WHILE I acknowledge that the floods are due mainly to the extreme weather conditions, there are a minority of people – known as the “We Know Better Than You Brigade” – who must accept a deal of responsibility and in future bow down to the knowledge of experience.

These people have created a compost heap in their garden and think it gives them the right to run the environment.

A few years ago the farmers knew where to plant the hedges, where to dig the ditches and the dykes, when to clean them out and when to dredge the rivers, and all this worked.

Along come the useless do-gooders and the knowledge of the country people is ignored because they think they are better at saving the environment.

In the past, water creatures, animals and birds quickly adapted to the features that were man-made on an annual basis due to remedial works. We now see dozens of species of wildlife on the brink of extinction due to these do-gooders and also floodwaters that could have been reduced by the methods of different generations.

These people should hang their heads in shame.

TJ Ryder, Priory Gardens, North Lane, Dringhouses, York.

 

• Everyone, on reading the various letters concerning the floods, is so keen to blame the Government or the Environment Agency for bad river management. The blame lays squarely with the EU Commissioners, who have issued directives that are made to never mind anything but the protection of wildlife and creating natural habitats for every creature other than man.

Unless we treat rules like this with the Gallic shrug and ignore them, we will be in the same pickle for years to come.

David Marsh, Millfield Lane, York.