http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/flooding-public-spending-britain-europe-policies-homes?CMP=ema_1364
The link above is top a guardian article on the reasons for the flooding and I could not have put it better my self its part of the reason I have all ways been a supporter of the practice of perma culture you only have to see the difference between my garden with trees and the garden next door with a lawn to know that it makes a difference when we have rain like we have had in London over this two months.
Just in case you don't want to read the whole of the article have copied this bit over. I do not all ways agree with George Monbiot but in this case I believe he is correct in his analysis of the situation.I also believe that the goverment has a hidden agenda with regards to this flood deference. In that the west of London has been drowned to save the city and the money making heart of the country.
Just as the south west has been left to look after its self though I suspect that it has been done to save Bristol as the major money making city in that part of the country.
I do not think this will play well for any political party at the next UK elections of course those may not include Scotland if they vote yes to independence
The story begins with a group of visionary farmers at Pontbren, in the headwaters of Britain's longest river, the Severn. In the 1990s they realised that the usual hill-farming strategy – loading the land with more and bigger sheep, grubbing up the trees and hedges, digging more drains – wasn't working. It made no economic sense, the animals had nowhere to shelter, and the farmers were breaking their backs to wreck their own land.
So they devised something beautiful. They began planting shelter belts of trees along the contours. They stopped draining the wettest ground and built ponds to catch the water instead. They cut and chipped some of the wood they grew to make bedding for their animals, which meant that they no longer spent a fortune buying straw. Then they used the composted bedding, in a perfect closed loop, to cultivate more trees.
One day a government consultant was walking over their fields during a rainstorm. He noticed something that fascinated him. The water flashing off the land suddenly disappeared when it reached the belts of trees the farmers had planted. This prompted a major research programme, which produced the following astonishing results: water sinks into the soil under trees at 67 times the rate at which it sinks into the soil under grass. The roots of the trees provide channels down which the water flows, deep into the ground. The soil there becomes a sponge, a reservoir which sucks up water and then releases it slowly. In the pastures, by contrast, the small sharp hooves of the sheep puddle the ground, making it almost impermeable, a hard pan off which the rain gushes.
