SIR - Last Wednesday, Tony Blair severely criticised the negativity of our news media.

Then, you had a letter from Philip Bird apparently suggesting that higher unemployment is preferable to creating public sector jobs (T&A, June 16).

These two events became one on Friday evening when BBC-TV's Look North co-presenter Christa Ackroyd looked for someone to blame for the flooding across Yorkshire.

She chose the Environment Agency, whose spokeswoman patiently explained that their responsibility was only for rivers, whereas most of the damage was caused by huge amounts of surface water which overwhelmed the drainage system.

Ms Ackroyd had obviously missed her target, but, still hoping to expose government incompetence, demanded to know why householders were not warned.

She was told that those known to be at risk from overflowing rivers were telephoned, which left Christa illogically wondering why the scheme did not cover all five million people in the county.

The exchange neatly illustrated the fallacy of Mr Bird's claim that the public service is a waste of taxpayers money because, when disaster strikes, everyone expects the authorities' to have the manpower and the equipment immediately available to deal with what, in previous generations, would be treated as an Act of God.

Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley