Once again, the Environment Agency is to blame

After two days of heavy rain in a week, the Lake District once again is under water. Whilst not a Storm Desmond, the streams have become rivers and the rivers spilled out to turn valley bottoms into lakes.

Listening to the radio, the blame was laid squarely at the door of Highways, for their roads becoming flooded, and the Environment Agency, for not wasting even more public money trying to block water and channel it even faster into even narrower drains.

Not once has anyone dared to challenge why the land around is not holding water. Not once has anyone questioned why the bare, overgrazed hills are deforested for the sake of unprofitable, unnecessary, non-native animals that roam everywhere and reduce the capacity of the landscape to slow and hold water, to allow the soil to absorb it (not to mention other functions, such as carbon storage and actually supporting biodiversity).

There was not one commentator questioning why water was not allowed to spill out into floodplains and slow down there, why the rivers were not allowed to meander and take their own course. Instead, there'll be the inevitable calls to dredge and build even bigger walls, whilst the necessity for farmers to accept water flooding the valley bottoms will go uncalled for. The necessity of land left to grow a longer sward, to scrub up, for clumps of trees to grow will not be realised, because no one dares challenge the hegemony of those so-called guardians of the countryside and their entirely unnecessary activity.

What's that definition of stupidity - doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results? The proof that the landscape is broken is right there in front of us - let's have a difficult conversation, not skirt the issue.