Flood Fiasco Shines Spotlight on Political Failings.

Well it seems that more and more people are sharing my viewpoint that the Environment Agency's agenda of protecting wildlife at the expense of buildings and people needs to change.

Still no spotlight on the amount of influence that EU directives have had on the way the Environment Agency work, but then no-one in the media has the balls to pull up the curtain and look behind the facade of Westminster politics.

Chris Smith is most certainly doomed and won't be in his job much longer. However I'm not sure his inevitable very public sacking will change anything other than the name of the man at the top. It's up to the people at the riverside to keep an eye on any work being done or not being done and to hold those at the top to account. If things don't change, don't vote the same MP back into Parliament, vote an independent in on a flood-busting agenda. If the flood-stricken areas all started to do exactly that, maybe the staus quo at the Environment Agency will change. Vote for the same old same old and blame yourselves if nothing is done. Simple as that.

As I predicted many management platitudes have been thrown at the flooding problem, starting with the pretty ubiquitous "lessons will be learned" although David Cameron went up a notch with  the management-speak nuclear option of "Money no Object".

Politically the dial has been turned up to 11 in an effort to placate the plebs with a photo-op of Prince or two mucking in with the military. Very Blitz spirited.

Yes finally the military have started to be deployed in moderate numbers, probably about a week or two too late. I hasten to point out they weren't deployed until the Thames Valley started flooding, but you just know that things didn't look politically precarious until the affluent Thames-side residents of Oxon, Berks and Bucks started to get their feet wet at which point things had to be ramped up to that level 11.

Here on the coast things have been wild but luckily where I am there is no huge river to swell and flood. We're cut off from the mainland by a large system of hills, which no river can get through. Here we just have to contend with the sea trying to move the beach inland and flying salt spray settling on the cars up to a mile inland and rusting them to buggery.