While you are statistically more likely to be flooded than burgled, public awareness of the risks posed by surface water flooding, and what we need to do to mitigate it, remains alarmingly low. That is why I was particularly grateful to see Francesca Perry’s article on “sponge tactics” featured on the front page of House & Home (September 21).

As Perry notes, comprehensive flood resilience strategies are rarely co-ordinated across entire cities. This is especially evident in London, where responsibility for managing surface water flood risks is fragmented across more than 30 different organisations.

The London Surface Water Strategic Group has estimated that London requires the equivalent of 10,000 football pitches-worth of spongy Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) like those mentioned in the article to begin mitigating this threat. However, delivering such a large-scale solution will only be possible through co-ordinated, strategic action by all relevant authorities.

Elizabeth Rapoport
Chair, London Surface Water Strategic Group, London E17, UK

To characterise Israel’s current activities in Lebanon as lacking strategy is premature, and probably inaccurate (FT View, October 1). On the contrary, it is arguably the first instance of a protagonist in the current conflict demonstrating strategic coherence.

Similarly inaccurate is the description of the conflict as a “cycle”. Terms such as “cycle of violence” have had some relevance for Israeli-Palestinian clashes over recent decades, but the current conflict is primarily one between major states, namely Israel and Iran (the latter having quasi-state allies or proxies).

Such actors do not engage in cyclical violence and fated escalation; their behaviour is considered, and influenced by perception of essential national interests. It is possible that the latter will cause Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear energy facilities in due course. If that were to happen, it would be a result of sufficient strategy, not a lack thereof; and it would follow a logical path — the same path that determines its current action against Hizbollah.

Deri Hughes
London E15, UK

Two FT reports on successive days earlier this month accurately captured the essential features of India’s economic growth path: abysmal jobs growth and skyrocketing income and wealth inequality.

In the early 1980s, India’s economy moved into an unmistakably higher growth path, compared to the previous three decades after gaining independence from Britain. According to data available in the Ministry of Finance’s most recent economic survey, between 1950 and 1979 India’s real gross value added at basic prices grew at an average 3.4 per cent per year; from 1980 to 2022, it grew at an average 5.8 per cent per year.

This significant growth acceleration has disproportionately benefited the rich and wealthy because the economy has been unable to generate an adequate number of good quality jobs for India’s growing labour force.

Therefore, economic growth over the last four decades in India has largely bypassed the vast majority of working people. This pattern continues even today, as highlighted in the FT report “India jobs dearth mars Modi’s third term” (Report, October 3).

The top sliver of India’s income and wealth distribution has of course never had it so good, as evidenced by their voracious appetite for luxury consumption, including Swiss watches (“India becomes hot ticket for Swiss watchmakers”, Special Reports, Watches & Jewellery, October 4).

Deepankar Basu
Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, US

Unlock the US Election Countdown newsletter for free

The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House

Joe Biden on Wednesday pressed Benjamin Netanyahu to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Lebanon and minimise civilian casualties in Israel’s strikes against Hizbollah, even though previous calls for restraint from the US have fallen flat.

The US president and the Israeli prime minister spoke by phone for the first time in two months after a new flare-up in tensions between the two allies compounded by miscommunication over Israel’s approach to expanding conflict in the Middle East.

The conversation, which was described as “direct” and “productive” by the White House, came as US officials try to limit Israel’s response to last week’s Iranian missile attack on the country and rein in its ground offensive in the south of Lebanon.

However, there are widespread doubts over Biden’s influence over Netanyahu after the Israeli prime minister has time and again ignored Washington’s pleas for more limited military operations and increased diplomatic engagement since the war in Gaza broke out in October 2023.

Those concerns have grown more acute in recent weeks, as Israel’s military has sharply increased its attacks on Hizbollah, the Iranian proxy group operating in Lebanon, directly defying Biden’s calls for a ceasefire in the region at the UN General Assembly in New York last month.

According to the White House, Biden did not call for Israel to stop all military operations in Lebanon in his conversation with Netanyahu on Wednesday.

But he did tell the prime minister that a “diplomatic arrangement” was needed for Lebanese and Israeli civilians to return to their homes on both sides of the “blue line” — the de facto border between the countries. He also called for Israel “to minimise harm to civilians” in Lebanon, especially in the capital, Beirut.

The White House did not say whether the two leaders discussed Israel’s looming response to Iran, though the US president has warned the Israelis away from striking nuclear facilities and energy infrastructure.

But while Biden and other top US officials have repeatedly been irked and even angered by Netanyahu’s unwillingness to heed their advice, they have been unwilling to make any big changes in US policy to raise the pressure on Israel — such as an arms embargo.

“Biden has been unwilling to use his leverage over Netanyahu because of the president’s persona, policy and domestic politics, especially so close to one of the most consequential elections in modern American history,” said Aaron David Miller, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Biden’s margin for pressuring Netanyahu contracted, [while] Netanyahu’s margin for resisting that pressure expanded,” he added.

In recent weeks, US officials have acknowledged that Israel has made what they see as tactical gains against Hizbollah in Lebanon after it killed Hassan Nasrallah, its leader, and damaged much of the group’s capacity to strike at Israel.

But Washington has also warned Israel against overplaying its hand, insisting there should be a path back to a truce.

When Netanyahu on Tuesday warned the Lebanese people in a video address to root out Hizbollah or face similar destruction to what Israel inflicted on Gaza, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, responded: “We cannot and will not see Lebanon turn into Gaza — into another Gaza.”

Other US officials have said Israel needs to develop a better long-term vision for its place in the Middle East.

“The challenge going forward is to turn tactical wins in battle into a strategy that secures Israel’s people and its future,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said at an event at the Israeli embassy in Washington this week.

“That takes real discipline, it takes courage, it takes foresight to match the conduct of war to a clear and sustainable set of objectives. That is never easy, but it’s imperative,” he added.

But many in Washington say US diplomacy towards Israel has floundered. “US policy has been trying to both deter and de-escalate at the same time, and realistically speaking, you can most effectively do one or the other, but trying to do both seems to have limited effects in both directions,” said Jonathan Lord, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security.

Sam Read/BBC

Instagram

Instagram

‘Embarrassed and ashamed’

instagram

‘Let down’

‘Controls in place’

Sam Read/BBC

‘Don’t be rushed’