risk of flooding in the first place!..
What's the point?. Why build the houses on stilts?. You've got to access them and have your car etc which will be unusable as the access roads are flooded. Unless you really want to build a little Venice.
Now don't tell me that we're so short of usable land in the UK that we "have" to build on flood plains??
And thats why their there, somewhere for the water to wait whilst the rivers etc drain it away!....
Vermuyden and co would turn in their graves if they knew of all the building we do on flood plains ...
That's planning for you.
Owain
That I didn't know.
Nonetheless, it appears that there is an area of expertise that is sadly lacking in the UK.
I totally agree. The expertise exists. Its just that no one wants to bother with it, cois its neither a YumaN Intrest Storey nor a quick way to gain brownie points for politicos.
Ebven the 'Highbrow' media is more concerned with MORAL issues than e.g. sewage treatment plants: The level of scientific and technical competence in e.g. the BBC is APPALLING.
Bring back Raymond Baxter...
ITS NOT LACKING. Its just not SUPPORTED or LISTENED TO.
We are FAR more concerned whether someone with a wheelchair can gain access to *any* and *every* house in the country and have a crap without assistance, than whether our houses can survive floods.
Talk to anyone in the lower echelons of BT, the national Grid, Railtrack or any of the water authorities..and they will tell you the same story: The whole thing is run by accountants for short term profit, and if semi nationalised for short term political expediency. It the same with roads..short term fixes to immediate problems, no strategic planning whatsoever.
When was the last time YOU saw a real practicing engineer on TV, given any time to make a statement, or any *respect* whatsoever?
Compare and contrast with how many times the most foolish and inane member of the public or politician is given a 10 minute slot to babble on about what they think ought to be done/are doing about it.
Simply put, our lives are dominated by politics and media as entertainment. The actual mechanics of getting a warm dry place to live with basic services in it are taken so much for granted that no one realises they actually EXIST any more except when something goes wrong.
And yet, the primary function of government OUGHT to be to ensure precisely those things.
If all the time devoted to whether a smelly scabby little murderous piece of vermin (NOT Tony Bliar) had as much right as a human being, had been devoted to debating when and how we ought to manage water flow in a rapidly increasing ere of climatic energy, we wouldn't have the situation we have now.
Quite agree. We would have been even more stiffed without the fire services and the army..the army in particular is totally geared to bring some form of organisation through territory that has no functional infrastructure, and achieve some semblance of civilisation in unusual situations.
I'd actually invest in the army, and put back a few 'local regiments' where they have recently been 'vanished'..
A natural disaster is, so to speak, a war zone, where the enemy is God.
Apart from pointing weapons at things and blowing them to bits*, just about everything else the army is exceptionally good at, applies exactly.
Not possible, since about 20% of existing housing is on flood plains already.
Not necessarily: The whole point is to put te roads on levees..and create polders which MAY flood, but keep the basic communications going.
For someone who lives in Cambridge, you obviously haven't bothered to examine the Fens with a critical eye.
You pout the important stuff on top of earth banks, or stilts, and let the less important bits hold the water till you can get rid of it.
Yes. We are.
Exactly. That function has to be preserved, even if its also used for housing.
Yes you're right although the outcome is the same
Exactly. An engineer is still perceived in the oily rag context which is not something that happens in the rest of Europe. At some point it must have gone wrong. If one considers people such as Stephenson and Brunel, they were held in high esteem.
In fact the smart thing to do would not be to continue playing King Knut with so-called climate change but to look at how to ameliorate its effects and use them to advantage.
Yes, he was great, wasn't he..... Even David Attenborough is better than most of the TV presenters in the science/nature space.
When idly flicking through channels late yesterday evening (and I seldom watch TV), I happened upon a documentary about a mid air collision - I think it was one of the National Geographic channels. It was the most puerile presentation I have seen for a long time. Essentially, there was enough worthwhile content for 15 mins max. They spun it out to an hour by repeating bits including bucket loads of twaddle and all the rest of it. Quite apalling.
There may be some local difficulties in the flatter areas but for the UK as a whole that is bollocks.
MBQ
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