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I was gratified to receive comments to my post on my telegraph blog that were largely in agreement with my thoughts. Especially it was good to get a comment from Rachel who confirmed that in her own experience the drains were inadequate to the task.
I posted another message in the same vein as follows
Charles Clover makes a similar point to my earlier post about the problem of drainage and how new estates are more than likely to be built on flood plains. It is of course more dificult to use simple drainage schemes to protect property on a flood plain, but not impossible. The trick is to identify possible escape routes for the water and then not block them as well. Defensive barriers in the long run will prove ineffective and prohibitively expensive.
Unfortunately, so far there is no evidence that public bodies are taking any notice of these solutions, either through planning regulations or the application of ordinary common sense.
I have long been unhappy with BBC news output. It is far too parochial and shows symptoms of journalistic laziness such as too many government originated stories.
In particular I find most annoying the Radio 4 Today programme habit of forecasting the days news and announcements. Items that start with “The department of XYZ will announce today…” to my mind is a technical breach of a publication embargo on a press release. They seem to get away with it day after day and I can only assume a too cosey relationship between Today journalists and the government departments concerned.
The BBC 24 News programme often picks every possible grain of interest out of a story, bringing in endless specialists to speculate and pontificate. This is lazy. It is only too easy to pick a few stories and then call on known talking heads to fill out the air time rather than search out many more stories from around the globe. As a recent example, Aljazeera English ran a story about fighting in the capital of Somalia and a further news item on the Arab peace plan for Israel with commentary from both sides while News 24 was going over the Iranian capture of British sailors ad infinitum. I finally heard about Somalia on the BBC World Service later on that night. It appears that they take the lazy way out by running and re-running a very parochial story which is easily got together. It is particularly noticeable when there is a home news story which could be of popular interest. On days when there is no such story, the actual scope of their news widens considerably.
Many people have complained in the past how BBC news is biased towards the South East of England and this has not really changed.
The principal excuse from government spokesmen commenting on the our poor showing in the recent Unicef report on children was that the data was out of date. It’s the excuse they make fro every derogatory report. In this case did they really believe that the public would say, “But, of course, in the last year or so I have noticed how suddenly all the young people look so happy and how they are suddenly so polite to others”. There are just one or two who have taken to shooting their peers in their own homes.
Jane Godley said something on Radio 4’s Saturday Live which made me think. She was talking about her husbands family using guns and hse stressed that they were not something they felt big or proud about carrying; they were just a tool, only to be fired in extreme situations. And that is the big difference with the young people in South London. Their guns define their status. They are their “emperor’s clothes”. And that is what makes them so dangerous.
The recent outbreak was obviously a serious news item. However, it could not warrant the endless news coverage in every form of media, the top billing and the never ending stream of experts. It would appear that our UK media is so lacking in energy and vision that it falls with gratitude on any story which can be covered by sending a reporter and cameraman to stand outside a deserted factory in the middle of the night and relay banal platitudes to us.
I was vindicated in this belief when one reporter ventured into a nearby town to drum up indignation and fear, only to be met with a wall of total indfference. Well done the people of Suffolk!
I seem to have been very quiet on here in recent weeks, not that I have been lulled into complacency by events. It is more of a sign of my pre-occupation with Scottish Education and its new national network portal, Glow. It is still fascinating how politicians seem to have a compulsion to tell half truths. Just yesterday, our revered Foreign Secretary suddenly had a lapse of memory on the Today programme regarding the so-called reasons for going to war with Iraq.
Anyway, A very Happy Christmas to everyone.
This morning just as I was waiting for a tradesman to arrive there was a thud on the window of our conservatory. To my horror, looking out, there was a small woodpecker lying twitching on the ground. When I got to it, it was still moving and its eyes were open. I gingerly picked it up and it lay still in my hand with its feet tightly curled under its body. It was about the same size as a small blackbird so I am assuming it was not fully grown. It had a patch of red on its crown and some red at its rump. It allowed me to comfort it for several minutes, opening its beak jerkily several times and at one point making a series of faint squawks. I thought about ringing the RSPCA, but because my visitor would be arriving at any moment, I decided to leave it till after he had gone.
Its wings did not appear to be broken and I could move them without causing the woodpecker any distress but it would not allow me to uncurl its feet. It was lying lopsided in my hand at an awkward angle with its beak over the edge of my palm. It did seem to be recovering rather than getting weaker so I laid it gently on some soft plants in a large tub where the dogs would not get at it.
After my visitor had gone I went out to the patient but as I approached the tub it flew briskly away, so I assume it had recovered and had been but stunned.
It was an amazing experience holding such as small vunerable creature in my hand, allowed to stroke it without apparently frightening it any further.
I have just heard on the ITV News that India now has more investment in the UK than the UK has in India. I think that is hugely significant. Britain has always been a major exporter of capital; this would appear to be one of the factors in the long demise of British industry. Now the tide is turning.
Major worries for the West are global warming and now the sideling of the West, America and Europe, in world economic terms.
