Lizzie: of course you are right about the floods being important. No-one denies that here, as far as I am aware. But in other contexts you have strongly expressed yourself about the quality of education. The government - of all shades - has stressed the importance of literacy. So how does daily exposure to evidence that big companies, journalists and so on do not seem to care help that? And it goes further than that, because it says something to the child about what their teachers claim to be important and what the world regards as important.

There are different timescales for things being important. The floods are important in the here-and-now, and in the mid term for things like building flood defences. Literacy is important long term. The one does not deny the other.