David Cameron today once again successfully failed to bang on about Europe, as he said Britain has ‘to do better as a country’ to protect itself from future floods, the Telegraph tells us.
No doubt those people of the Somerset Levels who had time to listen in on the radio while trying to cope with flooding, evacuation and the turning upside down of their lives, will have been incredulous when Cameron said that officials are working on a plan to protect the Somerset Levels, although, as he put it, it is still not clear what the best solution for the area would be.
Here’s a radical thought, as a starting point, how about a return to the flood prevention activity that was wound down over the years by the Environment Agency to fit a political agenda created through the EU? If those who managed to listen in to the pontificating buffoon were not already grinding their teeth in anger, then this may well have done the trick:
Dredging has a part to play.
At the end of the 1990s when the Environment Agency was established, there became rather an anti-dredging culture and some of the expert bodies said it shouldn’t be part of the picture. It has to be part of the picture.
Why won’t anyone acknowledge me?
Unsurprisingly, there was not a single word about why it was suddenly decided that dedging shouldn’t be part of the picture, or the concerted effort by the EU to inflate the price of dredging through waste management laws and restrictions on moving river deposits once on land. Far less any mention by the Telegraph’s Peter Dominiczak, who, like UKIP, passed up the opportunity to add value by providing context and sharing established facts.
There was no mention of Making Space for Water.
There was no mention of the Water Framework Directive.
There was no mention of the Floods Directive.
There wasn’t even any mention of the Natura 2000 strategy.
EU law has been changing the British landscape – literally – aided by environmentalist activists like Baroness Young, who Labour parachuted into positions of power to wreak havoc on the approach to flood prevention, because they shared the EU view of wanting to see reclaimed land, such as the levels, refilled with water to become habitat museums – this despite the fact that flooding the long since established farmland in this way kills the animals living there and results in a putrid, stinking swamp that cannot sustain fowl in any case.
Around the areas that have been flooded there will be some very lonely animals. But there will be none so lonely, or so deliberately ignored, as the great big EU elephant in the room that the useless UK media and politicans from the four main parties are doing their best to pretend they cannot see and does not exist when it comes to the flooding issue, how it has been allowed to happen and acknowledging who was responsible.
Autonomous Mind 
Hey, Commyron! I have some bad news for you laddie!
It did not work for Canute, it DEFFINATELY will not work for some toffy nosed commy bastard who can not even win an election!
But the elephant isn’t the EU, that’s just its head.
It’s a whole system of government which has come about where policy is decided completely outside of democratic control or even parliamentary control by activists and QUANGOs acting in cahoots with parts of the government, and the EU is just a part of it. The EU ties Westminster’s hands. Cutting off the head – leaving the EU – would be a useful step.
I’m really not surprised that Cameron doesn’t want to start unravelling that thread. He toyed with it before with his ‘Bonfire of the QUANGOs’ which vanished without trace.
I think there’ll be some practical measures to sort out the drainage of the Levels, because Westminster won’t want another embarrassment like this. I don’t know how this will fit in with the directives, but I’d guess they’ll go towards creating mayhem and expense somewhere less visible.
I doubt the underlying problem will be tackled, because it’s too big. We’ll just see a dab of Germolene put on.
All I can say is Thank you AM and how we are blessed we have the internet where at least we can talk about the hypocracy of these brainless *ankers that think we are all as stupid as them , Glegg was om LBC this morning with as much twaddle as he could muster.there ignorant arrogance is something to behold.
Where is Guy Fawkes when we need him..
Do you think it is possible that our politicians just aren’t aware of the influence of the EU?
Might it be that the directives get picked up by the various ministries that then busy themselves gold plating and extending them and finally drafting a bill for the minister to sign off?
It is so easy nowadays for a team of enthusiastic bureaucrats to cut and paste reams and reams of new directives. They can ‘boilerplate’ in cross-references like confetti. The result is probably full of flaws, let alone hidden agendas but no one person has the time to dig through. It isn’t even as if the task is shared by MPs, essentially each MP is on their own.
I think the solution is to drastically cut back on the legislative bureaucracies and appoint a deputy minister whose sole purpose, and without support, is to formulate new legislation.
JimS,
No. It’s a thing which generally gives them an easy life and it’s become the way government is done. Largely they are unaware of it in the way when you drive somewhere you are not thinking about what’s going on in the car engine.
Sometimes it gets in the way and stops them doing things, like Cameron’s alcohol pricing rubbish which keeps resurfacing, or the brouhaha about Starbucks not paying much tax in the UK. In those cases they drone on about the wickedness of whatever it is but they don’t actually mention the EU. Generally they fence with the other Westminster parties in a bit of stage sword fighting over the issue but they carefully avoid the EU.
The Tories have to mention the EU, because it’s expected, but they pretty much scratch the itch by talking about impossible reforms and renegotiating something or other, and that’s done surprisingly well.
Getting out of it would involve a lot of work and a lot of responsibility and they don’t like the idea.