Fun Online Polls: SLOPOTY & how to minimise flood damage

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Sports Lack Of Personality Of The Year Award

Andy Murray - 40%
Tyson Fury - 16%
Lewis Hamilton - 10%
Mo Farah - 7%
Greg Rutherford - 6%
Lizzie Armitstead - 6%
Jessica Ennis-Hill - 5%
Chris Froome - 4%
Kevin Sinfield - 4%
Max Whitlock - 4%

Strange.

Andy Murray ticked nearly all the boxes - not having any noticeable personality or having won or done anything notable this year. The only ones he failed on were we've all actually heard of him and know he plays tennis.

Runner-up Tyson Fury on the other hand, ticked none, having a cool name, taking part in an inherently controversial sport, having strong opinions, however repugnant, and actually having won something notable this year and then being promptly stripped of his title for some obscure reason.

Just goes to show.
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I have no strong opinion on how to minimise flood damage and those who do take an interest have strongly diverging views:

In the green corner, George Monbiot:

Just as remarkable is the collective lack of interest in what happens when rain hits the ground. The government boasts that “we are spending £3.2 billion in flood management and defences over the course of this parliament – half a billion pounds more than in the previous parliament.” Yet almost all the money devoted to freshwater flood relief is being spent at the bottom of river catchments. This means waiting until the wall of water arrives before seeking to contain it; a perfect formula for disappointment.

A rational policy would aim to prevent the flood from gathering in the first place. It would address the problem, literally and metaphorically, upstream. A study in mid-Wales suggests that rainwater’s infiltration rate into the soil is 67 times higher under trees than under sheep pasture. Rain that percolates into the soil is released more slowly than rain that flashes over the surface. But Cumbria’s hills are almost entirely treeless, and taxpayers, through the subsidy regime, pay farmers to keep them that way.

Rivers that have been dredged and canalised to protect farmland rush the water instead into the nearest town. Engineering works of this kind were removed a few years ago from the River Liza in Ennerdale. It was allowed to braid, meander and accumulate logs and stones. When the last great storm hit Cumbria, in 2009, the Liza remained clear and fordable the following day, while other rivers roared into furious spate. The Liza’s obstructions held the water back, filtered it and released it slowly. Had all the rivers of Cumbria been rewilded in this way, there might have been no floods, then or now.

So trees and rewilding good; dredging pointless.

Speaking on behalf of Britian's agricultural landowners (three-quarters of the land by area, one or two percent by value):

Amid all the devastation and recrimination over the floods in Cumbria hardly anybody mentions one factor that may not be the sole cause, but certainly hasn’t helped. That is the almost complete cessation of dredging of our rivers since we were required to accept the European Water Framework Directive (EWF) into UK law in 2000...

It was obvious to people, who depended on the land for their living that failing to keep the rivers clear of sand and gravel would cause them to burst their banks and destroy in a few hours fertility that had taken generations to create, wash away their houses, and drown their livestock… all this changed with the creation of the Environment Agency in 1997 and when we adopted the European Water Framework Directive in 2000. No longer were the authorities charged with a duty to prevent flooding. Instead, the emphasis shifted, in an astonishing reversal of policy, to a primary obligation to achieve ‘good ecological status’ for our national rivers. This is defined as being as close as possible to ‘undisturbed natural conditions.

… they all have the same aim, entirely consonant [sic] with EU policy, to return rivers to their ‘natural healthy’ state, reversing any ‘straightening and modifying’ which was done in ‘a misguided attempt to get water off the land quicker’. They only think it ‘misguided’ because fast flowing water contained within its banks can scour out its bed and maybe wash out some rare crayfish or freshwater mussel, and that conflicts with their (and the EU’s) ideal of a ‘natural’ river.

So dredging good; trees (for which there are no subsidies) and rewilding bad.

The only thing that everybody seems to agree on is that we shouldn't allow building on flood plains, obviously, but that doesn't help people in long established towns.

I know I did a Fun Online Poll on this last year, but let's narrow it down a bit to those two contrasting points of view without an 'other' option.

(I'm always happy to blame the EU when things go wrong, but the EU is also to blame for the subsidies for clearing trees so that's a worst-of-both-worlds as per usual.)

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