© PA
Cracked: the country’s water problems are derived from the failure to fix leaks and increase reservoir capacity
Cracked: the country’s water problems are derived from the failure to fix leaks and increase reservoir capacity
When I returned last week to a grey, cold, rainswept Heathrow, after a brief visit to Australia on rather sad family business, I naturally wanted to know what had been going on while I was away. It hardly said much for our democracy that Boris Johnson should have owed his "triumphant" re-election as Mayor to the support of just 16.8 per cent of those Londoners eligible to vote - while Labour owed its "victory" in council elections to just 12 per cent of the potential voters. The Greek and French election results heralded another sharp downward lurch in the slow-motion collapse of the euro. The prospect of Britain's lights going out moved nearer with the pulling out of France's state-owned EDF as the last company that might have provided us with new nuclear power stations, while the Environment Agency's Chris Smith announced that Britain may be hoping for a glut of cheap gas from "fracking" shale, but that this could be allowed to generate electricity only on condition that all the resulting CO₂ is buried in holes in the ground, by a wishful-thinking technology that would double its price and is unlikely ever to work anyway.
As big a story as any, however, was the ongoing drama of our "wettest-ever drought" as, despite record recent rainfall, we are told that hosepipe bans are still unlikely to be lifted because we don't have enough water to go round. And here, it turns out, there is a startling twist to the tale.
Comment: When essential utilities are under the control of private interests then methods of increasing prices become inevitable.