A few years ago the government of the day (I dont remember which government that was, not that it matters much) declared their intention of building on Britain's flood plains. Flood plains are so called for a reason but that does not mean that it is not possible to use them. Holland carries the term to an extreme as two thirds of the country is way below sea level and is not just subject to occasional flooding but would be permanently under water without the massive sea defences, permanent pumping and properly designed and maintained drainage systems. To be fair, without all of this there would be no Holland but given that their situation is different to ours in both scale and detail, they apparently only spend about twice as much as we do for all of this. Not bad value when you end up with a viable country for your efforts.
Why is it that we always just dip our toe (excuse the pun) in to these problems. It is expensive to deal with but is there really a choice? Dealing with existing problems is a massive issue but moving on to the UK's flood plains is a whole different ball game. Without adopting the full Dutch approach it would be insane. Sadly that is the kind of financial compromise insanity that I can see our saintly politicos going for but, sooner or later, someone is going to need to bite the bullet and sign on the dotted line to make this happen. To cross our fingers and hope the problem will go away is not an option. Only a fool would take that route........but then again perhaps only a fool would go into politics in the first place.
Rant over.......for now!
