Media has been awash with praise for EA in wake of recent storms and floods, from politicians and media itself. In particular media has been full of shock horror stories about cuts to EA staff and budget. They can’t have read this post at insidetheenvironmentagency.co.uk where a former EA worker points out compared to equivalent agencies in
Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden and Austria
EA has nearly 3 times as many staff as the others COMBINED
and a budget which is nearly twice as large as the others COMBINED
What are they all doing?
“Working” at home apparently
EA, following the principles of Sir Humphrey, deny any abuse
Practicing the tried and tested maxim of Joseph Goebbels
A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth
And why not when you have the political classes falling over themselves to sing from the same hymn sheet and boosted by all main stream media.
Did I say all? Well not quite for yesterday (7 Jan 2014) Sky News at least featured some clips critical of EA!
Two names I wrote down (hopefully correctly) were
Dr Simon Boxall an oceanographer from Southampton University.
Simon pointed out there were pinch points along many rivers (such as old bridges) which prevented water from flowing away as fast as possible. This is hardly news, what have EA done? – left pinch points alone to enhance flooding.
Bryony Sadler was extremely scornful of EA. Apparently EA came down for about 10 hours, which was a pitifully small amount of time considering the amount of flooding. Problems were made worse as no one from EA cleared up after last years floods.
Several people, whose names I didn’t catch, have pointed out rivers aren’t dredged so just silt up, leading to more flooding.
Once again insidetheenvironmentagency.co.uk had the story first. It seems the bulk of the “work” is filling in risk assessments and talking to media.
Problems are compounded as farmers, who at one time could dredge rivers and maintain river banks, now have to get permission from EA. I wonder how many forms that involves?
I was contacted this week by a researcher, Gabrielle Nash, from ITN. Gabrielle was looking for insiders from EA about issues hampering tackling flooding in UK.
Gabrielle was out of luck as I don’t work for EA and never have. I was left with the distinct impression someone had already decided what line the program should take (supportive of EA), so she was out of luck there too as I am extremely critical of EA.
Finally, media are making out there has been an exceptional amount of rain recently. Paul Homewood over at (notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com) points out this is not true. And in any case Met Office Did Not See Floods Coming, surprise surprise.
Paul makes the same point I have been banging on about.
What is the point in spending money on computer projections which are repeatedly wrong? In fact they are so wrong they’re a national joke.
