Flooding: shrug, raise the risks, hope for the best

With much of Britain under water, is enough being done to tackle the floods? Emily Hohler reports.

The belated deployment of the armed forces to the flood-hit Somerset Levels this week brought respite to residents, but "the area has been badly let down by the Environment Agency", says The Daily Telegraph. Prime Minister David Cameron admitted as much when he announced that dredging the rivers would begin once the floods recede.

The Agency claimed it could not afford the £5m needed; but it found £31m for a bird sanctuary at the mouth of the River Parrett. Its priorities have become "skewed towards conservation projects and away from basic maintenance".

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.