uknews/whaleybridge dam collapse town evacuated as danger to life warning issued

www.msn.com...

Residents are being told to leave their homes with their pets, essentials and all medication they may need for "a number of days".
A nearby school is being used as a refuge point.
Dragging a suitcase of possessions up the deserted high street, local David Holt told Manchester Evening News: “Police are knocking on doors, evacuating everyone within risk of that dam wall breaking.
“If it’s going to go, it’s going to go straight through the village.

This would look like the overwhelming of a dam that was built a long time ago due to the vast amount of concentrated rain that has fell in the area in a very short period of time

I suspect that an awful lot more infrastructure in the uk will become overwhelmed due to the unprecidented intensity and volume of the uk summer storm weather that is becoming the norm

Well that’s not good but might I suggest editing the title OP because it’s pretty close to being gibberish with all that punctuation.

Will be interesting to see what happens as reports say that it’s already particularly collapsed.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin
I have altered the title for you
I presume you meant partially collapsed

The summer weather is certainly putting a strain on the UK in many ways I fear

originally posted by: astra001uk
a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin
I have altered the title for you
I presume you meant partially collapsed

The summer weather is certainly putting a strain on the UK in many ways I fear

Haha yeah I did sorry

Doesn’t look good looking at pictures.

At least they’ve evacuated and seem to be taking action to save the dam

Incidentally, Canada saw a good deal of flooding in the last few days too...

Stay safe, Britons...

i thought there'd be problems because of the non-stop rain we've had over the last few days. terrible weather

a reply to: astra001uk

Well in part this is actually due to the old Conservatives privatization of the water industry over here as before that we had a proper water board and far MORE drainage ditches with farmer's not being allowed to remove them simply to expand there fields, they could still do so but had to leave the drainage ditches and water channels in place which these day's they have often not done as in order to make there field's a more standard size they had to fill them in and often merge two or three field's together.
This in turn reduced drainage and also along with the privatization of the industry we had a lot of water storage and management facility's mothballed and sold off as well.

Result in a country that is no stranger to rain, even torrential downpours like this the water runoff from the field's is often greater, it not as well channelled and so it often causes the rivers to flood and the remaining now in private hand's water utility's to suffer strain they are not capable of taking, especially when they are both aging and were often built LONG AGO during the age of the national water board and have been seldom updated and well maintained as they should have been by the private water company's more intent on less workers and investment and greater profit for there Conservative and Foreign shareholders.

Sorry to bring politics into this but conservative politics (and the now defunct Thatcherite NEW Labour) are definitely responsible, add to that other than this old village many new sites now under threat as they have been built following imbecilic and greedy deregulation of building standards on what are locations prone to natural flooding and as our weather becomes more extreme due to climate change the likelihood for this to get worse - while our water company's rather than being properly regulated are doing a far worse job of it than the old nationalized industry ever did.

a reply to: LABTECH767

I read a while back that an additional strain comes from leakage.
So much is lost in the system that reservoirs are already kept at a higher than normal level meaning bad weather floods over.

That doesn't read quite right but management is an issue.

a reply to: astra001uk

I especially love the idiots standing on that walkway above the dam as it is just spilling out.

a reply to: LABTECH767


You make excellent and very valid points I for one believe the UK should have water as a nationalised commodity or at least the profits must be used for renewing infrastructure long before the share holders get anything

The farmers fields and more sudden run off, yes that will be true along with the uplands not been managed for water but for grouse shooting
It appears to me that profit for the few yet again has undermined a decent supply for the many

a reply to: pavil
Yes common sense has seemingly disappeared in the UK in so many ways sadly Many people seem to have lost the ability to question their own actions probably think they can make a claim if killed

a reply to: Tulpa
How right you are it appears easier and cheaper to just fill the reservoirs more than fix the infrastructure down stream as it were perhaps they may reassess this now but I doubt it

a reply to: RoScoLaz5

How right you are overwhelmed by the weather comes to mind, stay safe my fellow ats er

a reply to: astra001uk


If they put money back in for infrastructure they couldn't pay dividends and make fat salaries, this thinking to profit the rich, has destroyed virtually all the infra structure. The people that paid for it originally have never got a penny either.

a reply to: astra001uk

Spot on, every nation should have control of it's own infrastructure especially those such as water which is not only necessary for health but for sanitation, flood prevention and drought management.

The problem is that both of our major party's have there own problem's, we have the Conservatives (they are really two party's in one the Tory's being the older and the real party and the Conservatives being the Newer front man party behind which the Tory's hide since no one would vote for the Tory's if they made there real intention's clear to the voters) and the Labour party, both have there good and bad point's.

On balance though the Tory's are the more evil of the two by a long shot, they believe in SMALL government, letting business do what it want's, no safety net and deregulation though they know to pursue there fundamental ideals in full would alienate about ninety percent of the electorate so they are always careful about what they do - less careful about it however during there recent stint in power.

The Labour party takes it's nationalization dream perhaps a little too far and whenever they are set to gain power (Old and Current Labour not the defunct false Labour that was called New Labour - Blair and Brown) the money men find way's to hide or move there asset's were the Labour government can then not bring tax to bare upon them - something Labour have long tried to put a stop too but which the House or Lord's and back handers in parliament always thwarted them from doing.

If Labour get's back into power soon then there will be an instant and artificial recession generated by the movement of money out of the nation by these money men, IF the conservatives stay in power under Johnson then Britain will become a tax haven for the rich with growing inequality between the poor and the rich, over the last 10 years we have seen an increase in homelessness due to Tory policy's and inhumanity of over one hundred percent.

Just today I watched a debate on the BBC in which a news presenter kept interrupting a young left wing commenter and did not interrupt a right wing commenter, in substance the left wing commenter a young lady was absolutely spot on but SHE was not speaking what that presenter wanted to have said on her news segment while the young Right wing commenter WAS speaking what she wanted to have heard on her show.

In fact the young right wing commenter was wrong on his assumption's, he claimed that when we come out of the EU it will mean cheaper food etc but in fact unless we have stringent regulation in place - and even then - it will mean we as an island return to being a monopolized consumer market, a captive market in which they can charge pretty much what they want so he was utterly wrong in his claim, take oil prices, when we are a captive market and the EU does not regulate our oil market petrol prices at the pump's will go up and this will affect transportation costs, add to that the cost of import's likely to rise as importers take advantage of the captive market we will then present to make as much profit as they can and costs of everything from utility bill's to the price of bread are set to skyrocket.

Nevertheless I believe we had to come out of the EU, just not Johnson OR may style and the reason is simply, the EU is working a policy were they are driving a single economy model as there goal, wages across the block to be standardized as much as possible along with consumer prices and this means' that in the more developed and established old western European nation's wages have to come down but at the moment Germany seems more insulated than other nation's against this perhaps due to the size of it's population and the veto power this gives it in the short term while conversely the wages in the old eastern and less developed European nation's will rise as will of course the price of good's in those areas.

So by coming out of the EU we have a chance of stopping our wages from going down to subsistence level's BUT only if we can stop the TORY's whom other than there own reason's for coming out of the EU (not nationalism they are too greedy for that) have pretty much the same idea as the EU, to lower our own wages and make us into a wage slave economy - we already more or less are.

And as for the Green's they have the right ideas but not the expertise even if they had a chance of getting into power and that leaves only the Liberal's as a viable alternative and sadly they are now pretty much taking the place of NEW LABOUR in that there policy's differ very little from what we may have expected from a Blair type government though they do have one gem that is worthy of note, they want to introduce if they ever have enough members of parliament and the house of lord's (So it would take many decades to get to this level of support and they do not have it now), a proportional one vote on voter system were a vote in Lanarkshire would be equal to a vote in Berkshire and MP's would have to have a set number of votes to win a constituency and not simply a percentage of a constituency's voters OR were MP's value in parliament would represent the NUMBER of people that voted for them instead of letting a Tory from a rural area with low population have the same or MORE power as a Liberal, Green or Labour MP from a high population area.

So our politics is pretty messed up and actually most of these government's and would be government's do not have our infrastructure very high on there agenda, labour however does have it higher on there agenda than the other's even if - well Corbyn need I say more I mean I like the guy but could he run the country or has he already made a stand based on ideology that may prevent him from ever gaining power even if that mean's some spook's rigging our elections (like that has never happened before).

a reply to: LABTECH767


Its a fairly simple concept , In a soviet Communist system, the rich are destroyed so everyone becomes poor. In a Capitalist system, it becomes Fascist so only the top one per cent are rich, and the rest become poor. In a Socialist system where all essential infra structure is state owned, and run as non profit organisations it underpins the economy with jobs, keeps private business liquid, and provides long term economic stability, so capitalistic enterprises can flourish.
New Zealand in the seventies was like this, one person was registered as unemployed in Auckland in nineteen seventy , and roughly fifty per cent of the population worked for the state. Then the government decided to follow the British model. Now we have plenty of millionaires , but many unemployed living in Garages.

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
Well that’s not good but might I suggest editing the title OP because it’s pretty close to being gibberish with all that punctuation.

Will be interesting to see what happens as reports say that it’s already particularly collapsed.

Just living up to the editorial standards of the publication itself:

They are serious fears lives could be claimed if it collapses and one local said it could "wipe half the village off the map.”

Don't let the Queen read what they're now doing to her English!

a reply to: anonentity

Didn't know the NZ history there, blame Thatcher, look at her family her husband wanted to import south American coal into the UK for penny's as he could get it dirt cheap and we at the time had the most coal fired power stations but there was one hurdle, we state owned and operated our own coal industry to power them with what was actually very high quality coal - low sulphur and very clean burning so the cost of our coal was deliberately over estimated and this allowed her to argue for the closing of our burdensome mines many of which had at least several decades of accessible coal left in them, meanwhile sadly this gave the Commies of the old USSR an opportunity as since our NUM was at strife with the government they could rally militant a communist organization whom had hijacked much of the Labour party and British Union infrastructure for there own ideological pro soviet belief's.

Thatcher got her way but the coal her husband wanted to bring in was too dirty so it was as far as I know never used and there went one of his pipe dream's, this remember was the same woman whom before she had become prime minister had invented a way of mixing air into ice cream, then somehow got the word Litre on a tub of Ice Cream to refer to it's volume instead of it's fluid content hence ripping people off.

Her husband also had vast investments (he was a multi billionaire though officially only worth a coupe of million as that is how the Tory's evaded there taxation) in the artificial food additive industry so on her watch food standards also spiralled downward with more and more E number ingredient's appearing in food up here in Blighty.

Of course you know about her son being investigated for fraud and even trying to topple a democratically elected African government Because Dennis had hidden much of his wealth in that country and they had lost it but had an agreement with the corrupt general they were tying to get into power that they would get that ill gotten money back.

Now this does not apply to all conservatives but it does apply to the hard core of the TORY's at there heart, they tend to be a truly rotten bunch corrupt to the core but also untouchable since they are the one's with the wealth and power.

I agree with that assessment of both Communism and Capitalism as well and also your take on a middle ground socialism though it is very easy for the pendulum to swing too far to the left just as it is for it to swing too far to the right as it currently has in the UK and very hard for a government to stay on track in that manner in a world were there are forces trying to pull it both way's.

That's horrifying. I watched the video in that link and I wonder why people are just standing around watching. I would be getting as much of my stuff as I could and getting out of there!

It seems weird to me that a whole little village was built in the path of that reservoir/dam. I guess it happens in a lot of places though.

www.google.com...@53.3213776,-1.9965647,3118m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x487a35b9af05d563:0x4a4b4e120fd42 1b6!8m2!3d53.3298746!4d-1.9841743

a reply to: LABTECH767

What? The problem with this dam is Thatcher's fault? Remind me, since Thatcher how many years has Labour been in power for? Did they fix these problems?