7/05/2007

Hardly the time to cut back on flood defences in Norfolk

The Eastern Daily Press reports that government spending on flood defences in Norfolk is to be cut by £20 million.

It is interesting that this is happening the week after some of the most serious flooding seen in this country for many years.

Luckily on this occasion Norfolk escaped the worst of the rain, but Norfolk's flood protection has never really been a case of protecting the County from rain. Norfolk's problem is the sea.

Norfolk is not as flat as people say, but inland from parts of north Norfolk, the county forms a series of large dips and natural lowlands which would, if the sea broke through in North Norfolk, sea several thousands acres, several villages and a number of towns fully submerged under several metres of sea water, rendering the land useless for farming and the houses uninhabitable (salt water rots things very fast).

So with the government already getting it in the ear for abandoning the people of Hull after the floods there, they seems to have pre-emptively abandoned Norfolk in advance.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a joke, yes? If Global warming is nonsense ~ we still need flood defences maintained for low lying areas. Global warming not nonsense ~ we need it even more.

As a marshlander myself, I am in complete agreement with your post (bet you never thought you'd here that!)

What cheeses me off is that if the locals grouped together and started to re-enforce their own flood defences, they would fall foul of some environment agency rule or some such.

Grrrrrrr....

Nich Starling said...

You are qwuick to write a story and link to me when wwe disagree. now is your chance to write a story and link to me where we agree !

Anonymous said...

Ouch ~ owned. lol.

OK, fair point, but I want to find some source material I have about how the Skeggy flood defences were built (regarding the latter part of my comment) first ~ I have to get a libertarian dig in there somewhere!.

Anonymous said...

Excuse me but do the Westminster people know where East Anglia is? I have heard that they have appointed a Minister especially to act as an ambassador etc. They seem to have as much concern for us as they have for the Dingle in Eire. I know we have got Norman and hopefuly soon yourself and Simon to speak up for us. With increasingly fewer East Anglian labour MP's maybe they have come to the conclusion that drowning us woult be best? Not that I know about these things?

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