Flooding Britain

I don't know about you but I think I have spotted a common theme in all government policies.  It appears to me that the common answer that politicians give to the 'What if?' question is 'We sweep it under the rug until it happens.'

Some of you may have read my post earlier this year about Hearthrow Airport being snowed under again.  Well it seems to have happened, again, only this time it is just plain rain.  The one thing England is famous for, our persistent precipitation and once again it is flooding out swaths of our countryside and towns.

Now, it could be noted that a country that is noted for being one of the wettest in Europe ought to have councils that build drains that can take it.  However this is unlikely to happen, even though it is what we pay them for.  Instead, for the mentioned above reason, they are going to continued to ignore the problem until it is so obvious that it has become the equivalent of trying to hide an elephant under the rug.

So, what can the ordinary people of Britain do about it?  Because I don't know about you, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for the government to do something about it, I hate passing out.

According to research done by the Woodland Trust and they should know their trees, planting a single row of trees down one side of a field will increase the grounds ability to soak up the rain by sixty percent.  The more the soil can soak up, the less there is to run away over the soil and flood the dip down the road were the village happens to be.  Also, increasing the number of trees planted within a city by five percent, in turn decreases the urban water run off by twenty percent.  That seems to me to be a large amount of returns for a small amount of effort.

For those of you worried about subsidence there is apparently no scientific evidence of planting trees causing subsidence.  The reason the lovely new concrete front garden subsides is not because of the tree planted the other side of the front garden wall.  It subsides because it is a lovely new concrete front garden, which does not allow any water to reach the soil underneath it.  Dehydrated soil shrinks in exactly the same manner as a dehydrated cell, which is why gravel driveways do not subside.

So it appears to me that the best way the people of Britain can look after themselves and prevent further flooding is to plant more trees, this having the added benefits of cleaning our air and lowing our stress levels, because what is scientific fact, is looking at a tree for five minutes a day de-stresses you almost as much as an hour in a yoga class.  It's a lot cheaper as well.