Flooding down in Shropshire

A watery look to the Shropshire plain

What a strange, mild, wet, windy winter here, just a few flurries of snow and the odd frosty night so far. I know there's plenty of time for a late cold spell like we had last year but all the same it's been strange. The big feature of Jan and Feb in the UK has been the wind and rain. Here in Shropshire, we don't have anything like the flooding further South but we can see a lot of standing water out on the plain below us - and the winds howling around again at the moment.
We've had some damage to the farm buildings and several trees blown down:

Sad to see this weeping birch down, it was lovely sight on the skyline

One of the trees down in the ancient woodland, Bluebell Wood

A tree comes down between our car and Wes's - no one hurt even though Wes was in his at the time.

But to me this winter will be the Winter When Climate Change Became Mainstream. Having listened to, read, talked, written about and even sometimes done something about climate change issues since the 1970's, it's tempting to jump up and down and say "I told you so!" It's good to hear, for example, people on the radio talking sense about what to do about flooding, ie not to build Canuteish walls to keep the sea and rivers out of our houses but to do the Permaculture thing, to keep the water as high in the landscape as possible for as long as possible. We're going to need every drop of it sooner or later. Goodness me, it's even dawning on some politicians that it's a bigger issue than keeping the corporations happy. How out of their depth they are though, are there wellies high enough for David Cameron?