Re the floods. ‘For all the community spirit on show, when people feel under threat it’s not the 'big society' but big government that they long for.'
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/14/floods-washing-away-founding-logic-david-cameron-government

So what do we want central government (or even local government) to do in the long term to manage our environment? We live in a managed landscape that has developed over thousands of years of occupation. One way or another that has to continue. If that management is done collectively it will have to be paid for collectively. So how do we want to be taxed and our taxes spent to pay for it? We're getting dangerously close to political ideologies when we ask these questions.