The first morning of 2016 was a rather chilly and grey one but it was still good to drag the family up a nearby hill and then buy them a pub lunch as compensation. Pic taken on the way round; the cow virtually demanding that I work on its close-ups.
Here is where we have just spent New Year’s Eve. and this picture is worth posting if only because it depicts a Hebden Bridge pub that has managed to open despite the floods. Up yours to the last, depressing week of 2015 and here is hoping for better weather in 2016, at least. But let’s not be negative – a happy New Year, whatever you have done, whatever you might wish.
We could mock this guy for reliving the glories of his youth, but seeing as just after this I punched the air and shouted ‘Yes! High Score!’ after beating all-comers at Asteroids, I have no leg to stand on. Pictured at the National Media Museum, Bradford, this afternoon’s entertainment.
Determined not to do a post today that was directly flood-related, so this isn’t one, although it’s hardly the best-quality pic of this or any year. The White Lion is currently the only pub remaining open in Hebden Bridge town centre, so the Railway crew have relocated — while they ponder the fact that their home turf may well never reopen.
I do note that the White Lion is the oldest building in Hebden, built in the 16th century when there was literally nothing else here — and that it is the only building in the town centre not to have been flooded on Saturday. It has only struck me today that this is not a coincidence. The builders observed — then they built — and they were right. Everyone else who has since built here has taken a rather more shortsighted view.
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.
Up until this morning 2015’s had been an entirely agreeable Christmas filled with friends and family old and new, much good cheer and sociability, etc. etc.
This morning things took a definite turn for the worse in the patch of England that lies, more or less, between Manchester, Leeds and Lancaster. Huge amounts of rain have turned much of this region into what you see here. We were scheduled to drive from my sister’s in Sabden to Clare’s parents in Morecambe this morning, and made it, despite some very damp moments on the road and views over scenes such as this. But we were among the luckier ones. Hebden Bridge and the whole Calder Valley, from Walsden down to Mytholmroyd, was today under over a metre (3.3 feet) of water, leading to terrifying scenes like this one, in Mytholmroyd. I do not even want to think about the impact this is going to have on my home town. In 2012 after the last (twin) floods hit several much-loved establishments were closed for months, and today’s floods were far worse. As this photo shows, the shops on the main street were deluged this morning.
The village of Whalley, which has appeared once before on this blog and was hit by flooding a couple of weeks ago, was also devastated again today. The shot I choose to epitomise this very shitty day is one taken as we tried to negotiate our way from Sabden past Whalley, on the A59 road which bypasses the village, and crosses the River Calder at this point (note: this is not the Calder that runs through Hebden Bridge, but the Lancashire river of the same name; in the first version of this post I misidentified it). As you can see the river has become a literal lake, and many houses in Whalley were evacuated today as a result. Nor do I think the sheep pictured here (lower left) have a great deal longer to live. As far as I know no human lives have been lost in the region today, but it is a frankly terrible situation, that at the moment I do not wish to dwell on very much.
It is all very well to blame capricious nature for this crap, but there are also decisions — to do with land use, water management, pollution — that have been deliberately made over the last couple of centuries of human existence and which are exacerbating natural weather events like this. Today the consequences of these decisions really hit home. I am sure you will see more of this over the next few days, but we have to get home first.
My nephew Tom and their family’s dog, Bella, enjoy a leisurely moment on Christmas afternoon. A happy festive season to you all, wherever you are and whatever you may have done.
Lucy was born on March 12th this year so is about to experience her first Christmas…. Perhaps she looks a little glum here but I think that is just because I caught her mid-crisp. I wish her a happy one, and hope you all have a good one too…
A picture to warm the heart of economists everywhere. Part of me despairs at the scale of it all but I cannot judge because, like everyone in traffic jams, I was just as much part of it as everyone else today. I guess this picture could be most anywhere in the world at this point in the year, but it happens to be Birmingham’s second-ever appearance on this blog (after 19/3/12). This is the Bullring shopping centre, recently totally rebuilt and vast in scale, this is just one wing of it.
Being 42 