WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Thomo]

Quite so David. I had a very long call from Ken on Friday during which he unburdened himself a bit. It will be my very great pleasure to help with some of the issues that he is concerned about. Whilst I have no intention of elaborating on our conversation, I get the impression that now that Ken is nearing the end of his term as Chairman of the Council, he does not wish to leave any loose ends for whoever succeeds him to sort out. Anything that concerns the Centenary is probably where I can most be of use. Near to the top of the "needs to be sorted" list is the Lifeboat William Riley, the local group who possibly have the greatest interest here, and anything concerning the Rohilla appear to have stated that the William Riley does not have its own trailer and that the Town would have to meet the cost of the hire of said trailer and a suitable vehicle to pull it, here and back. In the current local economic situation this could be a big ask. Yesterday I had a long talk with Peter Thompson at Whitby, initially to get some idea of the cost, the upshot of this revealed the following. As I always believed, the William Riley does indeed have its own trailer, what is required is someone with a suitable LWB 4 X 4 to go and bring it here and return it to Whitby post event, there is a veritable plethora of such vehicles in our area. When the William Riley took part in the Thames River Pageant it cost £800 for the hire of the towing vehicle. What is needed now I believe is an enthusiastic volunteer. I also discussed with Peter the matter of mounting a display in the marquee, of Rohilla orientated items. In Whitby they have a large collection of such things, some of them are to be exhibited at the Whitby Lifeboat Station from May to November this year as a part of their own Centenary Event. Peter is prepared to bring the remainder here and man the display himself, and I think that it would be a nice gesture if he could be found overnight accommodation at least. Peter is the now retired ex Cox of the Whitby Lifeboat and looks after the affairs of the Lifeboat Museum there, I have had the pleasure of meeting him and he is a most enthusiastic and interesting man.

[PanBiker]

Peter, is there any reason you are posting the same material twice in different threads? Once is enough and will draw the same attraction in a suitable single thread.

With my admin hat on I tidied one instance in here yesterday thinking it was a mistake but have noticed you have put it back, danger is of course that the conversation is now a bit disjointed between two separate threads.

[Thomo]

Sorry Ian, I was just trying to get the message across. This concerns Barlick and as a born and bred Barlicker I am trying to do my best. It will not happen again.

[Stanley]

I'm not a petrol head but I saw a car parked in Cooperative Street that caught my attention because it had a carbon fibre bonnet. All it said on the back was M Nurburgring. It was not new but looked like a mean machine!

[hartley353]

One of lifes small pleasures is watching Countryfile on a sunday evening. Last evening the farming presenter visited one of the Somerset farms under water, the farmer in question ably pointed out the problem to his land. Both the rivers in question flow at a level above the surrounding land, so if the water comes over the banks, it will not flow back when the river drops, and can only be put back mechanically. This was as good an explanation as I have heard to date and explains why the land had been underwater for twenty one days without appreciably receding. How will dredging help this?

[PanBiker]

It wont but I may well help avoid the flooding in the first instance.

[Stanley]

Simple. The rivers at the moment are only running at 40% of capacity they could have if dredged. This means that they would have more capacity to accept water upstream which would not then follow the lower level land and exacerbate the flooding. Remember that there is always pumping from low level on the Levels but this has to stop when the rivers reach capacity. Far easier to manage the water before it reaches levels this severe. The fear is that the rivers can overtop their banks and make the situation worse. That's why occasionally even the emergency pumping has to stop. The cleaner the rivers and the better managed the outfall to the sea, the more capacity there is to get water away. Most of the later improvements to drainage of the Fens was achieved by dredging the outfalls to the sea and improving the flow.
The real root of the problem is political. Protecting built environments downstream is more politically attractive than protecting farmland.

[hartley353]

Don't know were you get your imformation from stanley, as a riparian owner I have a little understanding of rivers, how can any one say what is the capacity of a a river. On many of the rivers I fish I have watched the water rise and fall many feet over a short period of time. they are in a constant state of flux, this has historically caught many people out and caused loss of life to those who were unwary. Tidal rivers of course have predictable rise and falls, and the consequence of flooding when a large volume of water wishing to come inland and a large volume of water wishing to reach the sea meet each other. Somersets problems are many faceted and as I wrote in an earlier quote I will allow history to prove me right that dredging will not help. My elder sister lives in a village outside Cheltenham, their village is served by two roads the lower and normaly quicker route will be flooded many times during a winter. Their churchyard will be under water some times for weeks and folks who die during these times and wish interment will be kept on ice till the spring. Village records show this has been some thing they have lived with for many centuries. Not one bleat has been heard from these residents, and many others around our isles. Why has Somerset gotten the coverage it has, could we just be short of news.

[Tizer]

The Levels, being level, have rivers that are subject to the twice-daily influence of the tides. For the lower reaches of these rivers, twice a day the flow is `downstream', towards the sea, and twice it's `upstream'. You need the banked up sides not just to keep in the water coming from the hills but to keep it in when it comes from the sea. Likewise, the silt flows both ways. In a fast moving river, on a greater slope, silt is carried out to sea - you could say they are `self-dredging' - but in these slower moving waterways it gets carried back in again. Hence the need for dredging. What you dredge out, you dump on the bank to build up the height. And let's remember, the `sea' we're talking about here is the Bristol Channel which has the second highest tidal range in the world, about 50 feet. When the tide comes in you've got to stop pumping because there's nowhere for the water to go.

An important fact about the effects of the floods here. Most of the houses being flooded are old houses, there for a couple of centuries or more, and have not flooded before 2012, and those that are flooded were not to such a depth in the past. The ultimate reason for them being flooded is to protect new housing estates built in Taunton and Bridgwater in the last 10 years. The rural folk here are being sacrificed for new houses built in the towns, built on flood plains and approved by the planners in the face of warnings from the Environment Agency not to do so.

[Tripps]

I've just seen pictures of the chap supposedly over a year adrift in the Pacific Ocean, living from drinking turtles blood, and fish which he caught with his bare hands. I don't believe a word of it. He looks to be in better shape than me.

[hartley353]

Just done something which I rarely do. A quick scan of the internet shows lots of reasoned articles on why the levels are flooded. Dredging seems low in many peoples opinions. There are some which I had not considered, such as glacial drop, or the fact that if you drain land for agriculture it also causes the land to drop. Even modern farming with its use of nitrates which will always cause weed growth and silt retention in waterways is greatly exacerbated when you artificially pump the stuff into water courses, The use of upland once peat bogs as sites for wind generation also requires the draining of the land thay stand on, and causes quickened run off. One thing is certain this land should return to nature, and if man doesn't allow it, then she will just help herself. I still find it hard to understand the people of this country who always want a scapegoat even when it is a natural event.

[Thomo]

In respect of dredging, it has more to do with just where it should be done rather than piecemeal bits anywhere. Since the lower reaches of many rivers ceased to be used by commerce, dredging activity is at a low level. This can allow what is in effect an underwater weir to develop near to where the river and the sea come into conflict. When the tide is out, the river waters flow is restricted and will "back up" causing problems in its lower reaches if the river has a lower natural flow rate.

[Stanley]

Well there you are... Bad maintenance of drainage isn't a contributory cause of the flooding. Someone should tell the DoE because they have just changed their mind and admitted that it is.
Have a look at this LINK for news of a report (on BBC R4 as well) of a suicide in Rochdale. Obviously we don't know the details but it's terrible that for whatever reason, this woman did what she did.

[hartley353]

My interpretation of lord Smiths speech are a little different to Stanleys. Through out the flooding of somerset I have read how many acres have been inundated, but not how many homes. A request for the figures of homes flooded suggest it may be below 50, compared with national figures of 55000 for flooded homes it would seem miniscule. Just who is driving the bid for dredging and why.

[Tizer]

It just doesn't seem to be getting through to you Hartley, the issue in the Somerset Levels is not about the number of homes that have been flooded by a natural event but by the flooding of some homes, the ruination of businesses and the serious disruption to the daily lives of many others...and all due, not to a natural event, but to the failure of the Environment Agency to carry out its duties. Not to mention the promise it gave a year ago to the same people who were affected then that it wouldn't be allowed to happen this winter.

Now for some other news from Somerset. I couldn't resist showing you all this news story from the Bridgwater Mercury:
8:00am Tuesday 4th February 2014
"Collie dog eats Somerset builder's £80k Aston Martin car. A builder was praying his car insurance covered ‘acts of dog’ after his pet chewed his £80,000 Aston Martin."
See the damage here: http://www.bridgwatermercury.co.uk/news ... ?ref=var_0

[Cathy]

That dog story reminds me of Marilyn's son's dog (her Grand-dog). He has come home a couple of times to find his dog has eaten some of his car.

[David Whipp]

Work underway to create two new pedestrian crossings on Kelbrook Road.

Two crossings are being built, one near the Memorial Gardens the other between the sports centre and the high school, as a concession by the county council.

LCC's planning consent for the new primary school included a requirement for one badly sited crossing between the exit and entrance to the garage. Local councillors asked for a signal controlled junction at the sports centre entrance with pedestrian phases and eventually settled for the two crossings being built.

[hartley353]

Sorry tizer that you feel that way, stopping the dredging was not a cost cutting exercise, just a waste of time when faced with the inevitable conclusion. There are no figures available to me as to the cost, but I have seen the figure of £4,000,000 for two and a half miles of dredging bandied about. The two rivers in question are probably of a combined length of over 30 miles plus. The EA did not take the descision to stop easily, there was a lot of infighting about it, and at all times as I have posted before there was pressure applied to them from europe and higher powers. Like you I have sympathy for the disruption to folks life, as I do for people disrupted by the building of roads, railways, reservoirs etc. It may be a progress a few will not like, but has to be swallowed. Mistakes were made by the use of this land now they have to be put right.

[Tardis]

An almost apology:

Thank you for your post on Saturday and for highlighting this matter to me.

I am obviously very disappointed to hear of this incident and as such have already begun an internal investigation to establish who the driver was and why this may have happened.

Following this I can assure you that disciplinary action will be considered and that we will also be reminding our employees of their responsibilities as drivers highlighting, again, our company policy and our ‘Drivers Guide’ which is readily available to them.

I apologise on behalf of Your Move and hope that our response to your post will reassure you that we have taken this matter very seriously and are doing everything we can to avoid such an incident in the future.

To my complaint of almost being run down on the Skipton Road zebra whilst walking the dog by this man in his company liveried car whilst he was busy chatting on his phone

[Tardis]

There are arguments that suggest dredging will destroy much wildlife habitat, including swamping the river estuaries with silt.

None of these plans currently address the silt in those rivers, and there are ways of reducing it's inflow.

Anyone who wants to see the power of storm drains just has to stand in Valley Gardens during a storm and see the beck, which is little more than a brick lined drain, watch the level rise and fall rapidly. Just apply that to the whole river and it must become apparent that pushing large volumes of water into a river course over a short period of time can only ever have consequences. But as Hartley says, not in the towns with the largest populations

[plaques]

Local councillors asked for a signal controlled junction at the sports centre entrance with pedestrian phases

As an occasional user of the sports centre entering from out of town, There's no problem in waiting for the traffic to clear before entering. My main difficulty is in locating the entrance before pulling to the centre position. The school entrance often kids me into turning too early.

[Thomo]

Anyone who wants to see the true value of storm drains should go to Singapore in the monsoon season. These drains are impressive in size and very effective. But these are man made and are kept clean and unlike rivers, all of the water moves at a constant rate of flow, side to side, and top to bottom. In a river with a poor rate of flow due to lack of incline, the water does not all move at the same speed, due to impediments to flow in the river bed, the water closer to this does not flow at the same rate as that nearer to the surface. If at a point down river there is an obstruction, only the faster moving water will go over it, and the higher the obstruction the less the flow, In a tidal estuary when the sea water is lower than the base of the obstruction, the river water at its base becomes trapped in effect, the full volume of the river water cannot escape freely. When the tide goes out, the river will move a degree of silt seaward, when the tide comes in, the silt is pushed back again, and the sea is more powerful than a river with little incline. Removing the obstruction can only be beneficial.

[Big Kev]

This caught my attention today. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ne ... vEUomxFDIV Not a very good example to set for the younger generation...

[Pluggy]

From the millions that must have taken place, from practically everyone under the age of 30 with access to beer and a mobile phone, calling it a deadly game is pushing it a bit. Statistically its probably a lot safer than crossing the road. Its drinking a pint of beer in one, hands up all those who have NEVER done such a thing. I drink very very little these days, but I can't honestly say I never drank a pint of beer quickly in my younger days and drank too much on occasion. The only difference is somebody wasn't recording me doing it........

Shut all the pubs in the land, stop everyone else selling booze and outlaw mobile phones seems the logical way to go.

[Big Kev]

I'm not against anyone drinking alcohol, it just seems to encourage binge drinking to me, everything in moderation.