May I use your columns to express my sincerest thanks to farmers and the wider rural community for their magnificent response to the flooding tragedy – and there is, sadly, no other word – that has been unfolding on the Somerset Levels.
It is difficult if not utterly impossible for any of us to imagine the emotional wringer scores of farmers in my constituency have been put through as they have watched the rising waters advancing inexorably to invade their land, their buildings, their stores, their homes and even their livestock sheds.
I know from talking to many of them what a shattering experience they have had, how desperate they feel at seeing businesses devastated, financial losses piling up and in so many cases their life's work obliterated in the space of a few days, or even hours.
Equally I know that the help, both practical and financial, they have been offered at this time has gone a considerable way to lifting the gloom of a very dark hour. To learn, while surveying the wreckage of one's farm and contemplating weeks, months, maybe years of recovery, that one's plight has not gone unnoticed in other parts of the country is tremendously heartening.
I have been immensely impressed by the tons of fodder and bedding arriving from all corners of the UK, of the financial contributions pouring into the various disaster relief funds and for the non-stop torrent of offers of help.
Farmers on the Somerset Levels are a resilient lot and they will come through this, but they may well be too preoccupied at the moment to return thanks, which I why I believe it falls to me to do so on their behalf – and equally to thank Derek Mead and his staff for allowing Sedgemoor Auction Centre to be used as a clearing house and distribution centre for the donated consignments.
Ian Liddell-Grainger
MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset