This.

Do the media still tell us how much booze and fags are going up before anything else on Budget Day?

rlAnd Jewsons ratchet up the price of sandbags.rl

I wonder if Harry and Wills would have been helping out if the floods were up in...say, Lancashire?

I won't take the Jewson lot then...

Price elasticity of supply and demand.

Cost of rental properties in Hull went sky-high when the floods hit back in 07.

I had an empty 4 bedroom rental property during this period and several people who had been flooded enquired about it.

As it was a good property in a nice area, and people were fighting over it, I got offers of £850 a month, compared with my original advertised price of £650 a month.

Very much like the housing market in decent areas of London, where if you have a decent property there will be a bidding war and you will exceed your original asking price.

There's nothing wrong with what Jewson are doing, however, there'll be a reckoning at some point. Back during one of the fuel strikes an enterprising young man decided that petrol could be flogged far more expensively than normal, which is fine as long as a ) you have an endless supply and b ) the strike lasts forever. He didn't, it didn't. He went bust soon after.

Awww, shucks, thanks!.

After all the rainfall and floods, it looks like we now have to be aware of the threat from giant swans

That's just an example of swan upping.

Surely swan-upmanship?

Erm, who's landlocked and miles from water?

There is a small bald man sitting inside that swan, peddling like mad you can just see the top of his head above its folded wing.

Can't you see all them callous asylum seekers leering out of that top flat window hatching a plan to trap then BBQ one of her majestys beautiful swans?

Evil bastads, I tell thee!!!

My pleasure entirely.



However, such extreme events are becoming more regular – and this winter's tidal surges were so severe as to destroy or damage many defences.



The point remainsimproving it. We have had successive governments, irrespective of the work of their own scientists, routinely cutting spending or ignoring the need to improve defences, infrastructure etc, on the grounds of political expediency and nothing else.



Yes, I think they have. We've always had occasional freak weather, but what is happening now is that is becoming more regular – and not just more regular, but in more places at one time or over a short period of time.

We have, in effect, lost any sense of the seasons

I'd treat Monbiot with some care

As I said above, the frequency with which such events are occurring is increasing. And looking at many of the houses we see in pictures of flooded areas, these are not developments that have all been built in the last 20 years.

I think he's saying that it's okay to have land below sea level [iif[/i you're landlocked. But then neither are we, which is what destroys his point.