The PM`s Cobra meetings.

These are the meetings that the people who really run the country(senior civil servants) tell the Ministers what they want to hear.......
 
I work in emergency response in the oil industry and did a short attachment in civil emergency planning.

Based on what they decide threat level wise at the Cobra meeting, resources etc are allocated / pre positioned. One thing I found hard to get my head around, because it's very cold and hard is the calculated death tolls. It's generally assumed that any mass casualty event will overwhelm hospital morge facilities so temporary morge facilities are brought in. For example during the Olympics tucked away around the corner was a temporary large capacity morge.

So I guess at the Cobra meetings there's some nice biscuits and sandwiches with the crusts cut off, but once they've finished there's quite a lot of work done behind the scenes.
 
Is it me or is everybody slightly disappointed when they find that cobra stands for 'cabinet office briefing room A'?
 
Said meetings and full scale action would have been swifter if, for example, the gated communities of Surrey and the like were looking like flooding....

I don't think the Bullingdon Club give a rats *ss about flooding anywhere it doesn't affect them, theirs or their interests!
 
Ok I'm on a lot of drugs (prescription) at the moment and may have missed the point! What a knob!

So in the instance of the flooding... Well it makes it look as if there doing something... Let's hope there biscuits don't get too soggy and drop off in there tea....

Apologies - back in the room now!
 
Like this. I am told. "War Book". Except for real. Here's the trailer. I am sure that you can find it in its full version somewhere. The whole is better than the trailer.

 
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It's what this country does well when there's big emergencies these days. The big wigs have meetings at cabinet office level, then at local government level, then at senior officer level (whether that be ambulance, police, NHS or fire service) followed by meetings at local area level to try and decide what's to be done.

Meanwhile the workers are getting on and doing it anyway. :doh:
 
Wringing their hands....oooohh the angst!
I know - we'll deploy the army.....hopefully, we won't have to worry about that area again for another few years...must make sure we don't lose many votes though!

Those on the spot got stuck in immediately.
 
Just another excuse to look good, gain votes, a get together in there warm un-flooded warm, dry room, eating prawn buttys, drinking coffee praising one another, commenting on their Xmas presents and patting each other on the backs.
If they were that concerned they'd be up here helping folk out.
 
According to the today programme, while measly amounts have been spent on upgrading flood defences, with the exception of much needed upgrades recently in the south east, billions of our hard earned money has gone to corrupt countries in grant aid.
Is it not long past time for the Uk government to look closer to home if it has emergency funds to spare f***ing ridicules if you ask me!!
 
Taken from another forum, it appears they can't do anything constructive even if they wanted to.

Flooding cause that the Government would rather keep to itself - Chronicle Live

The same argument was trotted out last year after the Somerset Levels flooding: Flooding: Somerset Levels disaster is being driven by EU policy - Telegraph

Strangely they then dredged the Somerset Levels, so apparently the legislation wasn't to blame after all :rolleyes:

If you check the Environment Agency's website you will see that record rain has been experienced throughout the month of December, with peak rainfall equating to a month's worth within 24 hours.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/488613/WE_20151222.pdf

No amount of dredging or flood defences are going to cope with those levels, unless we have a complete rethink of our future climate expectations and how we prepare accordingly.

There are a whole host of reasons why the floods are more devastating - increased house and road building, reduced maintenance of waterways and infrastructure, other priorities for investment, etc. But at the end of the day when you experience rainfall in this combination of both duration and intensity in a localised area you are going to get flooding.

In the past we called these events "natural disasters" - these days we seek someone to blame. I even heard one person say that they were contacting their solicitor as they didn't feel the flood siren had been sounded early enough! Complaining that things would be different "if they happened in Surrey" is facile and meaningless. No politician controls where the rain falls, and flooding on this scale is a disaster wherever it happens.

Politicians of every political persuasion will turn up because the electorate - and the media - expect, or in fact demand, that they do. Otherwise they are condemned as cold and uncaring. Just read the comments on here and you can see exactly why that is.
 
It's what this country does well when there's big emergencies these days. The big wigs have meetings at cabinet office level, then at local government level, then at senior officer level (whether that be ambulance, police, NHS or fire service) followed by meetings at local area level to try and decide what's to be done.

Meanwhile the workers are getting on and doing it anyway. :doh:

Lancashire county council will struggle to pay for any work needing doing, they've just blown £6.6 million hiring a firm of consultants to "implement and to transform adult social care services". Basically the old and infirm can stay at home and rot because they can't afford transport to the day centers. Politicians aren't worth a kick up the ass.
 
Said meetings and full scale action would have been swifter if, for example, the gated communities of Surrey and the like were looking like flooding....

I don't think the Bullingdon Club give a rats *ss about flooding anywhere it doesn't affect them, theirs or their interests!

So I guess you wore the smug smile of satisfaction when Oxfordshire was flooded in 2007, 2012 and 2014?

And when Gloucestershire was flooded in the same years?

And when Surrey was flooded earlier this year?

Did it make you happier believing it was Tory voters whose homes and businesses were devastated on those occasions?

Flooding knows no boundaries - it's a disaster wherever it happens.
 
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According to the today programme, while measly amounts have been spent on upgrading flood defences, with the exception of much needed upgrades recently in the south east, billions of our hard earned money has gone to corrupt countries in grant aid.

Oh dear. I fear that some of our SD Members are, an no insult is meant, a little "naive". For do you really, really, really think that if this "grant aid" actually did go to XXX country's "deserving poor" that the UK Government would still pay it at all?

It is because the UK Government knows that it won't that it still gets paid. It is, pure and simple, a bribe, "dash", "baksheesh", a "dessous table", a "backhander", a "sweetener", call it what you will to those in that country that will then, it is thought, exercise favourable influence in Britain's interests when needed to.

Why else do we pay, as SD Members quite rightly say, millions to India?

But, Britain being Britain, "rules of cricket" (and all that guff) we dress it up as foreign aid. And not as what it really is. Which is pure and simple a series of bribes. But in real terms what it gets us, for relative pennies, is well worth it.
 
So I guess you wore the smug smile of satisfaction when Oxfordshire was flooded in 2007, 2012 and 2014?

And when Gloucestershire was flooded in the same years?

And when Surrey was flooded earlier this year?

Did it make you happier believing it was Tory voters whose homes and businesses were devastated on those occasions?

Flooding knows no boundaries - it's a disaster wherever it happens.

No, no smug smile - apologies for any offence and to anyone else in the country affected
 
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