<
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/16/rory-stewart-tory-mp-decade-incompetent>
"It is December 2015. I am the minister for flooding. (I am also the minister
for forestry, for national parks, for nature, for chemicals, for air quality,
for waste and recycling, for water and much more than can be written on a
business card). I knew almost nothing about any of these topics when, six
months earlier, the prime minister, David Cameron, made me minister for these
things. It may have been a mistake. In a recent meeting he has given me the
impression that he believes I am the minister for agriculture.
Exactly 341mm of rain has fallen in the last 24 hours – the highest rainfall
ever recorded in the United Kingdom. More than 60,000 houses in Lancaster have
lost power, and the epicentre of the flooding is my own constituency in
Cumbria. I have been wading into front rooms, filled with dirty water above the
level of the mantle-shelves, their interiors a swirling mess of photo albums
and wooden furniture.
Bloated corpses of sheep lie strewn across field edges. Business owners are
staring in horror at the destruction of their stockrooms and getting no
response from the insurance agencies. My notebook is filled with names and
emails and requests from residents. Now it is just after dawn, and I have been
dressed in an Environment Agency coat and a hi-vis jacket, and put in front of
the television cameras.
My feet are wet and cold because I made the mistake of tucking my waterproof
trousers into my wellies. Behind me, in the halogen lights of a winter morning,
rescuers in boats are drifting down Warwick Road in Carlisle, lifting families
from upstairs windows. Journalists are finding different ways of asking me how
I could possibly have allowed this to happen. There are some earnest but
imprecise attempts to link the flooding to climate change. Finally, I insist
“the flood walls are working well. The only problem is that the water is coming
over the top.” This idiotic line is then replayed across all the networks and
is selected by
Have I Got News for You as one of the political blunders of
the year."
Via Joerg Fliege, Susan **** and also Doug Senko.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
