Five feet high and rising.

As the flooding in the south of England continues to dominate the news it has been interesting to see how our government has reacted to it.

If there was a graph then the starting point would be classed as “shit happens”, with the ever rising red line peaking on “Oh fuck it’s impacting on tory heartland”.

Initially it was a horrible situation, but considered as interesting as belly button fluff.

Cornwall could have been the modern day Atlantis, and in the deep pile carpeted corridors and offices of Westminster the water cooler jokes would have been about inbred mermen and maids.

I fully expected to see some crap memes surface stating “Don’t Panic. It’s Only Cornwall”.

Fast forward a few years and the poster of that, and one of demanding Nelson Mandela to be hung, would appear on Ebay being sold by toryboyswetdream as a job lot of Conservative memorabilia.

Once the flatlands of Devon and Somerset started to vanish under water as multiple river banks gave up the fight, there was an acceptance that “okay things aren’t looking too good”, but apart from some denials that dredging would have helped the main response was more words and no real action worth mentioning.  

Apparently dredging is just one of the many victims of cuts, and even if they had done it then it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Meanwhile the water continued to rise.

The line in the sand where it all changed from “Tough Luck” to “National Disaster” was coincidentally drawn when the waters reached Berkshire and Surrey.

All of a sudden a u-turn was made and they claimed dredging would have helped, the army were sent to save the day in a campaign that may have the code name of “Operation Too Little Too Late” and best of all “Call Me Dave” has claimed money is no object, and he will do everything in his power to sort this shit out.

In an era where on a daily basis we are told we have no money for anything, that the cost of care for the disabled needs to be reined in, that the NHS costs too much, that essential services should be handed over to private companies to save us all money, as we as a country are drowning in debt of course, it would appear that Dave has managed to find an unlimited amount of cash down the back of the couch.

A rainy day fund that the rain has literally forced him to reveal exists.

There’s something smells fishy about the whole thing, and I don’t think the odour comes from the haddock that has just swum through the letterbox of some poor soul in Cornwall.

Do we have any cash, or do we not?

Does the government only care when tragedy hits the tory heartland?

I think we all know the answers.