Flood risk alamists

This is another story that has got the great and the good of Radio 4 bleating again this morning (you can tell I'm stuck in the car for 90 minutes!):

Hundreds of thousands of homes could be uninsurable and uninhabitable unless stricter planning controls are introduced, insurers have warned.
The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said a third of the three million new homes the government wants to see by 2020 will be built on flood plains.

OK, so we are going to build on a flood plain, nothing new there London is a flood plain and we have been building on it for over 1000 years. But that's not the point I want to raise, it is the way that it is being reported:

He said: "Insurers want to continue to provide flood cover, but poor planning decisions will lead to more homes becoming unsaleable, uninsurable and uninhabitable."

There's 2 points here, the first being that this looks like another company trying to get the Government to take on its risk. The second is the words used. Taking them out of order:

Uninsurable - As far as I am aware this is a commercial undertaking based on the levels of risk. I'll bet insurance would be available, whether the price makes it worth taking is another point

Unsaleable - Everything can be sold. Maybe the builders and/or owners won't make the killing they expected, but that is a different discussion

Uninhabitable - I'll bet those living in the slums of our cities would beg to differ.

I do wish the so called serious press would keep a sense of proportion!

Panaroma "misleading" on WiFi

I suppose I should own up to being in the radio telecoms business so do have a vested interest in this story, not least because I am working on a major WiFi and WiMAX project. Anyway, confession over.

As reported on The Reg today

The BBC has admitted that the infamous Panorama programme in which Beeb investigators boosted public hysteria regarding health dangers around Wi-Fi in schools was "misleading".

Adding insult to injury, the WiFi-is-probably-OK-actually savant, Professor Michael Repacholi, "was presented in a context which suggested to viewers that his scientific independence was in question, whereas the other scientists were presented uncritically. This reinforced the misleading impression, and was unfair."

Does this remind you of any other topical subject? Global Warming, perhaps?