Flooding (West Cumbria)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In a sense, the media were with us for the floods, but during the terrible incident of the shootings—we have spoken about this in other debates—elements of the media behaved deplorably, offering people money and so on, so that within days the vast majority of people in west Cumbria wanted them to leave them alone. I have said that the floods rose to nine feet. I talked about sheep and cows going down the river, but there were also containers—think of the size of a container on the back of a lorry—Ford Transit vans and people's garden sheds swept down. It was incredible. Much of the focus was on Cockermouth, where businesses were devastated and the flooding was horrendous, but I also want to mention Hall Park View, which is in Workington. It was completely flooded—every house under several feet of water. People there felt that the focus was not on them because Hall Park View is just a single street, but they suffered equally. They got a little angry sometimes, and I can understand that. However, I was speaking to a resident from Hall Park View whose house had been flooded by several feet of water and I asked her, ““How are things?”” She said, ““Well, Tony, there are people much worse off than us.”” I thought that that summed up the spirit.