SIR – A few days ago, the T&A’s main headline was about the plight of families in Bradford who found themselves in difficulties after the Government’s benefit cap came into effect.

On the same day, the front page of a national newspaper was reporting the problems of flood-affected families in Somerset who felt abandoned by the Government.

I was brought up in a family where my father was in full-time work but which could not have survived without taxpayer-funded handouts. These days we would probably have been stigmatised as scroungers.

Flood victims and their supporters in the Tory-dominated press have generated a head of self-righteous steam, castigating the Government for its failure to pay for proper defenses.

In both cases, it will be the taxes of hardworking families not directly affected who are footing the bill, but whereas the impoverished families in Bradford are mostly on benefit through no fault of their own, those people in Somerset have only themselves to blame for choosing to live below sea level on land which is almost impossible to drain properly.

It makes you think, doesn’t it?

Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley