Water covers 71% of the planet. The UK gets plenty of rain most of the time, and has still been getting plenty of rain in the North whilst the south is dry. We had a wet winter and watched as the authorities allowed billions of gallons to rush to the seas without storing enough of it in case the summer was as dry as 1976 or 1995.
Worse still the population of the UK has grown by 4 million over the last ten years, mainly migrants needing homes and a water supply. The highly regulated monopoly regional companies did not put in new reservoirs to meet this extra demand. The Regulator did not want the extra cost on bills. In my area the necessary plan to build a large new reservoir at Abingdon to handle all the additional demand and new homes was foolishly delayed.
The Havant new reservoir was underway when Labour took over. The government is now taking a leisurely look at another nine projects. Abingdon is back on the list, with an application expected later this year. It is thought it will be well into 2028 before permission is granted to start work.Some think it might complete around 2040.
There needs to be a much greater sense of urgency. Labour promised to speed up the building of infrastructure. More reservoirs, bigger pipes and additional dirty water treatment works are much needed.Why the delay? Why lecture people on using less water when there is so much of it, and you do not destroy it by using it? Why think this is about the climate when it is mainly about population growth and about an inadequate and ageing infrastructure that needs modernising.
August 7, 2026
There needs to be a much greater sense of urgency. Labour promised to speed up the building of infrastructure. More reservoirs, bigger pipes and additional dirty water treatment works
This was also the tories reasoning for selling off the water companies, I remember well all these water companies saying the money they get for selling off water companies would be piled back into the infrastructure but NO the money they made out of us then and now goes straight to the shareholders pockets so stop taking us for mugs and build more efficient pipe work more reservoirs and if possible desalination plants around the U.K.
Reply Raising private capital was not the problem. Nationalised water was starved of capital as it all counted as public spending. The problem is the Regulator refusing new reservoirs and treatment works to keep bills down.
August 7, 2026
As usual our archaic planning laws discourage new infrastructure plus of course having water shortages feeds the global warming narrative.
Planning for HMOs and change of use for barracks doesn’t suffer the same delays, I wonder why that is.
We’re told there’s been a dramatic rise in wild fires when most are arson and made worse by poor land management due to rewilding. For centuries farmers have been managing the land to promote growth aswell as dredging ditches until the government got in the way.
Everything the uniparty has done this past 30 years, be it electricity, water sewage or land management has been to the detriment if the individual and people are thoroughly sick of it.
August 7, 2026
Good morning my Lord.
I could never understand, having been forced onto a water meter because our area has limited water, why they gave permission to builds thousands of new homes in our area.
Something to think about… The average person is seventy percent water or every ten stone person contains seven stones of water. With the population increasing, more and more water is tied up in the newcomers.
August 7, 2026
AI tells me ‘Building a typical brick, block, and concrete house requires about 4,000 gallons (roughly 18,000 litres) of “embedded” or operational water built directly into the structure (such as in concrete foundations, mortar, and plaster), plus extra water used on-site for mixing and dust control.’
The Labour government pledged to build 1.5 million new homes over five years (an average of 300,000 annually) by the 2029 general election.
August 7, 2026
Good morning
Does anyone in this country know what they are doing ? The Chinese government is stacked with engineers and professionals. People who can understand a problem and come to solutions to fix it. We’ve got people whose only skill is the ability to talk a good game.
What are the problems and what are the solutions ? If the problem is some law, then change the law. If the problem is some company that just gouges the consumer, threaten them with Nationalisation.
You are Parliament. You are supposed to be sovereign. Act like it !
Reply Nationalised water was worse.
August 7, 2026
“Does anyone in this country know what they are doing ? The Chinese government is stacked with engineers and professionals. People who can understand a problem and come to solutions to fix it.”
Well not many and those that do are rarely in government or in power. Witness the coerced net harm Covid Vaccines, the lockdowns, HS2, energy policy and May’s net zero (nodded through without even any vote).
Parliament is stuffed with PPE, English, Law, Classics, Politics… graduates who in general have zero grasp of energy, logic, maths, transport, engineering or real economics.
So Kemi in an article about Rod Little in the Spectator says she is against cancel culture – so is she going to offer Andrew Bridgen the Tory Whip back which was removed by Sunak for his crime of telling inconvenient truths about the Covid “Vaccines”. Today she says she will kick immigrants out of Social Housing but how can she and the party ever be trusted again?
The best thing to do with social housing is to charge the market rate to all with those who need help with rent getting it. Why should two people earning the same have hugely different disposable incomes simply because one has subsidised house and one does not. Also why would they ever move out of this less than half price house or flat?
August 7, 2026
Well there has not been enough investment in storage, processing, treatment plants… due mainly to very poor regulators, regulation and planners.
In the short terms it is this easier to blame it on “climate change” and have hose pipe bans.
I am no fan of ex London Mayor Ken Livingstone. But I remembered him urging Londoners to save water by not flushing the toilet after urinating, publicly aligning himself with the “environmental” maxim, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down”.
This does actually safe a lot of water (and money) or perhaps better just using grey water for flushing. But in such a wet country more water storage or fewer people is perhaps better. No need for desalination in the wet UK. Desalination it is very energy intensive and our energy is a rip off due to the Ed and Theresa May’s deluded CO2 devil gas religion. Warmer air actually usually delivers more rain precipitation and not less.
August 7, 2026
Broken Britain again.
We hear of rail passengers facing major delays today because of a power outage, it’s all part of the same problem. This has not appeared suddenly under a Labour government either.
‘The Regulator’ is blamed. When has a regulator ever fixed anything. Why do we even have them?
I expect this will turn into another privatisation/nationalisation discussion. It’s more a case of JFDI.
August 7, 2026
Here’s the thing – mention is made of the ‘authorities’ allowing billions of gallons to rush to the sea then we read how the ‘regulator’ did not want the extra cost on bills and as we see the Labour Government is now slowing everything up – but somebody has to be in charge some single office has to bear responsibity because what we have is a charter for finger pointing.
August 7, 2026
Depending on how you define QUANGO (Quasi Autonomous Non Government Organisations) there are 603 of them. Calling them Non-Departmental Public Bodies, stripping away core non-ministerial departments to focus purely on independent boards, tribunals, and regulators yields an exact count of 438 quangos.
These bodies are responsible for ~£391 billion in annual expenditure (representing roughly 32% of all state spending) and collectively they employ employ about 500,000 staff members. Not to mention their non-contributory, index linked final salary pensions. Nice work if you can get it. Jobs for the old boys and girls!
The Labour government has proposed or established 22 new public bodies—such as Great British Energy, the National Wealth Fund, and Skills England. Following a cross-government audit initiated by Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden, the administration has begun restructuring these numbers, most notably executing plans to abolish and absorb NHS England – the UK’s largest single quango – directly back into the Department of Health and Social Care to cut duplication and the severe administration costs
NHS England was costing us ~£175 billion a year. The Education and Skills Funding Agency is spending ~£73 billion and HMRC is costing us ~£41 billion. Huge sums
If Healey wants to save money for defence or other of Burnham’s priorities, QUANGO’s are the place to start
August 7, 2026
+1
August 7, 2026
Abingdon Reservoir has been on the cards for the last 30 years, but like so many other projects all past plans have been rejected after opposition.
Time we learnt in this country that if compulsory purchase is necessary, then we compensate people well and properly at the outset, by paying them at least 50% more than the market value of their home or business, at the moment it ends up costing many, many times more than that with delay, after delay, after delay.
Other Countries seem to be able to get on with huge infrastructure projects rapidly without the sort of delays we have or experience, especially when frogs, newts, or bats are concerned.
August 7, 2026
Worse still, due to the rollout of the governments new compulsory rubbish collection system we will all be using more water simply to comply with the extravagant rules or risk paying a hefty fine.
Apart from the organic waste containers that need a regular washing, we are told that cans and plastic containers must be washed or the rubbish bin for renewables will be rejected.
Socialists love arbitrary rules and I can’t blame the local council for doing what HMG demands, but it is most likely that residues of food will remain in these washed cans and plastic containers – so if the system can work with that why do we need to wash them?
The point is that we are all going to waste an excessive amount of water just complying with unnecessary bureaucratic commands, and this at a time of drought!
August 7, 2026
I came home from a short break yesterday to find an e-mail invite from South-East water, asking me to tell them what I think should be done to help the water situation in and around Kent.
I told them pretty much what you have just told us Lord JR.
Why do I think they’ll ignore my thoughts and indeed the thoughts of all that responded to their invite……
Reply I also responded to their enquiries which were embedded in thinking against simply supplying more water from more reservoirs!