A £20bn new Thames barrier could be built to prevent potentially disastrous flooding in London. That is about three hundred quid for each person in the country.
I think London looks rather pretty this way and at least it would finally stop those irritating demonstrators in Parliament Square.
Most of whom don’t care if London floods or not…
Wonderful! Can’t wait to be sitting in a giant puddle watching London stay all lovely and dry
When browsing the BBC website yesterday, I discovered that a page titled clickable guide to floods only covers the july floods and goes no further north than shropshire. I wrote in and complained, pointing out that there were quite a few wet places a few weeks prior to that.
I haven’t had a response yet.
How quickly things get forgotten! When we were on holiday during the first week of the Gloucestershire ‘situation’ we managed to know what was happening from the news for only 3 days…then it went quiet and I had to phone friends to know what was going on.
roflmao
*wipes a tear*
Oh yes, that’s a vast improvement to the London streets.
You provincial types have got such chips on your shoulders
You just wait until those Londoners stop the water from draining down the Thames and make it spill over higher up river.
We had the river level lowered here specially for the Festival!
How quickly indeed, Clare. When Mum (Reading) was telling me (Sheffield) about the floods she’d experienced, the used the phase “you’ve never seen anything like it!” On pointing out that actually… she dismissed my claims as if due to a bit of rain in Sheffield I didn’t quite appreciate the extent to which Reading had been ‘really’ flooded. This was from my own mother.
Reading wasn’t flooded as far a I could tell!!!!
But to be honest if I had £20bn to spend protecting London or Sheffield/Hull/Gloucester it would be London every single time for many, many reasons. None of this investment is to protect homes, it is to protect business and the economy and I would suggest that London has a bigger economic impact than Hull.
Wouldn’t it be better to relocate all the critical infrastructure (e.g. Linx) somewhere which isn’t on flood plain and once that is done, take a cool look at what is really necessary?
Possibly?
It just strikes me that the cost of letting central London flood would still be enormous. I think it would be quite sad to see places like the Tower of London swept away, compared with The Deep.
Well, in that case, there is no problem, according to the Environment Agency flood maps, the Tower is not at risk of flooding.
This is not going to be a one off cost, the east coast is sinking slowly and there is a general rise in sea levels. William The Conquerer was smart enough to place his critical military infrastructure above the flood plain.
If fools build places like Linx where they are at risk, then let the fools pay for protecting them. Canvey Island flooded in 1791, 1881, 1897 and (in spite of improved sea defences) in 1953, so why build an oil refinery there?