British flood victims angry at lack of help

FE Team | Published: February 12, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

DATCHET, Feb 11 (AFP): The floodwaters are rising in Datchet but there appears to be no one around to help except David Cannon the water-taxi man.
This quaint English town may be just a mile from the elite Eton College where Britain's prime minister went to school, but residents say they are waiting in vain for any substantial help from the government.
Instead it is up to people like Cannon, a 52-year-old scoutmaster, and other volunteers to help get people through the waters that have come from the swollen River Thames.
"It's a very popular service at the moment," Cannon tells AFP in the driving rain after giving a local resident a lift in his red canoe.
"We have been running some children to school and also taking sandbags where they're needed."
He said the response of the British authorities had been "very disorganised".
"They supplied sandbags yesterday and we had the military here last night but there's been nothing since then."
Datchet backs on to the famed playing fields of Eton, where British Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson went to school, and just a few miles (kilometres) from Queen Elizabeth II's Windsor Castle.
Cameron's government is now fighting a tide of criticism over its handling of the crisis.
Driven by the wettest winter in England since 1766, the floods first hit southwest England about seven weeks ago.