Weirdly, the river has broken its banks far less this year than in previous years.

It’s not bad everywhere. Our stream down below our house isn’t that high.

It’s easy making light of the situation of “it’s only a bit of water”

but you know what… it’s not, it’s really really not.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it could be far far worse. You’ll only end up with some mud in your house. At least your house hasn’t been completely destroyed by a tornado, earthquake or tsunami; you have food and warmth; your family are (presuambly) still physically ok.

In the grand scheme of things you’re going to be ok, and your house most likely will do. Now that’s not saying it doesn’t suck to be flooded of course, and you have my sympathy for that.

Re Binners Map

Is that because Tory/ non labour run councils hadn’t put in such inflationary budgets? So the point is?

I’m in Brighton , and buggered if I will let the Greens put through a 5% increase – when they have pissed so much money up the wall on hair-brained schemes and advisors

And central London, did you see that bit, binners?

Apologies.It also applies to the plebs who’ve temporarily infiltrated the capital, in their enclaves. They won’t be there for much longer

Is that because Tory/ non labour run councils hadn’t put in such inflationary budgets? So the point is?

Which bit are you struggling with? That map shows how much budgets have been actually cut. And it carries on year on year. So the imbalance of the austerity are cumulative. So by the end of this parliament, northern metropolitan councils will have had their budgets cut by 20% – 30% while the richer home counties remain relatively untouched

But we’re all in this together, aren’t we? You’ll excuse us if some of us are less than sympathetic to the bleating from Surrey riverside home owners, especially when they were then immediately promised a ‘money is no object’ approach by the PM himself.

I wonder if that response would have been forthcoming in any other part of the country? As if we need to ask. This willingness to chuck money at anything at all seems to have been noticeable by its absence until the Tory voters of the South East looked like they needed another subsidy from the reset of us 🙄

You’ll excuse us if some of us are less than sympathetic to the bleating from Surrey riverside home owners

It’s the southerners fault that Cameron has said this ? Therefore your sympathy is now gone for people who have done nothing wrong apart from choosing to better themselves and move down south into a nice area ?

It’s the southerners fault that Cameron has said this ?

Yes. Its an unhealthy mutual co-dependency, that isn’t applied to anywhere else

My point is that when this was just effecting Wales and the South West, nobody in Westminster could give a toss (apart from maybe a phone call to see if their Cornwall 2nd or 3rd home was ok). If it’d been the north or scotland they’d have been equally as disinterested. Now all of a sudden its a crisis, because there are some wet BMW’s in the home counties. And the Hunters and Barbours are being called into use for their actual purpose. Then the politicians are falling over themselves to have their photo ops, and making lavish promises of gushing funds

The rest of meant to park our cynicism and applaud this, are we? Should we keep our bolshy opinions to ourselves and doff our caps at the same time? 🙄

Budget cuts is a red herring, the EA never had a budget cut until recently, so it would have made naff all difference. In fact on their own KPI’s they gave themselves a green traffic light for reducing flooding risk in 2012/13.

As for political parties, well it makes sense to look after your own doesn’t it. No party of any side is going to spend much time helping people who religiously won’t vote for them.

The rest of meant to park our cynicism and applaud this, are we? Should we keep our bolshy opinions to ourselves and doff our caps at the same time?

No but maybe you could wipe some of those enormous chips off your shoulder.

Housing developers are trying to weasel out of new proposals that would mean they would have to include areas that soak up water on future large scale building plots. Apparently, it would cost “them” too much… for which you can read that they want the EA or someone else to pay for and do the mitigation for them.

Plenty of investment for flood defences along the River Severn Binners. That’s not in the southwest or south. Your chips getting extra soggy in this weather 😛

I’ve just spent the last 6 hours lugging bucket after bucket of water, up the road, down the drain, repeat…. again, again again.

We now have a water pump doing that job and we’re mostly in control of the situation i think. The wife is now in a meeting with the local council, Enviromental Agency and Highways agency….

Me, i’ve just put my boy to bed so have 10 mins rest… then back outside for me.

Today, the people buying our house pulled out of the purchase as they live in the same village and have seen the flooding outside (almost inside our house)

I know people are in worse positions… but today, having my wife in floods of tears, my house sale blown away and my house covered by a lake… i don’t know who they are.

weeksy – Member
I’ve just spent the last 6 hours lugging bucket after bucket of water, up the road, down the drain, repeat…. again, again again….

Sorry to hear that. Is there anything practical that we (STW forum members) can do to help? eg Lobby, send stuff, etc

Why shouldn’t people take personal responsibility for where they choose to live? Its pretty blindingly obvious that very low lying areas are at higher risk of flooding, likewise with properties next to River or the Sea.

nah mate, we’re all good thanks. It’s a very relative term, ‘all good’ but even if 300 of you turned up here there’s little we can do, we’re moving the water and getting it out of there, but the drains are full, the thing that used to be an empty stream is a raging river, the water is coming up through the drains rather than somewhere we can actively divert it from with human power.

That said, we are dry and at least right now, the situation is better than it has been for 3 days…

I’m just sitting on the sofa crying and feeling utterly utterly useless.

That sounds bloody hard work Weeksy. Hope things get better for you soon fella.

DaveT – Member
Why shouldn’t people take personal responsibility for where they choose to live? Its pretty blindingly obvious that very low lying areas are at higher risk of flooding, likewise with properties next to River or the Sea.

I don’t live by a river… not in the normal sense of the word, the ‘river’ hasn’t actually had a ‘flow’ or even at most points any moisture in the last 7 years of us living here.

Why shouldn’t people take personal responsibility for where they choose to live?

Generally people are. I see you are taking personal responsibility for being a sanctimonious **** with nothing to add to the thread. Why don’t you **** off and poke a 3 year old with a stick or something?

Binders
Is it a budget or actual expenditure we are talking about?
All major metropolitan areas would have seemed to have cuts …. Inc London

Weeksy
I hope things get better over the next few days. I was wondering how it would affect the house sale 🙁

the reason second floor flats in flood plains are expensive to insure

DaveT – Member
Why shouldn’t people take personal responsibility for where they choose to live? Its pretty blindingly obvious that very low lying areas are at higher risk of flooding, likewise with properties next to River or the Sea.

Even when there is no record of it flooding, not only in recent memory, or even several generations?
You can live next to a river and have no issues, you can live well away from a river and be flooded. It’s obviously escaped your notice that people are now being flooded by rising groundwater; the sheer pressure of the groundwater is forcing water out of the ground and through the actual floor of people’s homes. Explain again how that’s their fault for living somewhere that has no record, ever, of flooding.

RichPenny – Member
Why shouldn’t people take personal responsibility for where they choose to live?
Generally people are. I see you are taking personal responsibility for being a sanctimonious **** with nothing to add to the thread. Why don’t you **** off and poke a 3 year old with a stick or something?

😀

http://map.sepa.org.uk/floodmap/map.htm

does england have something like that ? – sepas pretty comprehensive and shows risk from rivers / coastal and from ground water levels.

it also shows areas that have potential to flood that have no history of flooding – as things are changing …… sea levels rising etc.

yes

http://watermaps.environment-agency.gov.uk/wiyby/wiyby.aspx?topic=floodmap#x=357683&y=355134&scale=2

used it when I was buying my house!

the reason second floor flats in flood plains are expensive to insure

I can’t even work out what is going on there…

I don’t think that’s a flood plain, looks more like higher up in a valley. The water is flowing fast downhill. Could possibly be a giant sink hole but it looks too big and maybe linear for that somehow.

are your feet wet kimbers ?

Thats the Spencer Court flats in Newburn – there was a victorian culvert under the site that collapsed, and the floodwater gouged everything out around it.

DaveT are you incapable of empathy?

To satisfy my own curiosity, that pic was from 2012, and was due to an underground culvert collapsing in Tyne Tees.

http://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/topic/newburn-flats/

Edit: 1 minute too late.

due to an underground culvert collapsing during high flood waters.

my feet are dry!

fine here though we arent too far from the thames, fortunately up and away enough to be ok

the EA website shows that large parts of london however are at risk, im assuming that its protected by the barrier though rather than upstream water?

Some interesting points made here but the people turning this into a political debate of any kind are ridiculous. Sadly the media and thus politicians seem to be following suit and we will all end up worse off be it through diverted investment in other services, higher taxes or higher insurance premiums.

You would probably have to change 300 years of history to address current and future flooding issues.
– Forest clearing for agriculture
– Decrease in green spaces everywhere
– Building on flood plains
– Slow adoption of SUDS and grey water recycling in new developments
– Planning
– Constant urge for more affordable houses (at any cost)
– Under investment / poor investment in flood infrastructure
– Climate change (and all associated causes!)

But by far the biggest is the sheer amount of rain. Something which could happen in any year.

The suggestion that other countries cope with bigger rainfall is mis-direction. Land forms naturally to cope with the local climate so wetter countries will cope with wetter weather.

I’d be interested to know which of these western countries build flood infrastructure to cope with 1 in 250 year events!? I don’t expect many, if any.

Well,

we survived and last night was the first night without any generators and pumps running… today the road is slightly damp… but basically irrelevent.

It took until Friday to get any assistance, then all of a Sudden we had the Army, the fire brigade, the Highways guys and just people everywhere.
we spent a relative fortune on hiring pumps, paying for fuel and keeping the water at bay.

It was possibly the most frustrating few days of my entire life and certainly some of the toughest, doing shifts through the night with the pumps, cold, dark and wet, watching the water levels rise despite the fact we were pumping 20,000 gallons of water PER HOUR !!!! Yes really… that’s an average fuel tanker every 2 hours being pumped away from the houses.

We had people who were amazing and people who should be burned in the street. We had abuse from people for blocking the road, people complaining about the noise from the pumps and people just basically not grasping the whole concept that if our road was to flood, it then floods down the next bit into their homes, into the village pub, into the shop and the post office, then into the electrics and we all lost power (as did 2 other villages next to us)… depite this, they were still angry at us for making them divert about 100m out of their way to get to the shop…

It’s times like this you learn a lot about yourself. I coped well on the outside and at times fell apart on the inside. The feeling of being helpless to stop it, despite doing everything within your power is just not a nice place to be. The feeling that SOMEONE must have a better plan… somewhere… but it seemed for a long time they never…

I’m very glad to be able to be sitting in the office today… it’s so so nice.