Man in a Shed: England under Labour ? Under water in more ways than one !

Labour has neglected our flood defences, but have made the usual promise of some future rise in spending - like all Labour promises its some date in the future - gone are the days when you could get a clear honest signal out of government about what it is actually doing.

Lets see GBP 600 Million /year 2007 - inflated at the actual rate inflation rpi ( rather than the Gordon Brown fiddled rate - cpi ) gives GBP 730 Million/year in 2011. Hillary Benn promised a rise to GBP 800 million - ie a real terms increase of 70/730 = 10%. in 4 years time. I doubt that covers the damage that the current deluge has created.

It Gordonomics - you hear the number and think that flood defences are getting GBP 200 million more that looks like 200/600 = 33% - and nobody thinks about the deferral of when it will be spent.
This is the usual utter contempt that Labour holds the general public in. We have been getting upset because Blue Peter and Children in Need have deceived their audiences ( or worse ) - but Labour does the same thing all the time !

The only thing you can be sure of is yet more money will head to Wales and Scotland from England as the Celtic Labour government bleeds England dry then leaves her to drown.

Of course the other drowning of England is in the debt that has been run up to fund Gordon Brown's state sector ( guaranteed votes for Labour there- means Gordon can play at being PM ). Except the performance doesn't improve in the Soviet systems Gordon has set up. A member of my Church had a stroke in Feb and was back for the first time today. He told us of after how after a number of days helpless in hospital God answered his prayers with a physio actually turning up and getting a wheel chair the next day ! This is the truth of the English NHS - you best pray for health care because the money has moved to Labour heartlands and to bribe Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

By the way nip over the the Institution of Civil Engineers site for a post that was made before recent events and scores highly of the prophecy stakes. They say flood defence spending needs to be GBP 1 billion /year. ( Update: Just seen that the same figure is now being mentioned by the Environment agency - shame Environment Agency chief executive Baroness Young didn't make a song and dance about it earlier eh ?)

Update: Blog reactions I have found on the English floods are:

Some Stuff - has picked up that the Met Office warned months ago about the current deluge (citing the a Guardian article here ). He compares it to Gordon Brown's bland statement (here) that no-one could have predicted these floods. Looks like Gordon's either lying or not on top of his job. A palpable hit there Ralph.

John Redwood points out that the Environment agency hasn't been keeping up the flood defences. ( So now we know that the government was warned and let things get worse not better ! )

Fair Deal Phil (Socialist warning ) notes water supplies are now threatened. Shame he hasn't realised its his own governments fault in many way !

Note: The first version of this blog post had the increase down as 4%, rather than 10% as I'd run a year too long. Correction now made.

Calcs
below: I've assumed 5% inflation - the true figure will be a mix
of wages, materials and other business costs. Of course the actual
figure will vary greatly dependent on conditions at the time, but what I
want to illustrate is how we are mislead by big promises far in the
future.