The hosepipe bans in the UK have started again. Yes the inhabitants of this great and green Albion, world famous for its inclement weather, will have to use buckets to wash their cars. Perhaps the people, struggling under the weight of their two-gallon pails, will pause to breathe and ask why ?
Why is it that the Thames Water system needs only 1.2 Billion quid of investment over 10 years (120 Million per annum perhaps) to have prevented this ban by repairing water pipes to prevent losses and this is seen as a problem ?.
Every year London contributes about 400 Billion quid to the UK GDP, every year tourists spend 15 billion pounds in London, you could go on and on pulling statistics out of your butt about London and yet the Government apparently doesn’t view water as a resource that needs defending even though it is as essential to the survival of the UK as any peace-keeping force.
I’m not going to blame the water companies – they are a business and it is only fair that they can operate as a business albeit with a natural monopoly. No, the fault for this lies solely with the government.
UK Defense spending is 33.8 Billion pounds per annum and Civil Defense is an extra 0.1 Billion. In GDP percentage terms that isn’t that high (unlike Greece who has Europe’s highest per-GDP defense spend, or the USA who basically is on a war-command economy footing), but this asymmetry of spending needs to be questioned if we can’t find the money to defend the lifeblood of a nation – its water. The world has changed; the Europeans, who we are, and who we have fought against, and with, for the past 2000 years (arguably since Gaius Julius Caesar paved a way from Rome) now hurl tourists against the White Cliffs and we rally our cuisine, our British wit and our weather against them. Equally we invade them, and in vast hordes we inflict on our historical enemies our sense of justice, our legal system and our English language.
Isn’t it time we stopped tilting at Windmills ? We can heal this fair land for a few pennies in the pound.