The drought rhetoric is for us all to ‘do our bit’ with the blame being, predictably, laid at the door of ‘extreme weather’, aka ‘summer’ and ‘unprecedented demand’ for water, as if the planners couldn’t possibly predict that water demand rises in warmer climes.
The effect is an unenforceable hosepipe ban, but the cause is misleading.
Of course, it’s nothing to do with supply and demand, with millions more people on UK shores since Blair took office in 1997.
Also, I’m sure it also has nothing to do with the fact that the UK last built a new reservoir, to cope with the increased demand (see above) in 1992.
The unprecedented demand also has little to do with the poor management of the water companies, for whom the executives are paid a pretty penny, or the estimated 2.9 billion litres lost daily through leaks.
This 2.9 billion figure equates to 20% of all the treated drinking water in supply.
Now imagine if this was your car: If you didn’t change the oil in over 30 years you’d have problems.
If it lost 20% of the oil daily, you’d spend an exponential amount topping up the oil just to run to stand still.
Now as an analogy, admittedly that is poor, but all such bans do is either make miserable moaners like me rail against the system - the man, as they mislead us once again as to the true cause of their edicts or, as has become prevalent in recent years, make you compliant as you blindly adhere to the state demands thrust upon us.
I have even seen posts where water companies, to save facing up to their shocking lack of investment, appalling management and huge levels of avoidable wastage, urge people to ‘grass’ on Dorothy at number 82, as she sneaks into her back garden at night to ensure the hydrangeas she has lovingly cultivated for months are not lost for ever by some demanding Government mandarin.
This action is indicative of the compliance of the British people.
We really need to be challenging and making them accountable at every turn and not looking for the easiest target to blame for their utter incompetence.
There comes a time when people have enough of this state-led nonsense and, as you can tell, my time is nigh, as I sit here contemplating giving the Mountain bike a midnight hosepipe deep clean as I wage a one-man war against ‘the man’….
Brett Ellis is a teacher.
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