As with most British summers, the inevitable pandemonium and clambering over each other just to absorb the last rays of sunshine in the one bright sunny week usually in a June or a July begins is dashed by some cheery fucker ruining it for everyone, every year. Yes, in the South of England we have the inevitable hosepipe ban. For those of you who don’t live in the radius of Southern Water and their associate knuckleheads, every year around about this time they will announce the banning of anybody using a hosepipe for either cleaning their car or watering their garden plants is strictly forbidden. Similarly there are ridiculous restrictions on bath and shower usage. While it is the water companies desire to restore the South of England to a similar state as it was in Medieval England circa William the Conqueror, I would like to ask…

In a country completely surrounded by water, how the f**k can there be any kind of water shortage??

Desalination Plants is an obvious answer but as usual this country robs us of taxes and squanders it on pointless endeavours, such as people who don’t want to work, or a war we have absolutely no place occupying still. The act of extracting salt and other impurities from water really isn’t that complicated, unless you’re unfamiliar with the concept of boiling and condensation. If neither of these are a familiar concept to you then I can only imagine the blind panic if you made a cup of tea. I shouldn’t imagine that having plants to distribute boiled water which has condensed and therefore pure in chemical structure to be such a bind. I mean come on if Bear Grylls can drink his own piss then this is not exactly hard to drink desalinated water. For a start unlike most other European countries we over here don’t have to be surgically attached to bottled water, like in Malta for example as water bourne diseases such as typhoid and cholera are not ubiqitous in our water supply either.

Standpipes: the water companies Victorian threat to try and butter their stupid hosepipe ban

But lets look at the the stupid water companies though, because of them they’ve created this media panic. They lose billions upon billions of gallons per annum by not fixing unnecessary leaks but instead going on the news moaning about how low the reservoirs are. Cause and effect? I think so. Instead of addressing the issue of the leakages and the total LACK of contingency for this situation, they’ll start to do the usual media frenzy by even mentioning the summer of 1976 and the fact that people had to use stand pipes. Straight away anybody contemporary to that time will reminisce of the times queueing in the street for water, completely ignoring the fact that we live in an age of better technology and contingency, although the water companies are doing an utterly crap job of this.

We also have had about 2 days of sunshine in the last month when they announced that they were enforcing a hosepipe ban. I kid you not. It has rained and rained and when it hasn’t it’s been hailstones. Don’t give me due to lack of rainfall the reservoirs have dried up because I’m pretty sure that it does actually on reservoirs. Similarly driving to work through overflowing drains does little to convince me there is a problem. But what would they rather have? More flooding? Back in 2008 areas like Hull, Tewksbury and Thatcham were largely underwater in parts as rivers burst their banks and drains ended up flowing upwards. Is that the only scenario whereby there is sufficient water in the water table? People being evacuated from their uninhabitable houses?

For me the water companies are just making excuses for charging people full whack for a service which frankly they are holding the general public responsible for their lack of foresight and pragmatic approach to providing their service. If they fixed half the leaks in their system and actually planned ahead more than 2 weeks rather than blaming the weather and wishing for flooding, then we would have more of a consensus. But instead they sit on their arses squandering the high fees they charge then have to audacity to scare everyone senseless with Victorian threats and then blame it all on the weather. Disgraceful.