These floods will happen again unless we act now
BARBARA MacArthur, (Letters, February 20) should know that puny man will never defeat the forces of nature.
Despite that, much of what we are experiencing today is manmade, caused in many instances by the of lack of maintenance over 30 years, at home and in Australia, that she mentioned. Look it up. She is also old enough to know of the past floods in South Wales, especially horrendous in 1946.
The alarmist current buzzword is “unprecedented”, when everything that has happened, has happened before in our history and will happen again, unless we act on maintenance.
We are subjected to “Get out” screams from the tabloid headlines. Surrender your property and belongings to the man-made flood. When not one person in 100 knows the root cause of what is happening to our United Kingdom. A United Kingdom that has been surrendered to the lunatics in our infiltrated political system.
How many of you know that in 1992 the then PM John Major came home from Maastricht and proclaimed the Queen of the UK is now a citizen of the European Union! At the same time, he and his government quietly slipped through Parliament the United Nations policy of “Agenda 21”, an innocuous alien policy, calculated to destroy the UK’s economy.
That policy set a course for the destruction of the UK’s environmental systems and our National Rivers Authority. That authority had had the sole responsibility of ensuring our streams and rivers could cope with what nature threw at us.
From about that time the responsibility was taken over by water boards and the environmental agencies, agencies that are mere quangos. Maintenance went out through the window; nature was given a free hand, and our rivers allowed to silt up with trees and debris, to the extent that we now get the overflow we are now experiencing. It cannot be overstated that the streams and rivers are the natural drainage system and must be maintained to high level, because they are so important to our economy and must be under constant supervision.
It was a sad sight to see on the front page of this newspaper (February 17) five men with just buckets, striving to bail out the water to the river below, confronted by what seemed to be a man-made disaster. The resilience of these communities astounds me.
I do not know who the chairman of the environmental agency is, but he should be gone, ASAP. He is the head of a quango that has lost its mind. Too big and too useless. They learnt nothing from the Somerset Levels floods, some six years ago, when the floods came to them. At that time, one of their environmental lunatics stated “I would blow up every pumping station on the Somerset levels”. It was obvious then, and it is obvious now, that our buzzwords should be vigilance and maintenance. Furthermore, using bits of plastic too late on top of banks, again puts the money in the hands of speculators.
Nature created the valleys to take the water away, man has created the obstructions. Deal with it. We can only solve the problem with vigilance and constant maintenance. Over the last 30 years billions have gone into the environmental services, Welsh and English, and it begs the question, how much went on dredging and actual maintenance? Obviously, not a lot.
George Chelmis Cardiff
Victims of flooding need a helping hand
IT WAS sad to read someone who had the audacity to whinge that the people who were devastated by the flooding over the weekend were going to get a helping hand off the Welsh Government and Rhondda Cynon Taf council.
Thank goodness there’s still compassion around at this heartbreaking time.
Whether the residents have insurance cover or not, they won’t get paid out straight away as they usually drag things out, so it’s good news that there will be some help for them.
Insurance is so expensive in this day and age, it’s often out of reach for lots of people.
C Williams Trealaw, Rhondda
Streams and rivers are the natural drainage system and must be maintained... George Chelmis Cardiff
Council created its own climate refugees
JEREMY Corbyn may have visited Rhydyfelin to show support for local people, but his colleagues on Taff’s Well Community Council have questions to answer.
As Nantgarw councillor, I put forward a climate change resolution which included reference to flooding. The predominantly Labour council would only accept my resolution if reference to flooding was removed.
They have in effect created climate change refugees in their own communities by not acknowledging the flooding risk I highlighted by refusing to accept my resolution by full.
Jonathan Bishop Community councillor for Nantgarw
Corrupt nation ruled by cowardly fascists
RE: “Parliament needs effective opposition” (Echo Letters, February 21). Michangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and an unmade bed along with a pile of house bricks are bunged together under the heading of “art”. This is one of the most extreme examples of the bizarre dysfunctionality of homo sapiens’ ability to sort the wheat from the chaff.
It would appear this malady has spread to the the way in which the political arena is pericieved – how else to explain the writer’s extraordinary claim that “the British Parliament is respected and emulated the world over”?
Are we expected to believe the rest of the world’s democracies (I exclude the United States of Trump from this analysis) subscribe to the “greed is good” mantra coined by “malignant Maggie” and borrowed by Michael Douglas in the film Wall Street, “winners and losers” and all the other paraphernalia of the “fascists without the courage” who dominate this “Septic Isle”?
Corruption is corruption and evermore shall be so.
James Barry Gabalfa, Cardiff
Reflecting on the wisdom of old age
AS I approached my 87th birthday, sheltered from the atrocious weather outside, I reflected on my experience, beliefs and insights.
I then listed my conclusions as follows:
■ An individual is sometimes right and the majority wrong.
■ Experts know a great deal about very little.
■ Drink and drugs activate the creative and destructive forces within.
■ Prayer, meditation and fasting can improve physical and spiritual wellbeing.
■ Practice based on best practices improves performance.
■ Investment in people, technology and innovation are the keys to long-term business and economic success.
■ Talent, training, teamwork and tactics characterise winning teams.
■ What people do is shaped by what they believe; what they believe is shaped by what they are taught; but what they are taught may be true, false or conditional.
■ Rule of law, social justice and tolerance underpin civilised societies.
■ Free speech, a free press and an independent judiciary are the best defence against the abuse of power.
■ Natural disasters, pollution and weapons of mass destruction kill saints and sinners.
■ Natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions and fluctuations in solar radiation are major drivers of climate change and cannot be controlled.
■ A global recession is imminent as government, corporate and private debt levels reach record highs and interest rates plummet.
■ Brexit is a lose/lose outcome that threatens the unity of the UK and EU.
■ The age of Artificial Intelligence and evolution will transform scientific, religious, political, economic and social norms in ways that we can but imagine.
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