Urban areas host 80% of England’s homes at high risk of flooding, study finds
Umm, OK. but is this good or bad? Compared to what?
From AI:
Approximately 83% of the UK population lives in urban areas
So, I’d guess that around 80% – mebbe 83% – of Britain’s houses are in urban areas. Which means that the headline claim is, erm, normal, right?
Well yes…. all those lovely quaint towns with modern developments on the floodplain and a municipal/county watermanagement scheme that amounts to “Their Responsibility” while pointing at each other *might* possible make up a very large part of that percentage…
We bought a house that stands on a Roman Road on the grounds that the Romans were good engineers and likely to build above the usual flood levels. I dare say they built on top of an Iron Age road with the same advantage. And maybe that overlaid a Bronze Age track with the same advantage. And Neolithic …
Our only flood risk is probably a humongous local downpour and, bar living on a hill top, everyone is exposed to that.
Do you get ghostly legions marching through your front room ?
And thanks to Labour you probably can’t get a no fault exorcism
‘s raciss against Pazuzu innit?
We did once see a ghostly legion marching down the street but it turned out to be an undergraduate drinking club. Fine uniforms, mind.
Now we’re in the Irony Age.
THe article majors on a claim that “Social Housing” tenants are most at risk – then one learns that the reason is simply that they don’t take out insurance policies (building societies insist on anyone wanting a mortgage has to insure their property including cover for floods).
Another Grauniad propaganda piece (you must sympathise with the irresponsible.)
Appeal to pity for unsympathetic characters.
Why isn’t the Social Housing landlord insuring against loss and damage? After all they own the property. Or are we talking about the humongous tellys, PlayStation’s and other toys the tenants own (or are in process of paying for)?
One assumes they are talking about contents, not the fabric of the building. After all the welfare tenants don’t give a f*ck about the house itself (as judged by the way they abuse them) and will have ‘rights’ to be rehoused somewhere else in the event their rented house is flooded. They would be worried about all the stuff they have accumulated while sucking on the taxpayers teat. Presumably the taxpayer is expected to replace it all, having paid for it in the first place. Can’t possibly expect these people to actually be responsible for anything!
Most commercial property leases have a “full repairing and insuring” clause requiring the tenant to take out adequate insurance.
That’s how it is here.
You just know that buyers of “canalside” new builds will be on TV in a few years wailing “how could this happen to me?”
I doubt canals flood that much, not being bodies of flowing water. Occasionally one breaks its banks in a spot where its built on an embankment higher than the surrounding land, but generally speaking rivers tend to flood but canals tend to suffer from a lack of water rather than too much.
Mostly it’s the Thames … huge chunks of the estuary and London are technically at risk – all dense urban areas and social housing in London (at vast subsidies). Hence the Thames barrier and estuary flood defences. Some coastal areas also already getting mitigations . So what exactly do they want?
I know what I want. A big, beautiful wall around the M25, loads of trebuchets, and a nice seige.
Any surviving Londoners should be enslaved and forced to work at Wetherspoons.
Many moons ago before I bought my current property, I went to look at one that seemed quite attractive from the agent’s blurb. However in driving there I passed flood height rulers on the roadside. I didn’t even stop to view it!
A study you say?
Do they define ‘high?’
Areas with houses at greatest risk of flooded houses. Remarkable stuff.
That said, new developments with names like Riverside Meadows should be avoided.
Why do you want trebuchets and a seige, Steve?
With a wall around it, and flooding, job done.
We could help it along with hosepipes over the wall, I suppose.
Why wouldn’t you want trebuchets?
How did that siege tower get inside the palisade?
Scotland using console command cheats on Total War Medieval 2
Reminds me of this April Fool
https://www.facebook.com/opportunitypartynz/videos/1952436158995126/
the areas with most of the houses have most of the houses that do something, shock!
Does anyone know what a cubit is? (Looking at old Ark plans.)
4/10th of an ell
But as an ell could be 27 to 47 inches it doesn’t really help.
It’s an ell of a puzzle
The distance from the point of your elbow to your fingertip.
However, because Solomon wanted the temple he built to be stable he required all the marble blocks and columns to be a standard size and the “cubit” was standardised at that of his chief stonemason which coincidentally came out as 18″, half the Imperial yard (which was only standardised two thousand years later),
There aren’t an awful lot of atheist statisticians because they boggle at the probabilities of various things like this.
80% of homes at risk. Arithmetic tells us that 80% of 0 = 0.
So. How many homes are at risk so we can put a number on that “80%”. And then we can calculate what percentage of total homes are at risk.
When percentages are used, that invariably means the baseline is very low, and the proposed alarming statistic isn’t alarming at all.
Many years ago a village I used to live in had a farm. Eventually it was broken up, parts of the farmland were built on in stages and part of it became a nature reserve held in trust by local authority. When the final parcel of land being developed for housing came up for planning a long serving local councillor pointed out the land was on an occasional watercourse (it even appeared as such on maps) and would flood, the developer who was about to whack up some very lucrative McMansions claimed their wholly inadequate anti-flooding measures would deal with problem. The long serving councillor who had known that land for a lifetime, and had decades of experience with local planning issues, told the committee they would not, they would be wholly inadequate. But the planning committee waved it through, the developer made a mint from sales and subsequently washed their hands of the issue. The people who bought the houses subsequently complained to the council every time there was prolonged heavy rain and their properties were surrounded by floodwater. Because the watercourse that had been there since before records existed flowed through the nature reserve and into the estate of McMansions, that’s just what it did, just what it had always done. In the end the local authority had to fund expensive works in the nature reserve to try and fix the problem that only existed because they allowed the developer to build on a watercourse without properly mitigating the risks and the developer buggered off once they had their gelt.
50% of all eyes found to be right eyes!
OT
Katie Hopkins keeps us up to date with housewife’s gossip on what we’re not allowed to know about mysterious Ukrainian teenagers.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yDPiwKG1c7E
Keep it vague, etc.
So there’s a trial going on now for 3 Ukrainian men accused of setting fire to “properties linked to the Prime Minister”
And the British media is completely ignoring it.
Sub judice is not an excuse, they’re allowed to cover trials and this one is of great interest to the British public.
How queer.
I’ve not been following this. Really, what’s it about? Has Sir Queer actually been bumming (or getting blown by) Ukies? Under what circumstances? Wasn’t Alli available? And why the firebombing?
…
Depends on what level of “sub”, I suppose. If there has been a superinjunction until the start of the trial then that would explain the strange lack of curiosity. But as seen in a thread above, there is now some media coverage. And what we see perhaps indicates that any blackout has backfired, with people possibly filling knowledge gaps with gossip. As they do.
Avoiding details for obvious reasons.
I have no objection to developers building on flood plains with inherent flood risk. The people who buy them should adjust what they are willing to pay to account for the risk of not being able to get insurance plus having all their possessions wash out the door every year or so. In practice people pay a non risk adjusted price and expect someone else to carry their risk for free.
The community carries some liability when problems arise. They have a stake in it. So, no, you can’t just build anywhere you want to.
What they are willing to pay to account for the risk doesn’t work, either. Unless you think developers will be forthright and honest with prospective buyers.