We are told by the media and the environmentalist lobby, and ad libbed by politicos that should know better, that building on flood plains and climate change is responsible for ruining the lives and homes of thousands of our citizens over the last few years – but they conveniently forget the role of the environmentalists such as Friends of the Earth, the RSPB, and various others of dubious ilk. The RSPB can turn a blind eye to bat atrocities inflicted by wind turbines, even to the mutilation of raptors and kites, and they are way up there when it comes to creating wetland environments – and flooding other peoples houses.
Anyone that has suffered from flooding in recent years, or knows somebody that has, close relative or aquaintance, might like to read a book that became a best seller in the 1980s and put in motion exactly what is happening now in your backyard. It is Jeremy Purseglove's, Taming the Flood; A History and Natural History of Rivers and Wetlands' Oxford University Press; 1988 (the book behind a Channel 4 programme). Tony Soper, a well known naturalist and bird spotter wrote the foreword. He says, when I first met Jeremy Purseglove he was involved in a crusade to change the way in which our rivers are straightened and canalised in the name of drainage in order to reduce flooding. Since then he and others like him have achieved a quiet revolution in the water industry.
Obviously, his disciples are employed by the Environmental Agency and causing mayhem. What Soper is saying loud and clear is that before Friends of the Earth and the likes of Purseglove and his mates got their fingers in the pie the water industry (admittedly a state industry in those days, and yet to be privatised) put people first – and the priority was to tame the flood. Since priorities changed , and wildlife have taken precedence over people, floods have become more common. The strange thing about the environmentalist policy is that wildlife tend to suffer as much as people as the bolts and holes of riverside mammals are flushed out and other bits of banks are swept away in the torrent. Fish find themselves stranded in what were fields and hedgerows, far away from the river – at the mercy of the enviro's treasured species, the magpie (and other cronies of the crow family). Other animals, including fox and badger, find their holes full of water, and rabbit burrows the same. Fledgling willows (if there are any) are washed downstream, together with bird nests and roosters. All that beautiful muck and gravel is tossed on waste heaps instead of enriching farm fields. Meanwhile, it is everyone's fault but the actual perpetrators. Surely a revolution must be in the offing – but no, the media have no intention of telling it like it is, the climate change bubble must continue.