Flooding compensation

Responding to questions in the House of Commons today, Gordon Brown said all councils affected by the floods would receive 100% compensation, according to a BBC report.

He said £46m had been made available by the government in the immediate future and annual spending on flood protection would rise from £600m to £800m by 2010/11.

But is this enough? Certainly these amounts are tiny compared to the extra £2.5bn a year Gordon Brown plans to lavish on the audit-failing EU, which will take our total net EU payments to £6bn a year.

The £46m is less than 3 days worth of what we'll be paying the EU, and the extra £200m the government intends to spend on flood protection over coming years represents a little over a week's worth of what our new EU payments would be, if MPs vote to approve the EU budget deal.

What does this say about how the government prioritises preventing the terrible personal devastation we have seen over recent weeks from happening again, relative to funding the wasteful and fraud-ridden EU?

Let's not forget, auditors haven't even been able to tell us where the "majority" of the EU's spending goes for twelve years running - so no-one knows where much of the money given to the EU is in fact going.

Surely that money would be better spent on flood prevention, than wasted on the EU? Those MPs who agree will vote against the EU budget deal.