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

[Derek Geldard]

Ross has answered that.

"De Meer is Droog ! "

But who built the engine that drained De Haarlemse Meer? ;-)

DG

[Paul]

On a related issue it was with astonishment some years ago while reading the ITU regulations on radio and radar transmissions that provision had been made for the avoidance of damage to aircraft from any future high power beams from space to earth should this technology be developed. It was an acknowledgement that in the event of such beams being utilised that aircraft would need to be routed around them. No, I'm not making this up, I wish I was, but I don't have the book in my possession so I can't give you the reference but it came as quite a shock. I was working at sea at the time and the ITU comms manuals were on board.

Paul

[Paul]

A Staff Sergeant friend estimates front line troops at fewer than 5% of the total.

Paul

[djc]

This problem was not exclusive to Britain. There were similar struggles=20 to establish status by engineers in eg Prussia and France in the latter=20

19th century. On factor in both those cases was an strong and absolute=20 monachy realised it could not become a great power if it was reliant on=20 a court of hereditary landed idiots. The Ecole Royal de G=C3=A9nie was=20 established in France in 1650, from the 1770 entry to the Prussian civil =

service was restricted to those who could pass the entrance examination. =

The equivalent British reforms of education and the civil service did=20 not happen until the mid-nineteenth century; after rather than before=20 industrialisation.

The prejudice against anything tainted with a suggestion of manual=20 labour is near universal, as is the tendency to enhance status by=20 academic rather than practical education. In Britain industrialisation=20 happened first, it brought wealth that was converted into status for the =

wealth creator's descendants: that status didn't involve engineering.

Middle class trade unions and cartels

One of the attractions of IT to many of my generation (b1954) is I=20 suspect the lack of influence pompous professional societies such as=20 BCS/IEE. Being able to do the job is what matters not the possesion of=20 exam certs.

--=20 djc

[The Natural Philosopher]

Sadly not true.I picked up loads of contracts as a self taught software engineer between 1980 and 1990..but by then if you didn't talk comp-sci gobbledeygook, you didn't get the job.

[dennis]

While that may be true in Scotland the main reason people live in existing conurbations is the planning laws that won't allow them to build a house in the "green" belt. If you relaxed the laws so that you could build elsewhere the flood plains would empty except for those that like rivers and running water.

[tony sayer]

In article , Sarah Brown writes

Having a good look at a lot of terrain mapping recently One can conclude that there is an awful lot of ground that is some metres above areas that could flood rather badly that aren't on hill tops or waay out ion the sticks.

Course before the railways and roads came along river transport was the in thing..

FWIW the centre part of the new Clay Farm site is quite low by Cambridge standards;!...

[tony sayer]

No need to be that extreme, there are plenty of locations around river areas and low lying land that could be built on....

[tony sayer]

In article , dennis@home writes

Once again the Green belt is strangling .. and now drowning us;!...

[The Natural Philosopher]

The green belt IS the flood plains, largely.

Where else is there good arable land, for example? alluvial deposits mainly.

[tony sayer]

Really?, What eve round your way .. Hill Billy;)...

[Jules]

I can't think of anything worse than a [cheap] house in London, to be honest! Somewhere surrounded by mountains rather appeals, however...

Nor do I think that's a particularly uncommon view, to be honest (albeit far outweighed by people who *do* want sea-level suburbia). I suspect the only hinderance is the cost of construction - but given the cost of clearing up after each flood, maybe building on higher ground will become more popular.

cheers

Jules

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes, but there is an awful lot that isn't. No one is claiming that all new developments have to be on flood plains, rather that its not practicable to insist that none are.

And rain. being one of those things that happens badly once in many decades, and in unpredictable locations, is not something that even maybe SHOULD preclude you building on certain areas.

The issue is that if - say - your location is liable to a 3ft flood once every hundred years, what should you do?

Exactly. And water power meant putting mills by streams and rivers.

People go where its economically attractive.

Flood the bloody lot.

[Jules]

Hmm, wasn't there also some strange scheme to power sattelites from ground-based lasers being pondered about by the US military? I'm sure I saw something about that a few years ago - as I recall, they weren't having much luck :-)

Different but vaguely-related idea, in that it would presumably have the same sort of impact on navigation...

[The Natural Philosopher]

No. We are bang on the watershed BETWEEN two flood plains. However just go a mile down the hill, and every winter you will find a foot of water across the road from a very small brook, that occasionally shows aspirations to become a river.

That's where the village was originally located, simply because people needed water to drink wash and crap into.

So that's where the roads and the shop is, and thats where people want to build new houses.

When I bought this place I had to undergo extreme pressure from my then partner as she considered it 'too isolated'

Why has the Thames valley been the most rapidly developing areas in the UK?

Cos its where the communications are.

Why were they there? Because the Thames was a big highway once.

[djc]

I agree. I have a (relatively) affordable flat in London (I could afford to buy it 20+ years ago, I would struggle to do so today). I also spend a month each year in Umbria, in an appartment slightly larger and worth a third of the London price. Now if there was a job in Umbria...

The trouble with building on the 'green belt' etc is that unless the work moves too, there is just a greater need for an unbalanced transport system to cope with the tidal flows of commuters.

[magwitch]

On the contrary, from aerial footage of Oxford last night the fields surrounding the city are flooded, taking immense amounts of water from the Thames.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It appeals, but where is the work?

You may have visions of beoing the Laird of CairnBollocks, but frankly, unless you can rustle up some paying customers for a deer shoot, or get a government grant to sit on your backside and 'conserve the land' you will be reduced to living like a 19th century crofter..

No: Its simple ecomomics. 99.99% of peoples housing choice is a compromise between what they can afford to buy and what they can earn to cover it.

We are all, in that sense, working class peasants, now. Only a very few people, and of course the Government, themselves have the power of unrestricted choice.

When it comes to building houses they must have potential buyers. You COULD a few years ago pick up a nice terrace in an old mining town in S wales for 16 grand. A friend of mine did. Nice countryside mainly. He just managed a (not daily) commute via bicycle and train to Bristol.

Why? because there are no mines anymore, and precious little else.

That's changing, and its probably worth a fair bit more.

People have to live where the work is. Work is less localised around the geography than it was, but it is still localised.

There are good reasons for that. The opportunity cost of - say - building 50 houses up a hillside in central wales is immense.

Where are the shops? the roads? the offices? the drains and sewers? The bus routes? the nearest train station? the nearest electricity substation? The nearest TV transmitter or telephone exchange?

Basically you have tow choices fo CHERAP development. You either do a Cambourne or a Milton keynes, and shove a brand new town not TOO far from civilization, and that takes HUGE commitment from the local council to ensure that decent infrastructure IS put in places at the expense of taxpayers who don't yet exist - which means borrowing money, or central govt help. And then you get a toytown suite of estates usually with awful access ..

OR you infill on top of the infrastructure that you have, and hope it stands the strain.

Or my radical suggestion, you buy up crap parts of major towns, rip out and upgrade the infrastructure, and build nice, but high density housing on them.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at

11:50:57 on Thu, 26 Jul 2007, Jules remarked:

I thought it was the other way round: a satellite gathering solar energy and beaming it back down to earth.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 11:49:51 on Thu,

26 Jul 2007, The Natural Philosopher remarked:

Hope that your forty economically active years don't co-incide with that

100-year event. (Before and after being SEP).