This has got to be one of the stupidest headlines ever!

Agreed about the article, but it was the headline I objected to. It is very, very stupid, which I don't expect of the Indy.

The thing is, if a headline is that stupid, it puts one off reading the article. They must know that. Definitely low class, stupid, lazy journalism, presuming writing headlines is part of the job. And why, for goodness' sake? What's the point they're trying to make with such a headline? When there's something that bad in what is supposed to be an intelligent newspaper, I think that's far worse than the tabloids which don't have the Indy's pretensions.

Only my opinion of course, but I doubt if I'm alone in thinking it.

I live about ten miles away from Morpeth (it's actually the County Town of Northumberland). They have had flooding there for years, but it is worse than it used to be. It sits on the River Wansbeck - runs straight through the middle of the town.

I do think that there is too much building on flood plains. I did hear of one major supermarket chain in, I think, Gloucestershire, where they appealed against being turned down to build a store on what they were told was a flood plain. They won, the store was built and, guess what? It flooded. And what did the supermarket chain do then - why they wanted compensation because they had been allowed to build there!

The small town where I live has been flooded twice in recent years - after the first time new flood barriers and defences were built. Unfortunately the barriers made the allotments near the river more susceptible to water lying - I heard that quietly some bricks were removed to aid drainage. And you can see what happened then: next really bad weather the area flooded again because the river "escaped".