So, the media circus moves on.....

The great British media having exhausted the misery of the floods - or at least the patience of the unlucky inhabitants of the Somerset Levels - and have moved onto pastures new. Soon all will be forgotten. The politicians will have retreated and all that will be left are sodden ruins of homes, shattered dreams and promises we know they will never fulfil. The Environment Agency will return to quango mode following three months of chasing after BBC film crews. 'We always knew when the Environment Agency would turn up', complained one irate resident, '- as soon as the BBC arrived'. Like a whining child the Environment Agency blamed everyone but themselves: it's the weather, it's the jet stream, no it's the climate, no it's lack of money, no it's a flood plain (this is what you get if you live on a flood plain and we're in charge) and no.... so, it goes on.

What is for sure is that the recent storms belting the South West of England normally vent their fury on the West Coast of Scotland or Cumbria which have mountains and lakes and things and which no one cares about. It has been unusually wet, but the claim that the amount of rain December through February is the largest on record is bunk. 1929/30 holds the record by a substantial margin for what are typically the wetest three months of the year (October-December). Paul Homewood on his excellent blog: http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/ has more information from the Met Office that puts the recent deluge into context.

What we have experienced this winter, in the UK, is weather. That's what we get in the UK, alongside bloated quangos. Quango's like weather are a hazard of British life and I am sure the blighted inhabitants of Somerset have had enough of both.

ps: by way of passing who was it forecast in the early Autumn that we would have below average precipitation between December and February? Why, another quasi-governmental-organisation, demonstrating the power of its super-computerised models of the British weather: the Met Office! We are now solemnly informed by its Chief Scientist Dame Julia Slingo that this is what we get with climate change. She wasn't saying that in October was she?