Time after time the Environment Agency has said that the town is protected from a one-in-200 year storm event but this is absolute nonsense.

There are areas alongside Wootton Brook and Dallington Brook that would not stand up to a one-in-10 year event.

With regard to the latest scare at Upton two weeks ago when floodwater overtopped the defences, I went to the area on the following day and have to say I was not surprised at what had happened.

Prior to the building of this new site I said to a member of the English Partnerships team that they would be building on an area liable to flood. The gentleman turned to me and said: "I am an engineer and I know what I am doing."

Very obviously he did not know what he was doing.

I asked all members, at that time, of the Upton Parish Council, if they remembered the area being under water during the floods of 1998 and they all confirmed that they did, also the flood map of 1947 clearly shows that the area is liable to flood.

Perhaps it is not surprising that it is proving difficult to sell the houses.

I have a letter from the chief solicitor of the Environment Agency to say that building should always be above the highest known floodline but, as it says in your editorial, "Planners should make sure that new estates are well away from water courses and that profits for developers are not put before common sense".

People like English Partnerships and the Environment Agency must listen to local opinion and consider local knowledge.

As the county councillor for the West Hunsbury Ward I am very concerned about the proposed additional building at Wootton and the 2,000 houses proposed for the Collingtree Golf Course, because surface water from both of these developments will go into the Wootton Brook which is already overloaded during and after rainstorms.

This brook enters the River Nene just above the Upton Way bridge and the water will join other flood waters from Kislingbury and above eventually trying to get under South Bridge.

It will not succeed in doing this because the river under the bridge has not been properly dredged for over 50 years.

The Environment Agency said in 1999 that the rivers and streams would not take any more . . . don't they even listen to themselves?
David Hugheston-Roberts,
Conservative County Councillor, West Hunsbury Ward, Northamptonshire County Council.

Drugs advice from school-leavers
Recently in the news there has been stories about assistants at pharmacies giving dangerous advice to customers. I used to work as a pharmacy assistant in several pharmacies, independent as well as chain-store.

I started training about 10 years ago with a dragon of a pharmacist.

She watched us like a hawk and there was no room for error.

She would listen to what we were saying to the customers and would often intervene if we were unsure about something, especially if it involved elderly people or babies.

I have many years of experience in pharmacy work and have the medicine counter certificates but whenever I apply for a job in one, they don't want to know! It seem they now want to employ school-leavers.

I went into a chemist in the town centre and the assistants, who were all about 16-and-a-half, were standing around giggling and gossiping.

I asked for some Sudocrem (it is good for spots) and she snorted that she had "never heard of it".

She also had no idea what a Newton's Chiropody Sponge was.

The dragon-lady pharmacist made us read the Chemist and Druggist (a pharmacy product directory) every day, order from it, and made sure we all had sound product knowledge, so that if a customer asked for something, we would know what to do.

Some assistants I have come across don't seem to care about the customer, have no product knowledge, but seem to think they know everything.

Are they employing school-leavers because they are cheaper?

Maybe when we women get over the age of 30, we should go to the vet to be put down. After that age, no-one seems to want to employ us.
Margaret Arnold,
Upper Thrift Street, Abington, Northampton.

Helpful human is losing his job
Far from being the party of the working man, New Labour regards human beings as cost heads. This is a ruthless financial concept, very different from the Christian democratic principle of wise stewardship.

This was brought home to me recently when I went to John Dryden House to sort out my daughter's student loan.

As a result of my questioning, I discovered our right-wing Government is transferring everything to Glasgow.

As the assistant agreed, this will only make things harder for new students.

They will be presented with a faceless body interested only in money.

Our problem was that I had missed out one of the boxes.

The faceless bureaucrats simply tried to take my daughter's grant away.

My helpful human face is apparently not "value for money" and is losing his job.

According to Baroness Warnock, elderly people are cost heads and not "value for money". What a Government!
Colin Bricher,
Local Spokesman, Christian Peoples Alliance party, Northampton.

Five top reasons for polls failure
I read with mirth the letter from the leader of the opposition on Northamptonshire County Council (Chronicle & Echo, September 23), Things could be a lot worse.

He can bray as loud as he likes about the achievements of the Labour Party. May I remind him that the current difficulties we are facing in the financial world didn't happen overnight.

My main concern is that he doesn't seem to understand why the Labour Party is down in the opinion polls.

May I enlighten him: 1 immigration, 2 broken promises, 3 surrender to Europe, 4 the destruction of Great Britain and its history, 5 the disgraceful treatment of our police force . . . the list is endless.

The social and moral fibre of this country has been destroyed and our finances could get worse. But does anyone in charge care?
V Graham-Hole,
Elgin Street, St James End, Northampton.

Getting in a state
In reference to the article in Chronicle & Echo, September 29, about the Darwin row at the Park Museum and several previous letters on this subject, it is most strange that in this country today we have no problem with people who spout the fundamentals of socialism, humanism, evolution and just about any and every other philosophy or religion, but the mere mention of fundamental Christianity gets some people worked up into such a state that they try to do everything they can to assassinate such people's character or their intelligence.

They don't think such ideas should be mentioned in public. Is that freedom of speech or a form of censorship?
Mr G R Aitchison,
Harlestone Road, Northampton.