THE loss of a policeman in the Lake District floods is a tragedy for his family and colleagues.

The loss of homes, businesses, and communities is sickening.

I was near Keswick on Thursday night and saw a road bridge washed away. The force of water was terrifying. The Environment Agency, police and local council workers were at work all night blocking roads, rescuing people, and diverting traffic. Could it have been prevented?

Flood defence works in the Lakes, Wales, Scotland, and many coastal areas around Britain are identified, but are getting done at a painfully slow rate. Work around Cockermouth was under way, but very slowly, and too late. An excuse being put forward now is that this is a “once in 1000 years event”. The same level of flooding occurred a few miles south in Carlisle, just four years ago.

We have a country with some 750,000 unemployed young people (between 18 and 30 years of age), not to mention about a million illegal immigrants, 99 per cent of whom are young men. In the US, the National Guard (similar to our TA) has engineer units which spends all of its training periods strengthening levies, dams and bridges across the country, and constantly carry out flood defence work on their major rivers.

Why on earth do we not build up the TA engineer units by about 30,000 to 40,000 people (volunteers), get some of the plant and equipment we have sitting idly in military camps and on building sites, and train (and pay) young volunteers in flood defence work, coastal defences, bridge strengthening, and road building etc? What a waste of young people, training, equipment and energy, not to pull them together.

Although in quasi-military units, they would not be called to war, unless they volunteered. The young people would develop skills, learn to work with others, perform a vital national service and put some money in their pockets. It may give them a sense of worth and self respect, and immigrants doing one year for their adopted country could stay.

Idleness, waste and stupidity seem to be a “human right” in Britain.

The army is adept at housing and feeding thousands of people on temporary sites.

Every other country in the world utilises its forces for civil works. Then I look at what is running the country — forget it! If they run out of flood work, they can put hundreds of Nissen huts up on some remote freezing island, to meet our growing prison population.

Ron Shambley Clough Avenue Westhoughton