Lessons for our local policy makers.

The waters after last Thursday's storm recede. But the land is still waterlogged. More storms are on the way. July's the wettest month. November sees local government elections in Poland.

So then - lessons for our local policy makers.

Be more careful when granting building permits. At present, the system is entirely haphazard. Either you wait in limbo, with some urzędnik (untranslatable word - surely not 'Civil Servant'?) deciding not to decide and telling you your application was made in the wrong font, or that some spurious attachment is missing - or else planning permission is given all too readily without the necessary due diligence being carried out.

Part of that due dilligence must be 'what happens if there's a flood of the century/flood of the millennium?" Building on inadequately protected flood plains must cease.

In our case, in Jeziorki, located on table-top flat land like central Mazowsze, the issue is "where will water go if there is 20 litres of rainfall per square metre in the space of two hours?"

Are the drainage ditches clear, or has some anti-social neighbour, through whose land they run, blocked them up? Are there enough drainage ditches to conduct the rain from the fields to the lowest lying land in a given neighbourhood? And should houses be allowed to be built in that lowest lying land?

And should houses in low-lying areas be allowed to build underground garages and cellars? And should not insurers and their actuaries better assess the risk and build it into premiums, which would clearly communicate that risk to householders?

Is there an emergency plan prepared, lying in City Hall, ready to be put into action should there be a repeat of these floods? What is the division of roles between the fire service, urban waterworks company (Miejskie Przedsiębiorstwo Wodociągów i Kanalizacji - lit. the Urban Enterprise of Waterpullings and Canalisation), the military and the police?

Among all the human misery witnessed these last few wet weeks, perhaps the most preventable has been in the Wrocław district of Kozanów, hit hard in the floods of 1997. The worst affected areas of Kozanów consisted of housing built... after 1997.

One of those missing word issues that Polish has is that the word for 'policy' and 'politics' is one and the same - polityka. Reading many Polish political blogs, I can see that this leads to the former being ignored in favour of the latter. Rather than solving problems with policy (flood prevention, waste water treatment, transport infrastructure provision, healthcare, primary, secondary and tertiary education, reforming the pension system, the tax system, etc. etc. etc., Poles worry endlessly about politics. Who gets to decide all the above is key (policy). What they intend to do (policy) is irrelevant. That's all spin. It's getting hold of power, and hanging onto power that matters. Policy tends to go by the board, as people who admit to not knowing much about economics get terribly worked up about the appointment of the president of the National Bank of Poland. For political, not policy, reasons.

I blame Tusk for not stopping the rain and health minister Ewa Kopacz for failing to ensure that every Pole lives to 110.