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Fishlake – was there a clue in the name?

(Wednesday blog)

Censorship at the Times

First, can I recommend that readers click on the headline of yesterday’s blog? There are some great, well-informed readers’ comments.

Talking of readers’ comments, yesterday I wrote the following comment on the Times website following an article on universities brainwashing students with ‘progressive’, left-wing, politically-correct nonsense:

Given that you can now get into ‘Uni’ with just two E Grades at A Level and without being able to even spell the word ‘university’, I humbly suggest that for many of today’s students the words ‘university education’ are an oxymoron. Thankfully, most of today’s students won’t know what an ‘oxymoron’ is, so they won’t be able to take offense and rush into their ‘safe space’ due to my comment.

Within less than five minutes another reader reported my comment to the moderators/censors for being ‘offensive’ and it was deleted.

Free speech anyone?

Fishlake – could there be a clue in the name?

You’ll all know about the flooding in a town called ‘Fishlake’. And, of course, as usual the ecofascists and Greta-worshippers are blaming it on Climate Change or Climate Breakdown or Climate Emergency or whatever it’s called this week:

I’m no environmental expert. But I did wonder for a brief moment whether there might just be a clue in the name of the town ‘Fishlake’. The word ‘lake’ – doesn’t that have something to do with water? And the word ‘fish’? Might there be a greater risk of flooding if one buys a house in Fishlake than if one bought a house half-way up a mountain?

In fact, as far as I understand, Fishlake is situated slap bang in the middle of what was once a floodplain. Moreover, Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster are among the places flooded, 12 years after they were badly hit when the River Don burst its banks in 2007. Many affected areas, including Meadowhall shopping centre, where customers were stranded overnight, lie within the river’s floodplain – low-lying land next to the river that naturally floods during high flow.

A local expert, who clearly hadn’t read the politically-correct BBC script that everything was due to ‘Climate Change’, sensibly explained: “This is only a problem if you develop floodplains by building houses, businesses and factories on them, which is obviously what we have done over the years, so to some degree it’s a problem of our own making.”

This rare piece of common sense came from Roy Mosley, the head of conservation and land management at Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust. Mr Mosley added: “The risk faced by floodplain communities is exacerbated by the management of land upstream of the city. Intensive animal grazing leads to short grass and compacted soil, which is less able to absorb and hold water. There are no longer enough trees and plants to absorb rain and stop it from running straight into the river.”

Given that the sensible Mr Mosley didn’t blame climate change for the floods, one could wonder how long he’ll be employed.

A separate report on flood management noted: “In 2016, the planting of 40,000 trees above Pickering in North Yorkshire was credited with helping the frequently flooded town avert inundation during heavy rainfall by slowing the flow of water into the river and reducing its peak height. The £500,000 project was significantly cheaper than a proposed new flood wall.”

It has always surprised me that people who buy homes in places like Little Crapington on Sea are amazed when their homes are affected by coastal erosion and demand compensation; people who buy homes with names like ‘Riverview Cottage’ are dumbfounded when their homes are flooded after heavy rain and demand compensation; people who buy homes near rapidly-growing airports are outraged every time a plane flies over their home and demand compensation; people who buy homes with ‘convenient access to the motorway’ complain about traffic noise and demand compensation and people who buy homes on floodplains cannot understand why their homes look like swimming pools every now and then, blame the Government for their own stupidity and demand compensation.

10 comments to Fishlake – was there a clue in the name?

  • Hardcasle

    Why do people buy property in areas susceptible to flooding? Because their education and upbringing has largely been devoid of exposure to the natural world.It was not long ago that the Geography curriculum (unless you followed one of the soft human geography options) contained all of the basic knowledge regarding the causation of closing and possible solutions,some of which you mention in your blog.Historically based local knowledge,rapidly disappearing,also informed with regard to drainage patterns and flood dangers.Several of the new housing developments in my small towns have been developed in areas which are well known watercourses both surface and underground.The result? Problems with damp and flooding of foundations.Who make these decisions? Planners sitting in offices with no local knowledge and financial greed overcoming common sense and a bit of humility.However,I do note that the local authority have,after years of neglect,started to clear drains and ditches .So perhaps someone has gone back to the basics founded on long held knowledge and experience.

  • Stillreading

    Laudable dose of common sense yet again. Much as I feel sympathy for those suffering flooded homes – it must be ghastly to see one’s possessions submerged and ruined beyond redemption – I have been asking myself whether perhaps there is the slightest hint as to the susceptibilities of Fishlake in its name. In England, a country with centuries of rural history, it’s always informative to ask oneself why or how a village or an area acquired the name it now has. In Venice, currently under a metre of water, the mayor is proclaiming that “climate change” is to blame, whilst at the same time stating that this is the worst flooding FOR FIFTY YEARS. Nothing so very new there, then! Just nature and an exceptionally high tide doing what they do when they happen to join forces. The Venetians have long suffered periodic inundations of the Acqua Alta. An acquaintance told me many years ago how astonished were she and her husband, who had gone there on honeymoon in December, to look out of their hotel window the morning after their arrival and be greeted by the sight of the local inhabitants confidently striding along on metre high trestles, brought out of storage specifically for that purpose. Furthermore, Venice is slowly sinking into the mud anyway. Nothing to do with climate, changing or otherwise, just the inevitable, sad consequence of building a city essentially on stilts sunk into mud. As for relentless encroachment of concrete causing flooding disasters in the UK, glorious water meadows in the South, which I recall with nostalgia from my childhood, where kingcups proliferated and where, even in dry spells, you sank to your ankles in mire, have now disappeared under a major arterial road and adjacent land has suffered tightly-packed housing development. After heavy rainfall inhabitants of these houses experience the joys of raw sewage backflowing into their drainage systems and polluting their gardens. Even the BBC passingly admitted in a TV main news bulletin last week that the Sheffield shopping centre, where visitors were trapped overnight by flooding, had been “built on a flood plain”. Yet relentless, inappropriate development continues unabated. How very convenient for local authorities, hell-bent on meeting Government targets for housing, to be able legitimately to blame the consequences of inappropriate planning consent on “climate change”.

  • twi5ted

    Maintenance seems to be a factor with all these floods too. The somerset levels, the recent dam that collapsed and in my neck of the woods the river wey bursting its banks for the first time in years.

    Budgets have not been cut but just diverted to more woke greenie nonsense such as in the levels where maintenance funds were diverted to creating a bird sanctuary without informing the local residents. The money that used to go to local people with knowledge and appreciation of the issues is instead sent to Brussels and emerges from the political sausage machine in the form of grants with conditions attached resulting in so much chaos.

  • A Thorpe

    There should be a clear message here to Greta and her worshippers. We do have to adapt to changes in the climate, but it is the local weather that matters in the end, and it mistakes we have made in the past determine how future events affect us. How can people be so stupid that they believe a single temperature of the earth can tell us anything, about the weather now or the future? Perhaps we should change to concentrating on global annual average rainfall.

    Stillreading mentions Venice and it is a classic example. The Venetians made the mistake of diverting rivers from the lagoon to help with defending the city, but this stopped silt entering the lagoon and so their fate was determined. It has been flooding for 600 years and the Venetians brought in a tax to help. It is of course sinking as well, but silt would protect it, although they might not have canals. Rye is a good example of a town moved inland by silt. The major did not say anything about the incompetent government that has still not completed the scheme to protect Venice from flooding.

    Councils and governments allow development in inappropriate places and then they come to taxpayers for money to make us all grateful and show us that we could not possibly live without their help.

    On the subject of education Corbyn is promising a university place for anybody who wants it. It should enable the street-sleepers to get get an education and a job. Perhaps they could provide the NHS with all the doctors both Labour and Tory parties are promising.

  • William Boreham

    One despairs, Johnson has turned out to be as dumb and half-witted as Miliband, Cameron and May. “Mr Johnson has made clear that climate change and the environment will be one of the major topics of the campaign. He will promise that a majority Conservative government would drive a clean energy revolution that will “harness the power of science, innovation and technology to tackle climate change.” So we are about to be taxed further billions to tackle a nonexistent threat – another idiot worshipper at the feet of St Greta. We had a fairly minor flood a couple of years back in the place where I live now, naturally put down to global warming/climate change. Then I found an old history of the town in the local library and that recoded a far worse flood that killed 23 people – in 1922! Model T Fords?
    Meanwhile the USA is feeling the effects of global warming with the polar ice-caps melting and polar bears dying:
    “A dangerous deep freeze is about to get worse for millions of Americans as it widens and tightens its grip. From the Great Lakes to New England, people are digging out from deep snow. At least five people died on icy roads, including an 8-year-old girl in Kansas. Sleet-slicked roads caused a 50 car pileup near Youngstown, Ohio, that left two people critically injured. Forty miles west in Hudson, multiple collisions caused cars to spin off the road. Overnight, a bus carrying seven passengers landed on its side after the driver lost control just south of Syracuse, New York. Meanwhile, snowfall records shattered across the Northeast and Great Lakes. In Buffalo, New York, nearly nine inches of snow broke a 77-year old record. Parts of northern Michigan saw upwards of 30 inches of snowfall. Steam rose from Lake Superior in Minnesota as the temperature there hovered around zero and Chicago set a new record low at seven degrees. But an even more unusual sight was snow as far south as Richmond, Virginia and Nashville, Tennessee.”

  • A Thorpe

    @William I hope all the followers of this blog will give the candidates for this election a good grilling if they come to our doors canvassing. The discussions recently have given us the ammunition to ask difficult questions. I cannot vote for any party except the Tories and I don’t want vote for them. It will be a vote to keep the other parties out. If it was more “normal” times I would spoil the ballot paper. Get some satisfaction from giving them a hard time.

  • Jeff Palmer

    Historically, Doomsday Cults have always existed in some form or another. At the moment, the Swedish-led one is only asking the rest of us to commit economic and societorial suicide. But there is a grim history, in recent years, of doomsday cult leaders urging their followers to personally end their own lives. The unfortunately disturbed and irrational figurehead of the present cult must be carefully watched for what she may encourage her immature followers to do. Otherwise I seriously worry that in years to come we may see the first Climate Scientology suicide bombers.

  • Stillreading

    I suppose it’s only we geriatrics who remember the disastrous floods of 1953, which hit Belgium and the Netherlands as well as much of the East Coast of England. It killed 2,500 people. Although scarcely more than a child at the time, I well remember the newspaper coverage – no TV in those days. A tidal surge was created by the combination of high Spring tides (a naturally occurring event – not even Thunburg can affect the moon’s phases) plus severe gale-force winds. It was a national disaster, an example of nature at its most harsh and cruel and accepted as such. But then, we were more stoical and fatalistic in those days. We, after all, even those of us who were barely teenagers, had come through the War and had grown up with sirens, cold nights spent in air-raid shelters, absence of our fathers and food rationing. (BBC News correspondent bleating on again at this moment about “climate change” being responsible for the Venetian floods.)

  • VeryQueer

    What they are teaching your kiddies at Skool.

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1194303196459614209

  • Bertie B

    In Britain we need beavers lots of them and wolves to keep the deer in-check.

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