Stan The Man wrote:

[...perfectly sound stuff snipped for space...]

b) the water shortage is much more to do with John Prescott's new house
building agenda (coupled with insufficient reservoirs) - and supply
pipe leaks - than it has to do with gardening (or rainfall - which
statistics have been much distorted by the Environment Agency to suit
the Govt's agenda)

So gardeners and their hosepipes are the sacrificial lambs to a much
bigger God: the need to build tens of thousands of new homes in the
south east, many of them for immigrants, without having the water
supply infrastructure in place to support them.

The lack of water infrastructure to support new house building won't go
away unless the water companies can be forced to build new reservoirs -
and they take 20 years to make. So even if we suffer months of
flooding, the Govt still wants us to use less water so that they can
give our 'donations' to the new housing estates. Hence, no publicity
when hosepipe bans are lifted.

Fortunately, the advance of water metering presents the water compnaies
with a dichotomy. If we are brainwashed into using less water, the
water industry gets less revenue from metered properties.[...]

Well, yes of course to all of the above.

But we do _need_ the houses, and they do have to be _somewhere_. It's
actually not an easy trick for a government to get long-term employment
into areas where there are a lot of old houses which could be
refurbished or replaced or infilled. Somebody has to be the Minister of
housing: we can't blame Prescott for people wanting a place to live.

Yes, the reservoirs are insufficient; but they have to be somewhere,
too. Whose farmland and villages and which bits of national parks are
we going to flood? When we've decided that, how much are we prepared to
pay for it?

Yes, the leakages are a scandal. I dare say that those who (both
myopically and understandably) voted for governments which attacked
council powers may be partly to blame for the lack of infrastructure
spending. Yes, it's obvious that turning over the supplies to private
profit instead of public welfare was moronic if not quasi-corrupt. But
it's a fact that these transmission losses are actually happening.

There should of course be a national water grid (and I suppose the
existing canals could be its backbone -- I don't know). But there
isn't.

So there really is a water shortage in some heavily populated areas,
and house-building will indeed exacerbate it. The Kennet really has run
dry. We do flush the loo with drinking water; people do let rain run
off the roof into the drains without using it first; they really do use
a gallon or two of water to clean their teeth; etc. Building practices
are clearly inadequate. Industry's nowhere near as wasteful as it used
to be, but I'm sure it could do better still.

If it takes a piece of spin like rumours of hosepipe bans to get people
thinking about water, and even saving a bit, then maybe it's not
entirely a bad thing.

--
Mike.