Why did floods agency spend hundreds on 'equali-tea' gay awareness mugs...

I think you could file that one under the heading ,"personal interest before those of the public" .

639 squid?
All a stormfront in a teacup, as Adolf Hunter would say!

Besides have you any idea of how much water all these cups can hold - brilliant!

Didn't Maggie stop schools from promoting homosexuality when she was in charge?

Positive discrimination is frowned upon by the EU as well.

Smith should be sacked and prosecuted.

isn't it wrong for smith to spend taxpayers money on his own personal interests like a gay march

can these people just do whatever they like?

the money the EA spend should be spent on environmental issues

if the man in the street did things like that he would be in big trouble

one law for the political class and another law for the plebs

there should be an inquiry into this

Lots of government agencies give money to charitable causes and provide finance for slogan t-shirts & mugs. Whether they should or not is one matter, but to only single one out to suit a political argument again shows how desperate the right have become with this barrel scrapper!

Liberals are always pushing their own agenda,the destruction of the family is near complete now.

The man should be prosecuted for misappropriation of government funds.

This isnt a Charitable cause.

As a "left winger" I abhor the promotion of homosexuality especially by using the taxpayers money
to do it.
There seems to be a "shouting" of how **** they are and use the unthinking people
who are shamed into silence by these idiots, to follow like the sheep that they are!!!!!!!!

Just like this moderation which will not allow me to print the word Q---R, which by the way, has been a word in the English language for many centuries!!!!!!

Regardless of your feelings bazzza, why should ANYONE in a quango be able to use their position to channel money for that quango towards their favourite sponsorship themes ? Gay pride marches have asolutely zilch to contribute towards flood protection or any other responsibility of the EA,particularly when funds are heavily restricted. Smith has no case to complain about re funds if he chooses to waste what he has been given.

i'm hardly a fan of overpaid and wasteful quangocrats, but honestly, this thread is laughable

a few thousand quid would have made absolutely b*gger all difference to flooding of the magnitude we've just witnessed. a few schoolkids armed with buckets and spades would have had the same impact.

proper flood defences, the kind of serious engineering that can withstand coastal and river flooding AT THE SAME TIME costs BILLIONS. and its hardly the EAs fault that government after government has refused to fund that level of spending (except in London, obviously, but what else is new)

That's not the point,not a penny should be spent by the Environment quango on vile pet projects by the overpaid Chairman.

the point is that deflecting blame onto the EA is a cute little trick that politicians are playing to avoid themselves getting blamed for their own lack of foresight

politicians do love a scapegoat dont they

and it looks like there are morons queueing up to buy into such bullsh!t

I agree that the amounts talked about here are laughable. What isn't so laughable is that £395 million of the EA's 2012 £1.2 billion budget was spent on salaries,or close £600 million if you include pension costs. A good read:


http://insidetheenvironmentagency.co.uk/index.php?controller=blog&action=view&tag=Whistleblower

Subversion this thread is about the waste of public money by a quango run by a political hack for his own benefit.

The more general point about the lack of spending on flood defences is valid and one I agree with.

i'm sure the EA could do with a good 'bonfire', just like most quangos

but those figures are still p!ssing in the wind compared to the scale of the problem.

the investment required is BILLIONS PER RIVER SYSTEM. either we fund it, or we accept that flooding of that magnitude cannot be prevented. harsh but simple choice.

wildman - I'm not a fan of Chris Smith at all, but I blame politicians far more than I blame the EA for this mess, and what I  dont want to see is politicians sacking Smith then claiming 'everything is fixed'

that won't solve a damned thing, yet its exactly the kind of cheap trick we can expect politicians to try.

You are right to blame the politicians although the figures you quote are startling and worrying.

One of the reasons I hated the privatisation of things like water is the private firms always look on the short term,they will never invest enough in infrastructure.

wildman - The figures are high because its pretty much an 'all or nothing' problem. Localised solutions like dredging only move the water around, and if you leave ANY gaps in the defence, then the water will breach at that point.

The key problem is drainage, and in a wide low-lying area like Somerset which is at sea level and thus prone to coastal flooding across huge areas, this is an absolute nightmare.

You basically have to ensure the length of the river is well managed, and then have some kind of large engineering solution for dealing with the point where the increased river flow (which will be massive since the improvements upstream mean all the floodwater is now still in the river) meets the tide (which was also massive in the recent storms).

This is exactly why the Thames Barrier was built - and should give an example of the scale and cost. There are projects (managed pumped lagoons, tidal barrages etc) for the Somerset/Severn Estuary area with estimates in the billions of quid.

For just one area.

the investment required is BILLIONS PER RIVER SYSTEM. either we fund it, or we accept that flooding of that magnitude cannot be prevented. harsh but simple choice.

Free marketeers suddenly in favour of state funding?

subbie, the public in Somerset have been blaming the EA for neglect for several years now and the politicians have only recently been jumping on that bandwagon now.I have had dealings with them for 4 years and they are living on a different planet,split down the middle between engineers who want to install solutions and bird hugging cowns who want to condemn houseowners and farmers. Regardless of your politics the mere idea of wasting £30k on your own hobby , be it racing or marches, is  reprehensible and should be a sackable offence to stop others in high office abusing public funds.

treetop - theres a huge difference between minor, localised flooding and the extreme combination of coastal and river flooding we saw in the last couple of months

the EAs 'neglect' may have made a difference to minor, localised flooding.

but the figures being talked about here are a total irrelevance in the context of the recent extreme flooding. theres simply no way the current infrastructure could handle that, dredging or no dredging.

locals like dredging because it shifts the problem away from their land. thats understandable, but does not solve the key problem of drainage further downstream, especially for a low-lying area like Somerset.

I have some agreement with you on the prinicples subbie but regular maintenance would have enhanced the situation and the extremes would have been much less impact. Looked at the met office rainfall sites recently and the most SW station (Camborne) has had recorded rainfall of over 200 mm per month (usually December/January) 4 times in each decade since the 80's so it isnt as if the EA could not have predicted problems last month ? It may have been higher this year but the figures arent posted yet. When the local population are so adamant about the causes of the problem being so bad perhaps we should give them some credit for knowing their local area instead of relying on Islington/urban experts who prefer to return the lands to wetlands and bird sanctuaries. The previous chair of EA is on record as saying if she had her way she would attach limpet mines to every pumping station. Bizarre or not ?

treetop, first of all, you are misunderstanding the problem completely if you are looking at just rainfall. the huge waves smashing coastal defences up and down the country were NOTHING TO DO WITH RAINFALL.

the problem is the COMBINATION. if you want hard figures, look at the Thames Barrier operating stats, which was designed to protect against this exact scenario. 43 closures since the start of the year, in just a month and a half. MORE THAN THE LAST 10 YEARS PUT TOGETHER.

the harsh reality is that, if the fundamental drainage problem is not fixed, SOMEWHERE IS GOING TO FLOOD. dredging just plays a role in determining where. harsh reality unfortunately.

dredging doesnt make the water magically disappear into thin air, it still has to go somewhere. and if the tide is high, rivers will struggle to drain at the estuary. simple physics. harsh reality again.

of course locals want their area dredged, but again, it just means some poor b*stard downstream is just going to suffer more, unless there is a proper solution for drainage.

London has that solution. the Thames Barrier. a large, expensive engineering project. London was deemed worthy of investment to protect it, Somerset was not. that pesky harsh reality again.

That was an example of comparison, the locals on the Thames have also been vocal in saying that drainage elsewehere has aggravated their situation too but the whole point of having a quango like EA is to investigate measures to prevent,alleviate or protect against flooding too. What have they been doing for the last decade ? Talking to our water guys they are adamant that since the Rivers Authority was disbanded years ago nobody has taken responsibility for maintainng the local rivers and ditches adequately. It fell into local authority,water companies,farmers and EA responsibility but has been managed very badly. I do feel we could have done better and recent events may be a wake up call instead of doing SFA.

50 closures in a year is considered the recommended maximum operating threshold for the Thames Barrier apparently

if even the Thames Barrier is being strained, what chance does poor old Somerset have?

treetop - the EA can propose solutions all it likes but it is up to government to fund them.

as should be obvious, the decision was made to fund serious flood defences for London, but not Somerset. (and even Londons have been stretched to the limit by the recent rainfall/tidal combination)

in fact, a quick google should show you a range of projects that have been rejected by governments as too expensive for the Somerset/Severn estuary region time and time again.

what is the point of understanding the problem if governments are refusing to fund the solutions?

Eric Pickles stated quite clearly that the advice the government received did not seem to be sufficient. I assumed he was referring to the 'experts at the EA' when he said that. My limited dealings with them has underwhelmed me.

damn, you know you're in trouble when you are quoting that corpulent tw*t Pickles as some kind of authority. would you honestly expect a politician to say anything different? they are in witch-hunt and damage limitation mode, so they do what they do best, blaming other people.

the government controls the funding, not the EA. Superman could not have prevented the recent flooding with the EAs current budget.

thats my point. the EA, competent or incompetent, would have made little difference either way to the recent extreme flooding without massively increased investment from the government. it is the government that are the limiting factor here.

Why do these kweers keep proudly outing themselves?
Daly a diver not a muff diver.
I declare on this thread that I am a very proud heterosexual!!!!!!

We have to agree to disagree subbie, my view is that judicious use of public money could have alleviated much of the flooding,not all but enough to make a difference. Why on earth ANY of it is spent on sponsoring one man's personal beliefs is a sackable offence in my book.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/flooding/10655005/The-flooding-of-the-Somerset-Levels-was-deliberately-engineered.html

its issues like this that make politicians little blame games so disgusting

the EA has to take some share of the blame, but there is no way it should be taking ALL of the blame. watching politicians trying to squirm out of their own role in the mess is sickening

because they could?

but they can find 30 million for the birdies!!!!