Dealing with the floods

There are a number of politically significant things which would normally merit a blog post which have happened in the past few days. However, I am still stunned at the impact on many parts of central and west Cumbria of the floods - an issue which is far from over as it is raining again. Bridges and roads are still in many cases down, blocked, or unsafe. More than seventy families are in emergency accomodation, though the numbers affected are much larger - it's understood that over a thousand properties have been hit by flooding.

This puts the normal party political debate into persective and in the circumstances, I'm not going to be posting anything party political for the next few days.

One thing we can all agree with is that the response of the emergency services to this disaster has been exemplary. Police, fire, lifeboat, NHS, council services and the voluntary sector have all moved quickly to help, co-ordinated their efforts well, and responded magnificently to a very serious set of challenges.

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