Tuesday, 18 February 2014

They said it, not me.

The effluent has hit the affluent

My latest blogpost: They said it, not me.Tweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 18:52

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9 comments:

Bayard said...

Well, they have the Somerset Levels as an example. Everyone who owns property on a floodplain could be charged drainage rates. The insurers know who they are: they're the ones putting in the claims at the moment.

18 February 2014 at 19:15
James Higham said...

Think the money trail is a good indicator with the SLs.

18 February 2014 at 19:21
Lola said...

I didn't know about ALTER. Thanks for informing me.
But why does Cable say so much other stuff,a lot of which is stupid?

18 February 2014 at 21:27
Bayard said...

L, perhaps that's the stuff the men in the grey suits tell him to say.

18 February 2014 at 21:30
Mark Wadsworth said...

B, as TW pointed out, they DO still have good old fashioned "drainage rates" on the SLs, but either they aren't spending the money correctly or the rates don't raise enough to pay for what's necessary (or both).

JH, yes, but from where to where? Is the whole flooding thing a scam perpetrated by insurance companies as an excuse for a) jacking up the premiums, while b) not paying out and c) getting lovely subsidies from the government which says "money is no object"?

L, I dread to think, but he's the best hope we've got right now (until enough people stand as YPP candidates).

B, perhaps he is a man in a grey suit?

18 February 2014 at 22:28
DBC Reed said...

You have to wonder whether the farming they're doing on the levels is economically viable; it would n't be if the farmers were paying a realistic rate for the drainage to keep them in business.

19 February 2014 at 07:52
Kj said...

DBC: true, they should, as everyone. It´d come out of rent, and if rates>rents, it would not be viable. It probably is though, if there were proper drainage that is.

19 February 2014 at 08:44
Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC, Kj, of course farming is viable there, it has been viable for as long as they have been dredging/draining there, i.e. thousands of years.

Anyway, we've moved from the SL's, we're doing west London now, only the artificial river there is called "Jubilee River"and not "Huntspill".

19 February 2014 at 08:51
DBC Reed said...

Not convinced about viability of cuurent agricultural practices including growing maize (see Monbiot)on Somerset Levels .Chris Huhne wrote in Guardian about his cabinet experience :
"A confidential deal struck last June ahead of the spending review increased flood defence spending as a payback for the insurance companies continuing to provide cover for 350,000 houses at high flood risk." So left to the Invisible Hand the private sector insurers (whom Huhne calls highly "enlightened") would have written off all these houses owned by true blue voters of the don't subsidise the poor / subsidise us variety. I cannot see why on strict Invisible Hand grounds ( I am starting to see the relevance of this now) the farmers should not be allowed to go out of business naturally (to use Adam Smith's favourite word).Or they could adapt to natural conditions,not adapt the natural conditions to them.
I do know about the Jubilee River: I cannot see why we should be bothered by the plight of one lot of homeowners subsidised to live by a river more than another richer lot upstream.They both should be paying an effing great LVT for their own flood protection.
On the Levels, it might be better to nationalise all the land below 10 feet above sea level (plenty of places below five) and anybody mad enough to try and work it should pay a rent into an organised public sector land management scheme.
For a good example of a non viable drainage and enclosure scheme on wetland see Otmoor near Oxford when the legal system was n't entirely controlled by the landowners (it was late on in the 1830's )and attempts to stop the R.Ray flooding were at one time halted.They eventually went ahead
amidst a good deal of fighting ( a company of Coldstream Guards had to be stationed there) but the area is now back as rather wild wetland.(The Fenland is not naturally viable either.)

19 February 2014 at 09:50

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