Global warming, it seems, may well deliver more wet summers to Britain. While the rest of the world gets hotter, we could be stuck with a monsoon.

On the other hand, recent soggy summers may just have been random events caused by an errant jet stream.

Whichever is the case, householders affected by the flooding now find themselves the pawns in a battle between the Government and the insurance industry.

The Government seems determined to go against all advice and continue to sanction building homes on flood plains.

Householders of the flooding now find themselves the pawns in a battle between the Government and the insurance industry

The insurance industry, justifiably, does not see why it should be made to foot the bill for this madness.

So homeowners are caught in the middle. While the industry has, in general, done a great job in sorting out the mess caused by last year's floods, homeowners face rising premiums.

More worryingly, insurers are raising the excess for flood damage (that is the first part of any claim a householder must cover themselves) to jaw-droppingly high levels.

With more flooding expected, some homeowners find themselves, to all intents and purposes, uninsured.

The homes affected are not just new ones built on flood plains. Areas not previously prone to flooding are at risk because our ageing drains cannot cope with the downpours.

And we have not helped ourselves by paving over front gardens  -  a change which puts still more pressure on the drains, because rain water has nowhere else to go.

This is a tricky problem. Insurance is about spreading risk and insurers are commercial organisations.

If they were to offer full cover against a near certain event they would go bust and no one would benefit.

It may be that the Government and the industry will be forced to create an insurer of last resort for those homeowners most at risk of flood damage.

That may not be ideal, but the alternative of leaving people in homes that could become uninsurable and unsaleable is, surely, unthinkable.

Dirty tricks of investment industry rob women of their full pensions

Victims of ruthless selling: the small print in many women's pension plans are cutting their pensions

The investment industry is capable of some dirty tricks. So perhaps we should not be surprised that women were sold pensions that would not mature until they are 65.

Consider this. These pensions were sold long before there was any talk of raising the retirement age.

So NPI, and other insurers involved, designed and sold these products in the full knowledge that the women who bought them would be faced with bridging a five-year gap between retirement and receiving their pension.

To discover that her retirement age was 65, the woman we feature (Page 49) would have had to dig deeply into the small print because the indications were that she could retire at 60.

So with all her plans made, she suddenly discovered that taking her pension at 60 would leave her facing a stiff financial penalty.

Naturally, charges and commission are at the root of it all. The later a person's retirement date, the greater the commission and the longer the insurance company has to recover that commission through charging the investor.

Insurance-based investments such as these were built around a simple model  -  how to extract the maximum from the investor without them noticing until it was too late to do anything about it.

Products sold today are generally cleaner  -  but that will not prevent more stinkers such as this coming out of the woodwork.

Nationwide's take-over operation serves as a lesson to the banking industry

Minimal fuss: Nationwide's take-over operation saved savers strife

This time last year, panic reigned on the high streets of North-East England as savers queued to pull their money out of Northern Rock.

Any hopes of a private sector rescue were bungled by the Government, regulators and the bank itself.

A potential takeover by Lloyds TSB was scuppered before it got off the ground, and taxpayers were lumbered with the liabilities.

Compare this with the Nationwide's takeover of Derbyshire and Cheshire building societies, which has been conducted with minimal fuss and without worries for savers.

Unusually for this type of takeover both Derbyshire and Cheshire will retain their names and the range of savings accounts will remain unchanged.

Borrowers on the standard variable rate will move on to Nationwide's lower base mortgage rate.

This is a lesson to the banking industry and to the Government on how difficulties could and should be handled. It has cost the taxpayer nothing and there are no queues of panicking savers.

It is also a lesson to building societies in the folly of dipping their toes into unfamiliar waters.

Derbyshire came unstuck on sub-prime lending while Cheshire, for reasons only its executives will understand, decided to dabble in commercial property lending.

Other building societies have also been involved in sub-prime, often through commercial subsidiaries.

Although their follies are on nothing like the scale of the banking sector, these societies have learned that he who chases the easy money will surely come unstuck in the end.