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Is this the wettest drought ever ?

Had to laugh this morning when I hear someone on the radio asking if they would get fined for using a hosepipe to pump out their flooded cellar.

Yeah, we flew in from Turkey last night and all I could see huge, were parched areas of Surrey, from the aircraft and I said to myself, "Damn this drought, if it would only rain!" !laugh!

[img]http://images.inmagine.com/400nwm/image ... 98te1a.jpg[/img]

This is why water should never have been privatised, in the old days it was run by "Blakey" from On The Buses types, who had no other function than to collect and distribute water to the likes of you and I. Now it is run for no other reason than to give shareholders and management scum, big bonuses, we the consumers are of no importance other than cash cows.

Its the wrong sort of rain apparently !wink!

Hasn't stopped raining since they mentioned a drought!

I thought privatisation mean't competition? How many water companies are in each area? One in each!

I realise that this idea has been mentioned by countless people before and dismissed as not practical and/or too expensive.

But if water is truly in such short supply and apparently this will be a more and more common situation, due to climate change, then why on earth can't someone invest in an underground pipeline from Scotland, Wales, Cumbria etc.

I made a flippant remark about this on a previous thread
i.e. putting the HS2 track on a slight slope to the south.

But thinking about it, slightly more seriously....

!idea!

If HS2 is going ahead, then why not bury a pipeline, as the track team travels up the country.
Running along side the track, maybe around 10-20 metres away from the track, to avoid any future pipe collapse/maintenance issues etc.

This would act as the main vein, so to speak, from the succulent North, to the arid south.

That would surely drastically reduce costs and this issue isn't exactly going to go away.

There already is an interconnected system by which surplus water could be moved to areas lacking the wet stuff - the canals. At a fraction of the cost of a 'national-grid' water could be introduced into the canals in the north and, albeit quite slowly so as not to damage the infrastructure, or interfere with other users, it could be moved south down the Grand Union and others. On arrival the water could be purified for use sooner or simply added to the water table for use later.

All great ideas, but that would mean Privatised Water companies spending money and if they did that there would be less profit for their shareholders.

Surely it's better just to ration out their product and keep the profits rolling-in.

Don't you love Thatcher? !swear!

bamboo wrote:


> But if water is truly in such short supply and apparently this
> will be a more and more common situation, due to climate
> change, then why on earth can't someone invest in an
> underground pipeline from Scotland, Wales, Cumbria etc.

Water is very heavy, and to move it by anything other than gravity is very expensive, to the point of being uneconomical for what people are willing to pay for it.

Using the canals would take a long term plan, these utility companies are not interested in long term plans, only short term profit.