This letter was in the Guardian this morning:
The risible inadequacy of the government's £40m “extra” spending on flood defences (Cameron's £40m flood money criticised as ‘sticking plaster', 4 January) means that it's time to seriously address how to find the countless billions needed to effectively mitigate this inevitable consequence of climate change. One answer is to be found in the recent extension of the European Central Bank's €60bn-a-month quantitative easing programme, which included the crucial innovation that this money could be used to buy local government bonds.
The Bank of England's governor, Mark Carney, is on record as saying that if the government requested it then future QE in the UK could buy assets other than government gilts. In that case it is entirely possible for George Osborne to ask Mark Carney to buy local-authority-issued “climate bonds”. Local authorities have the power to issue such bonds, and with increased devolution they should be encouraged to do so to fund flood defences and to reduce carbon emissions by improving energy efficiency in all the nation's 30 million buildings.
In combination this would provide hope for all those in flood areas and also kickstart a decades-long programme that would create new jobs in a vast range of skills in every part of the country. Such an approach could unite local authorities of all political hues, the opposition parties, unions, business and NGOs.
Professor Richard Murphy
City University
Colin Hines
Convener, Green New Deal group
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If anyone read it in the guardian a few days ago, Pickering in North Yorkshire did a remarkable thing after being refused enough money for flood defences. Planted lots of trees, redirected or built new culverts on the moorland, built a holding station and released slowly, 2 million and was successful. Rather like George Monbiot suggests, work with nature.
And it fitted into the valley, rather well
Yes, and as featured on C4 News yesterday evening. And of course, what George Monbiot has been hammering on about for several years now.
But I also couldn’t help but note in a recent article by GM the amount of money that’s been handed to the owners of grouse moors over the past few years. Who, as the article points out, then do everything that encourages water to run off moorland as quickly as it can.
So, here we see, once again, another example of the contradictions inherent in that staple of our government – ideology driven policy making: that despite many statements/commitments to sacrificing the countryside rather than populated areas when it comes to flooding, this only applies if the countryside in question isn’t owned by very wealthy people/corporations.
The catchment management measures needed to slow down and absorb the rapid run off which is a major part of the flood problem are well known. They are unlikely to be used in Tory England where the Chair of the EA was until recently the Chair of Arup the engineers and Internal Drainage Boards in England and Wales are largely influenced by landowners who are unlikely to want to see an end to the grouse moor management which contributes much of the run off. That’s just another part of the of the failure of Tory dogma to address what is a public problem. In the field of flood defence at least, if not yet of long term catchment management, Scotland has a much tougher regulatory regime and the folk running it at SEPA are public service professionals without external interests.
I think that The Tory plan calls for competition not co-operation. That appears to be the last thing they want When everything is fragmented there are rich pickings to be made. They will have proved ‘There is no such thing as Society’ to ther satisfaction.
Their certainly won’t be any such thing as society as the whole Island will be under water if we wait for the ‘market’ whose hand in this area is so ‘invisible’ barely anything is being done. it’s another example of YOYO (You’re on your own) where Government pretends it has no role and it is up to locals to club together to sort it out. Sorting it out locally IS needed which is why the local bonds sound a good idea, either that or we rely on an outbreak of Victorian ‘munificence’ from local magnates!
This sounds like a call to let the market free. Landowners of farmland ( including grouse moors ) get a selection of agricultural subsidies based on land area, inheritance tax exemption, business rates exemption, red diesel and VED exemptions in many cases. Some of them get a full hand of these.
The New Zealand model is the way to go ( in both senses of the phrase ).
It was good to see this matter got plenty of airtime from Corbyn in PMQ’s today and how many of the Tory front bench appeared to be squirming at the thought of their own constituents asking the same questions to them when they next meet.
I imagine that those 1000’s of people who lost so much will be comforted by the Environment Agency statements that flood defences did not fail. They were simply “tested beyond design”.
Good for Pickering, but it depends who owns the moorlands. The 6,500 acre grouse shooting estate above the Calder Valley in Yorkshire is privately owned and has been “improved” over recent years to provide the grouse and their killers with a drier habitat. I live near the South Yorkshire moors and have witnessed at first hand how the gamekeepers alter the environment. Private greed still rules the roost in the Pennines.