Are floods are more important than hanging baskets?

The Chair’s phone was hot recently – all the media were desperate for BJRA’s views on the hanging basket saga.
Here is BJRA’s formal response which, bless their cotton socks, the Evening Post printed:
Burton Joyce’s sad plight of being deprived of its annual spate of hanging baskets has hit the Evening Post’s headlines today. Reporters have had nothing better to do over the past week than to ring just about everyone in the village trying to get expressions of despair from the locals.
I would like to put on record the view of Burton Joyce Residents’ Association. It’s a shame that we won’t have hanging baskets this year, but we have more important things to worry about.
WE ARE MORE CONCERNED about the impending threat to the village of increased flooding risk that we and all other downstream villages will suffer as a result of the proposals to build flood defences to protect the urban area around Nottingham. Planning applications for this defence scheme were recently sneaked into Broxtowe and Erewash Planning Authorities without the rural communities that would be adversely affected by the applications being notified.
… AND the increased flooding risk plus threats to the stability of homes in the villages that will result from Nottinghamshire County Council’s proposals to site the largest sand and gravel mine in the county between Burton Joyce and Gunthorpe.
… AND the threats to the health and safety of residents as a result of recent planning permission to site a chicken farm on an unsuitable location in the village to which the development of road access has destroyed a previously much loved and well used bridle path.
… AND the continuing approvals being given for yet more housing in the village, without any regard for the infrastructure which has been creaking for a long time and is now near to breaking point in many areas
… AND the poor state of roads and pavements in the village which are neglected year after year by the local authority, while other areas get repeated make-overs.
In this context, front page concern over hanging baskets shows a very strange sense of priorities.