Every summer Britain stages the same piece of absurd theatre.
The sun shines for ten consecutive days, the television dutifully finds the most half-empty, mud-spattered reservoir in England, and solemn experts warn that the nation stands on the brink of hydrological Armageddon because someone in Surrey had the audacity to water a geranium.
Outcome, the hosepipe bans, accompanied by the annual sermon that we must all ‘do our bit’.
Apparently western civilisation now hangs by a thread, depending on whether I wash the car or revive a lawn that’s beginning to resemble a cricket wicket in the Kalahari.
HORTICULTURAL PUBLIC ENEMY
The enforcement zealots emerge with drones, cameras, and righteous indignation, hunting the horticultural equivalent of public enemy number one, the man who dares water his roses while pretending Britain has somehow become the Sahara.
Forgive me if I’m less than convinced.
The real problem isn’t that Britain has suddenly run out of water. It’s that we’ve spent decades failing to build the infrastructure to collect it, store it and move it around the country. We’re only now discussing the first major reservoir in around thirty years.
That isn’t an environmental crisis, it’s a managerial disgrace.
NOBODY BANNED KETTLES
It reminds me of Britain’s electricity shortages in the 1960s and 70s. Whenever Miss World, the FA Cup Final or a Coronation Street cliffhanger ended, millions of viewers put the kettle on at exactly the same moment. Local substations groaned, lights dimmed, and the system struggled.
Nobody concluded Britain had run out of electricity. Nobody proposed banning kettles.
We strengthened the National Grid, improved distribution, and built a network capable of moving electricity from where it was plentiful to where it was needed.
Remarkably, common sense prevailed.
Water deserves precisely the same treatment. Build more reservoirs. Create a genuine National Water Grid. Connect the regions properly, move water across the country, repair leaking pipes and stop pretending geography is some insurmountable engineering problem.
REAL VILLAIN, THE PENSIONER
Instead, we’re invited to believe that the real villain is the pensioner watering his roses while billions of litres vanish daily through crumbling infrastructure.
It’s the classic British solution: don’t fix the system, blame the customer.
What makes it even more irritating is the sanctimonious tone. Water companies and councils wrap themselves in environmental virtue, as though this is chiefly about personal morality.
Of course, nobody advocates wasting water. We should all use it sensibly. But nobody expects motorists to abandon their cars because the Government forgot to repair the roads.
Conservation is admirable, chronic underinvestment is not.
DECADES OF NEGLECT
If your network cannot survive a fortnight of warm weather in a country that practically invented rain, perhaps the problem isn’t the climate. Perhaps it’s the network, and decades of negligent under capitalisation.
So, let’s stop pretending hosepipe bans are badges of environmental virtue. They are not evidence of ecological responsibility; they are evidence of infrastructural incompetence.
They’re the hydraulic equivalent of handing everyone a mop while refusing to repair the burst pipe.
NO NEED FOR LECTURES
Britain doesn’t need another annual lecture about using less water. It needs politicians and water companies to stop confusing rationing with planning, guilt with engineering and public relations with infrastructure.
Until then, spare me the sermons, and pass me the hose, I’ve got some serious watering to do in the garden.
Oh, and by the way, my flourishing Gladioli’s will never be responsible for thirty years of managerial neglect.
