I took the picture above this time last year as I crossed the Somerset Levels to run a workshop for a major client based in Taunton. You’d have to be living on Mars not to have heard it’s even worse this year – and the storm warnings keep rolling in. As the initial shock and awe has subsided, politicians and the media have got into a bun fight over who is to blame for what – and even who turned up to witness it, when and for how long.

I am pleased, however, that there is a move away from the ‘pour more concrete’ approach to flood management. The problem here is the confluence of several man-made problems – fast run off in the upper reaches due to land use changes*, building on floodplains and the weather-on-steroids effect we have been expecting from climate change. Many people are realising that the solution to these problems are subtle, long term – and I hope the blame-throwing media and the blame-dodging politicos will start to pay attention to the voices of reason.

The bottom line is that we have to start thinking in eco-system terms – to be in tune with those natural cycles instead of trying to disrupt them. As someone once said, if you push nature out the door, she comes back through your window with a pitchfork.

* when I was in Somerset, the River Tone was running chocolate brown from the silt washed off the surrounding land, indicating something was very wrong upstream.