Friend Peter's struggle with severe flooding in England

My "mate," Peter Bryenton and his Partner Jane, live in the small village of Birlingame, Worcester, England. Over the past several days, the waters of all rivers in central England have flooded and produced devastation, the likes of which haven't been seen in generations. Peter maintains communications and here is his letter to me today:

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers, Curt. Be assured we are both safe.

Jane and I manage the risks we take, making carefully considered choices. We are warm, well fed, dry and have clean drinking water with electrical power. We have plenty of dry provisions and tinned goods, with a multi-fuel stove on which we can cook, and an oil lamp for the power cuts.

We are reaping the fruits of successive governments under-investing in our national infrastructure since 1947. Thatcher's privatisation of the public transport and utilities was a death blow to the warp and weft of our social fabric. Blair spent five billion pounds on a pointless war in a far away place, but not even one tenth of that amount will go to renew our Victorian sewers and storm drains, in spite of massive house building programs over the decades. Our fields have been made ever larger, for more profitable yields, but the hedges and ditches which have traditionally drained England's agricultural systems for centuries have been filled in, against all the advice of those who know better. We put up new homes on flood plains, but do not construct adequate defences, if any. All of our leading civil engineers are now saying "We told you so, but you wouldn't heed us". They were right in their prophecies.

Well, there are one hundred and fifty thousand domestic dwellings without power and water only ten miles from us, in Tewkesbury, where the rivers Severn and Avon meet. Jane and I have driven out to survey the countryside this evening, in deceptively cruel sunshine, but some of the roads are still under deep water, where the usually tiny brooks are still swollen. Abandoned cars litter the roadsides, reduced to scrap value in a moment by their inexperienced drivers, have either been dragged or shoved out of the way by tractors and lorries. These oversize 4WD (SUV) vehicles are merely fashion items, and not at all the off-road dream machines peddled by the marketing people. This is a tiny country, with narrow lanes. I have no idea why ordinary people feel the need to drive a 4.5 litre Jeep or Chrysler. You would need a military spec snorkel system with waterproof electronics to survive this lot, plus plenty of common sense, training and some sound mechanical aptitude. It's about greed.

The disaster has polarised citizens. We now have two distinct classes: the selfish and the selfless.

Cheers,

B.

Peter Bryenton
www.brypix.com