The British Army has been now deployed to Wealthy Stockbroker Country west of London near Windsor Castle and Eton College as the national flooding crisis of the Thames Valley days after the flooding event and now after isolated reports of bandit type high jacking of Hessian sand bags and looting of homes takes place. There have been complaints about the lack of Police and Army personnel to provide security. The British Army are now placing sand bags in the door entrances of folks properties after the properties have been flooded out a few days ago. The poor Squaddy dogs bodies it would seem haven't even been issued Wellies or fishing Waders whilst they wade through 3 feet of cold stinky water having to suffer cold and wet feet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26131515

A slow motion Katrina event but without the panic and the gun fire. Copious cups of hot tea at community Tea stations help considerably! Local and National government reactive actions, too little too late rather than being pro-active and prepared. Lack of maintenance in ensuring water drainage and silt clearing/dredging and crumbling Victorian infrastructure leading to a very British Crisis during an age of austerity.

The National pot hole crisis is bound to following with years of patch repair and make do thinking mentality.

Yikes - I had no idea England was going through that right now but British weather has been in the news a lot this winter, it seems.

Will watch more closely on my BBC app.

Best wishes to all affected.

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There is a photo spread: Flooding in Southwest England

Apparently they can't even find a life vest for Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales (see photo #20), although at least he does have his Wellies.

These photos were of the Somerset levels, which was an area of normal natural wet marsh land which was drained back in the 17th Century to create prime farm land by the good engineering folks from Holland. Over the years the drainage ditches haven't been maintained over the last decade due to the expense and apparent environmental political correctness excuses.

The Somerset levels have of course naturally flooded once more as they did last year. The flooding of the Somerset Levels has essentially been ignored by the Government for the last 6 weeks until the Duchy of Cornwall (Prince Charles) turned up and saw the plight of the local yokels. The Government then rang up the good folks from Holland again to provide some solutions to the flooding problem. I was impressed though by the local community in Somerset with their improvised sand bag filling machine (A wooded frame with inverted road cones. )

The National Crisis has happened in the last couple of days (after the Government started playing pass the political blame game parcel around and around within various government departments) as the homes of the British Establishment and the City of London Stockbrokers multi million pound properties started to have their carpets ruined due to the Thames valley inundation. Apparently money to solve the problem is now no object!

Watching the poor Army sqaddies getting the short end of the stick delivering sand bags to the doors of local residents in Staines in the Thames river valley who were already flooded out just about sums up the situation. News media reports have also shown a tortoise being rescued from the flood.

There is a reason folks need to be prepared in the UK.

Not just a British crisis.

It seems much of the worst effects you talk about are from what used to (and may still be) called "deferred maintenance." That is, we know we need to do something to prevent this from failing when we need it, but we can't do it now.

As long a basic infrastructure is working, it is the first place money is saved by not maintaining it. Only things that are broken get fixed.

Many of our urban and other systems are well past their expected lifetimes, with no prospect of any routine replacement/upgrade in the near future. Thus, it fails in a catastrophic mode.

If I may be indulged, a bit of a personal victory over this attitude. About 18 years ago, we moved into a new community with a Homeowners Association, which had some fixed assets to maintain. I got on the Board and got an audit of these assets, their expected lifetime, and replacement costs. Then we set up a budget with yearly funds going into a fund to replace these assets as needed, and a yearly maintenance budget for them. We now have a reasonable sum set aside for replacement as required, and everything is being maintained as it should be.
Seemed like common sense. . . .

The old foagie in frame 17 should know better. If he didn't like the speed the car was going when he took a swipe at it, he darned sure won't like the speed it goes when it comes back by him the other way. Looks like when he took his swing, he filled up his willies (at least one of them).

After all, the driver was probably just late to tea.

I wonder which is more pungent, the smell of the Thames floodwaters, or the stink being raised in the government offices by the stockbrokers, er, constituents, um, political fundraisers...

The part of the sandbags being delivered to the hapless Sumerset victims bodes poorly for the PR groups.

this post has only just caught my eye sorry about that. I believe all perspective buyers at the time of purchase were warned what kind of land they were buying houses on ,Looks like Mother Nature really stuck it to them I also cant see the point of selected river/embankment improvements both then and now. I'm not a tree hugger by any means but I do know this don't interfere with mother nature. Then again if your post/zip code
is more important to you, you pays your money you takes your chance
Daz