Don’t know what particular TV or movie production was being the latest to use Hebden Bridge as a location this afternoon, but someone was — these huge lights were blasting it out hours after sunset, even our house felt well-lit and it lies a quarter of a mile away.
Four weeks after the flood, a positive message. The ‘bobby dazzlers’ in question will not include our parliamentary representative or any of his colleagues elected by constituencies flooded in December 2015, despite the financial resources we expend on furthering their lifestyle, and the moral authority they claim, on the basis that they are “representing the interests of the people”.
Well, 1,610 days in and I’m still here…. Facebook friends may know what I mean. Maybe this is the point though… What you see here is a scene which happens every Thursday in Hebden Bridge at this same time of day. But I don’t think I’ve ever pictured it before, and even if I did it wasn’t in this light, in this slight drizzle, and so on (including heroic flare for the second day in a row). I’ll do my best to keep seeing the moments.
This platform over the Hebden Water has always been there, at least since I’ve been living here. But recently a project began that seemed to be building on it. One story was that this was to be car parking, but I’ve also heard that there was going to be a house built on it. Either way, the state it is in now reflects what happened on December 26th, in the floods, when the river peaked above the surface of the platform, leaving it smashed up and littered with debris (much of which has since been cleared).
The point is that this is exactly the kind of situation where you might think planning permission had been granted without due consideration. Flooding, and damage from flooding, isn’t just about heavy rainfall — it’s also about damn-fool planning. At least this happened before someone blithely bought and moved into this putative house. But who knows, perhaps the project has not yet been abandoned.
Good news… the Picture House has reopened. Just the balcony — visible here is the front part of the ground floor, or stalls, where now no seats remain. The heating’s not working either. But at least this particular community asset has survived.
I haven’t felt like taking many pictures over these last three days. Media coverage of natural disasters encourages us to see the flood just as a spectacle, a series of dramatic images, and all these things we do on social media are part of it. Voyeuristic citizen journalism is little different from the voyeuristic corporate kind. I wish I had something else to document, though.
This to me is the saddest sight; virtually every house and business in the town centre now has these piles of stock and/or furniture outside on the pavements, waiting to be cleared.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron today announced that he would ‘do all he could’ to help the victims of flooding across the north of England.
In June this year, his government’s Climate Change Committee warned that previously unprecedented weather events would become more common and that the UK state was not doing enough to protect its citizens from flooding. In October 2015 Cameron’s government finally responded to this, by announcing that a new flood defense and prevention strategy was “not appropriate” at this time.
In December, two days after the signing of a new international agreement in Paris, aimed at alleviating climate change, UK Chancellor George Osborne slashed all subsidies for renewable energy, while retaining them both for fracking, and for the burning of peat and heather on the moors of northern England, a land ‘management’ strategy that greatly increases run-off of water into the valleys during rain storms.
The gentleman pictured here is the owner of Paradise, a successful and long-established take-away joint in Hebden Bridge. He has just lost £30,000 worth of kitchen equipment from his business; even if he can reopen again he will have to be closed for many weeks. He was uninsured for this, not through neglect, but because the free market in insurance would not deign to cover him or other businesses in Hebden Bridge after the 2012 floods.
Calder Valley has a Conservative Member of Parliament, Craig Whittaker. His email address is craig.whittaker.mp@parliament.uk and his Twitter handle is @CWhittakerMP. I just thought I would mention these things.
Second of five days in a row where I guarantee I am not going beyond the home — pub — shop axis. Time to dig into some creative corners; I’ve had my eye on this door for a while.
Friday night in the pub – the world outside passes by, but the working week (a 6-day one for me) is over.
Very, very far from being a satisfactory photo but it does sum up a terribly dull, grey and dark day, in which very little happened of note. Thus, the turn of the year etc etc.
Being 42 