Government let Somerset Levels flood as a matter of deliberate policy!

On 11 February 2011, Leo McKinstry wrote this in The Express:

“The higher the flood waters rise, the lower the reputation of the Environment Agency sinks. The very organisation that should be protecting the public is partly responsible for the deepening crisis. Like all too many quangos in modern Britain, it is unable to fulfil its essential duties because it is drowning in wasteful bureaucracy and fashionable dogma…

This is a body that squandered £2.4 million last year on public relations activities but at the same time refused to spend £1.7 million on dredging work that might have prevented the terrible flooding that has engulfed the Somerset Levels. The agency also managed to find £30,000 to sponsor a Gay Pride festival in Birmingham in 2009, even though the West Midlands had suffered serious flooding over the previous 18 months.

Justifying the decision, a spokeswoman declared that ‘the Environment Agency prides itself on being an equal opportunities employer and it has been named in the top ten employers in Britain for bisexual, lesbian, gay and transgender people’. In the mindset of the agency chiefs, propaganda and gesture politics appear to be more important that basic public protection.

Indeed, one recent contributor to a whistleblowers’ website called Inside the Environment Agency, wrote: ‘I have been working for the Environment Agency since 2004. If the people of Somerset knew the distaste our line managers have for them, there would be revolts in the streets. ‘Environmentalism comes first, followed by flexi-working. People, homes and businesses come right down at the bottom of the list.’

The politically-correct spirit of the agency is embodied in its chairman, Lord Smith of Finsbury. A former Labour Cabinet Minister and Islington MP, Smith has long been a green radical, serving for 15 years as President of the Socialist Environment & Resources Association, a Left-wing pressure group…

Under his guidance, the EA has become ever more keen on the green agenda at the expense of flood defences.

According to one insider quoted on the whistleblowers’ website: ‘The Environmental Agency has been over-policed by tree-huggers from within. Fact: water voles have more rights than people or property. Leaving rivers to self‑clean is absolute rubbish. Rivers need to be maintained and dredged’."

Christopher Booker's Daily Telegraph take on the floods, 'Flooding: Somerset Levels disaster is being driven by EU policy, may be seen here.

Baron Chris Smith of Finsbury was the MP for Islington South and Finsbury from 1983 until 2005, when he stepped down. 

In 1997, Tony Blair appointed him to his first Cabinet as the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. In 1984 he was Britain's first MP to choose to 'come out' as gay and once illuminated us thus:

"I'm Chris Smith, I'm the Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury. I'm gay, and so for that matter are about a hundred other members of the House of Commons, but they won't tell you openly."

In May 2008, the unelected Lord (he was ennobled by Tony Blair) was appointed the Chairman of the Environment Agency. Previously, in 2005, he was the first MP to acknowledge that he is HIV-positive.

Very much a city boy's CV, I'd say. Not someone you'd imagine would sympathise overmuch with the countryside or it's people. Leo continues:

"The present crisis has exposed how parts of the agency, working in league with the European Union, have not only attached greater importance to wildlife than to humans, but have actually encouraged flooding through their belief in theories dreamt up by zealous environmentalists…

One of the high priestesses of this green movement was Baroness (Barbara) Young, a former Labour peer and Chris Smith’s predecessor as head of the Environment Agency. In her determination to create new wetlands, she reportedly declared that she would like to see ‘A LIMPET MINE ATTACHED TO EVERY PUMPING STATION’.

This ecological drive was reflected in a Government strategy document of 2004 entitled, Making Space For Water, a euphemism for allowing more flooding.” More here.

The flooding of the Somerset Levels was caused by those we pay to prevent such catastrophe happening. 

The necessary maintenance of the drainage infrastructure was DELIBERATELY run down or stopped altogether. The green-before-machine crew were inspired to do this by invisible globalist automatons at the EU, who were themselves adhering to the UN's Agenda 21, whose demonic social engineers want us all removed from the land and cemented into the cities.

The property speculators will be gearing up to move in when all is as back to normal as it's going to get. Contaminated farmland will be sold off cheaply and the moneymen will then sell it on to the frackers, as the kand rests upon a huge shale gas field.

You know what I wonder? I wonder why they spray all this stuff on us when there seems to be no good reason to do so. At the beginning of the YouTube video, ‘Why in the World are They Spraying?’, Dane Wigington says this:

“I have been forced to conclude that there is no greater and no more immediate threat to anything that lives and breathes than the global geo-engineering program, short of nuclear catastrophe.”

The blurb that comes with the video adds:

“People around the world are noticing that our planet’s weather is dramatically changing. They are also beginning to notice the long lingering trails left behind airplanes that have lead millions to accept the reality of chemtrail-geo-engineering programs. Could there be a connection between the trails and our severe weather? While there are many agendas associated with these damaging programs, evidence is now abundant which proves that geo-engineering can be used to control weather.

In this documentary you will learn how the aerosols being sprayed into our sky are used in conjunction with other technologies to control our weather. While geoengineers maintain that their models are only for the mitigation of global warming, it is now clear that they can be used as a way to consolidate an enormous amount of both monetary and political power into the hands of a few by the leverage that weather control gives certain corporations over the Earth’s natural systems. This of course, is being done at the expense of every living thing on the planet.”

Watch the video. It may just wake you up to the routine evil perpetrated upon the world and its peoples by those you vote for.

On 4 February 2014, Dr. Richard North, an environment and agriculture specialist and a former a Research Director within the EU Parliament, told us this in The Central Somerset Gazette:

“It is all very well for Chris Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency, to prattle on about ‘difficult choices,’ and to tell us that ‘more must be done to protect the Somerset Levels,’ but in the flooding crisis over which he is presiding, there is one which Smith's Agency, at the behest of the EU, deliberately allowed to happen.

Allowing the flooding is a matter EU policy, introduced by a 2007 Directive and consciously adopted by the Environment Agency in 2008, which then sought to increase the frequency of flooding on the Somerset Levels… Only now are the consequences of those decisions becoming evident, while the people (or agencies) who contributed to this disaster are entirely invisible…

The European Union… was behind the last great change in British strategy, heralded by a Defra consultation document in July 2004 called ‘making space for water,’ introducing ‘a new Government strategy for flood and coastal erosion risk management in England.’

The clue as to its provenance came on page 23, under the heading ‘European Dimension,’ which told us that flood risk management was being discussed at the EU level, and the themes under discussion were ‘all consistent with this consultation and the current approach in England’…

At the time, Charles Clover, writing in the Telegraph was very far from being impressed. He complained that, while Defra calls it ‘Making Space for Water,’ others called it ‘flooding’…

Government consultation continued into 2005, making it very clear that a ‘new strategic direction’ was involved, one which involved changing the emphasis from flood protection to allowing certain areas to flood. For Somerset, this had already been spelled out in an EU-funded conference in Warsaw in 2003.

Flood defence for farm land, along with high levels of subsidies, was for many years an important element of Britain's production-orientated agricultural policy, wrote the authors. Many floodplain areas benefited from publicly-funded flood defence and land drainage schemes which reduced crop damage and facilitated a change to more intensive farming systems.

Recently, however, they continued, policy emphasis has been placed on environmental enhancement, on greater diversity of economic activity as a basis for sustainable rural livelihoods, and on public enjoyment of the countryside. Funds previously committed to support farm output are increasingly diverted to encourage land managers to deliver environmental benefits.

In this context, we were told, there is reduced justification for high standards of flood defence for agriculture. Indeed, there may be substantial benefits if some floodplain land is returned to its previous unprotected, un-drained condition.

Therein lay the death knell for the Somerset Levels, as a new term was to dominate policy: ‘Washland.’ This was an area of the floodplain that was to be allowed to flood or was deliberately flooded by a watercourse for flood management purposes.

Unacknowledged by either government, the media or even Chris Smith in his current diatribe, this policy was given legislative force, not by the Westminster parliament but by an EU directive 2007/60/EC of 23 October 2007… There, in recital 14, we saw spelled out the requirement that flood risk management plans should focus on prevention, protection and preparedness. But, ‘with a view to giving rivers more space, they should consider where possible the maintenance and/or restoration of floodplains, as well as measures to prevent and reduce damage to human health, the environment, cultural heritage and economic activity.’ 

There, writ large, was Defra's ‘making space for water’ policy and all that was needed for an already Green-dominated Environment Agency to abandon the Somerset Levels.

The shift in policy can be seen with brutal clarity on the Commission website which gives priority to the ‘environment’… The Floods Directive, we are sternly warned, has to be implemented by 2015.

Just so that there should be no doubts as to where the policy thrust law, DG Environment in 2011 issued a note, stressing that flood risk management ‘should work with nature, rather than against it,’ building up the ‘green infrastructure’ and thus offering a ‘triple-win,’ which included restoration (i.e., flooding) of the floodplain.

By then, the Environment Agency needed no encouragement. In its March 2008 plan it had decided that, ‘providing a robust economic case for maintenance works on the Somerset Levels and Moors remains a challenge.’ (p.131). We believe, the Agency said, that ‘it is appropriate to look again at the benefits derived from our work, particularly focussing more on the infrastructure and the environmental benefits, which previous studies have probably [been] underestimated.’

We have, they said, ‘international obligations to maintain and enhance the habitats and species in the Somerset Levels and Moors, and it is within this context that all decisions have to be made.’

And, with that, they were ‘doubtful that all the pumping stations on the Somerset Levels and Moors are required for flood risk management purposes. Many pumping stations are relatively old and in some cases difficult to maintain. It is necessary to decide which ones are necessary particularly in the context of redistributing water.’

Of six policy options, the Agency thus adopted the sixth, to: ‘TAKE ACTION TO INCREASE THE FREQUENCY OF FLOODING to deliver benefits locally or elsewhere, which may constitute an overall flood risk reduction.’ This policy option, they said, ‘involves a strategic increase in flooding in allocated areas.’ (p.141).

The Levels were to be allowed to flood, as a matter of deliberate policy.

Thus, when the BBC reported that the government had been ‘slow to act,’ it could not have been more wrong. It had been there years before, planning to make the disaster that has overtaken the people of that part of Somerset a routine occurrence, not so much man-made as made by government.

By the time Owen Peterson arrived to try to deal with the situation, he was years too late. Between the EU, the previous Labour government and the Environment Agency, the damage had already been done.”

On 8 February 2014, The Daily Mail reported thus:

"The Labour quango chief blamed by flood victims for wrecking homes and livelihoods has effectively been told to quit by No 10. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, now put in charge of handling the flooding crisis by David Cameron, said Environment Agency chairman Chris Smith should make a public apology for its mistakes.

And asked whether Lord Smith, a former Cabinet Minister, should resign, Mr Pickles said bluntly: ‘He has to make his own decision.’ He used brutal sarcasm to pile on the pressure, adding: ‘I don’t see myself becoming the advocate of the 'Save Chris Smith' campaign or printing 'Save The Environment Agency One' T-shirts'." 

Elsewhere at The Mail, Pickles said:

"The Somerset Levels were man-made and dredging was a fundamental part of keeping it going, just as it is with any land below sea level right across the world. You need to continuously dredge. It worries me that in a politically correct attempt to be more environmentally sound than the next person, something as basic as this has been forgotten… 

Chris Smith tried to play divide and rule by setting town against country… The agency has lost its way and become riddled with political correctness. Don’t even start me on my arguments with them about fortnightly rubbish collections... 

The EA hiked up the council tax by around 20 per cent in the West Country last year with little to show for it… People matter. People are entitled to feel safe in their homes… The EA gets £1.2billion a year but paid out £395million on staff last year and just £20million on improving maintenance of culverts and channels to ensure the free flow of water." 

The Mail's Simon Walters added:

"No one has ever accused Eric Pickles of being a slave to political, or any other, fashion. By contrast, culture vulture Lord Smith was a New Labour Minister who cut his teeth in trendy, Labour-run Islington, the urban fount of political correctness."

After Eric Pickles’ splendid denunciation of the ghastly, gay luvvie, he blotted his copybook almost immediately. UKIP’s Nigel Farage had suggested that it was ‘basic common sense’ to donate a small portion of the International Aid budget to the regions that had been flooded. A simple idea which seemed to impress everyone but the politicians. Pickles replied thus on Sky News:

“I think it's an easy hit, it's a kind of a populist hit. We will be able to do all this without having to touch the aid budget… Aid we're offering in other parts of the world could well have an effect in terms of the things that happen in this country…

Our aid is pretty much targeted to help people in the greatest need.It's well targeted in dealing with infection and inoculation but I think it's possible to be able to offer help to people throughout the world, the poorest, without it taking anything away from the people of Somerset.”

So the Aid billions will not be touched because the government is going to nick a couple of mil from somewhere else? To spend on the good people of Someset and beyond? Which they never bothered to spend before?

Don’t hold your breath, folks.

On 19 March 2013, The Post Online told us this:

"The government has cut the budget for maintaining flood defences and clearing rivers from £68m to £39m, flooding Minister Richard Benyon revealed in a parliamentary written answer.

'The maintenance of assets is carried out using a risk-based approach,' said Benyon. 'This allows investment to be made where it will contribute most to reducing the potential for damage and where it is economically and environmentally justified... The Environment Agency chooses the most suitable maintenance activity for each stretch of river, coastline or defence system.

The Environment Agency is working in partnership in a number of areas to improve its efficiency. It is on track to achieve its corporate plan target for asset condition in ‘high consequence systems', ensuring at least 97% of these assets are in target condition'."

It really does make you wonder whether stupidity and incompetence are necessary preconditions for one's upward slither to the top of the Ministerial pole, doesn't it?

P.S. In July 2001, Richard North had previously blown the whistle thus:

"The start of the current foot and mouth epidemic was not, as the government would have us believe, in February. The probable start was some time in September.

It is something of a curious coincidence that, in the period immediately prior to this month there had been running foot-and mouth vaccine trials in four countries: the U.S. Taiwan, China and the United Kingdom. Since this involved injecting pigs with the vaccine and then exposing them to live FMD virus, somewhere in the UK prior to the start of the FMD epidemic, pigs were being deliberately infected with FMD virus.

It is even more curious that the UK trial was reportedly due to finish in September 2000, just about the time that FMD probably started... Of the two countries which opted to sign a secrecy agreement, the UK was one. China was the other."

In June 2001, Dr. North also said this:

"Sinister motives may have been at play... For some time now rumours have been flashing through the country that some dark deal has been agreed with Brussels to the effect that we will destroy our animals and turn our countryside into theme parks!”

Wouldn't it be good if the Richard Norths were in charge of our world? Pretty obviously, such folk give a damn. Which, I guess, is why the bad guys despise them so. Check out 'Prisoner JW7874.'

At one time, 'Prisoner JW7874' was none other than Dr. Richard North.

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