Pickles is indeed an unmitigated twat, for the crap he spouts about local authorities and otehr agencies who he has starved of the cash needed to operat eproperly. He's a "Daily Mail" polition, i.e. its always someone else's fault, and "someone" should do something about it.
As for the Somerset levels, when I used to drive across them regularly, my initial thought was "why do people live here, its obviously not viable?" Living on land below sea level is just plain silly, unless you have a massively expensive and complex infrastructure to manage it.