Video from remote control helicopter shows the extent of flooding in Frankwell, #Shrewsbury. http://t.co/R8UUl6HtSx pic.twitter.com/FcqHL3qfYV
— Shropshire Star (@ShropshireStar) February 10, 2014
OK, so the weird weather and infrastructure crisis exacerbated by the Galbraithian combination of private affluence and public squalor is being monitored by the local newspaper using a web platform for 140-character snarkfarts and cat photos, and their robot air force. That, you know, provincial newspapers just have at the back of the newsroom. This is basically a Bruce Sterling novel, isn’t it?
As a proud son of Shrewsbury, I faintly need to point out — not that it diminishes your point or indeed the severity of floods elswhere — that that image shows a car-park built in the curve of a riverbend on a flood plain that has flooded something like this literally every other year since records began. So weird weather is not really the villain *here*: Shropshire is flat, soft, low-lying and alluvial, with a fvck-off big river that winds lazily through it. It busts its banks a LOT.