Could the floods have been prevented?

A letter from an Australian poster on James Delingpole’s blog.

>I am sitting here in my home in South East Queensland, watching the news come in about the flooding everywhere. Entire suburbs around Brisbane and several smaller towns are either isolated by flood-waters or have been evacuated. Highways are cut everywhere.
People have been dying. So far about 20 people have died in the past week – nine just this morning when a deluge went through the Lockyer Valley. Most of them children. Another 70 are missing. One could put it all down to “just” weather.
Except EXACTLY the same floods occurred in EXACTLY the same places back in 1974, with much the same tragic loss of life and destruction of property. Continue reading “Could the floods have been prevented?”

Getting nearer to home

They are evacuating Strathpine, which is our nearest large shopping centre, and the local radio was also telling us of several major roads being closed in our vicinity.   The back-road that I mentioned in an earlier comment, on which I returned from the Doctor’s, was closed hours ago.   So we thought we’d do a little rubber-necking and have a look at the overflow from our local reservoir, Lake Samsonvale.

Not a hope, all the small roads leading to the dam were waterlogged and we had to make do with a car park on the edge of the lake.   Those trees are usually 20 – 30 metres from the water – it’s pretty full.   There were flocks of pelicans enjoying themselves, and three black swans were out of the lake asking people to feed them.   No pictures, because I wasn’t going to get out of the car.

It’s still coming down by the bucket-load; the Bureau of Meteorology is on overtime trying to expand its computer models to predict where and how large the floods will be.

While we were lakeside, #1 daughter phoned to say she was home because the CBD has been closed down, and that her eldest step-daughter (18) was stranded in the next suburb, which is cut off.

Noah’s second coming?   Feels like it!

There are too many articles, videos and photos to link – just have a look at the front page of the Brisbane Times.

Oi Christina, ‘ave a butchers at this

Minutes before, this was an ordinary High Street

Without warning, a wall of water swept through Dent Street in Toowoomba, tumbling cars as though they were leaves, some with occupants.

Oh yes, Queenslanders are just “showing off”, as one Charioteer said recently.   They’re not real floods, just a few puddles.   Yeah, right.

Sunny Sunday afternoon by the Thames

After a pretty wet week, it was a pleasant change to have a crisp, but sunny day, so we took a stroll by the river.  It was crowded on the bank but nothing much moving on the river, which was hardly surprising; there are cautions in force at the moment for boats.

“Molly” and crew ignored this ( they usually do! ) but they were the only boat to use the lock while we were there.

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Unintended Outcomes

Generally speaking, the government’s proposals for changing employment law are sensible and measured. I have always believed it wrong to apply the law with equal rigour to small companies and large corporations, and I would include in the changes removing the rights to have one’s job retained over a period of maternity leave. This hurts the small employer disproportionately. I would argue that the law should be much lighter on firms employing no more than 15 people.

It also makes sense to return to the two year qualifying period required to take an employer to an Employment Tribunal. Reducing it to one year has been a major factor in clogging the system. However, I am much less sanguine about the suggestion advanced by some Human Resource executives that employees should have to deposit £250 in order to sue their employer. Such a measure could well lead to the unintended outcome of driving more workers into trade unions. A significant attraction for some workers, most notably in transport, is the union offer to meet legal costs.