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Water Pistols of Mass Destruction

I have never been a big fan of statistics, firstly because it is so easy to manipulate them to support a particular point of view, and secondly because they can be based purely on the results of interviewing a few people in the street. Take the Government's most recent statistics on smoking (source www.statistics.gov.uk ) which claim that 73% of smokers would like to give up. This sounds promising, however the same data could be interpreted to say that one in four smokers has no desire to quit whatsoever, which has quite a different spin.

At the risk of being presumptuous, I imagine these figures resulted from interviews conducted between student paupers and the general public in a particular town centre on a Tuesday afternoon, and so are insignificant anyway. Furthermore, the only people interviewed were too obese to run away from the interviewer, and claimed that the reason they smoke is because it functions as an appetite suppressant, otherwise they would be first in the queue for free (due to long term unemployment) Zyban on the NHS.

Equally, are there times when statistics make sense, for example when analysing financial and mathematical issues. Take the current situation at Thames water, whereby profits are up 31% this year, yet 25% of its customers are facing a drought order, and a hosepipe ban has been in place since April. Ordinarily a business wouldn't be able to offer such a poor level of service to paying customers whilst making a huge profit, however the UK water market is effectively a Monopoly, whereby you cannot switch providers, and as such you either pay up or bathe in the rainwater from your own garden.

Thames Water made a pre-tax profit of £346.5m in the last tax year; a very impressive total, especially when you take into account that the generous salaries and bonuses paid to senior staff have already been deducted from this figure. It is the ultimate aim of every business to make a profit, and of course the bigger the better, but it is ludicrous to think that any company can make such a sizeable sum while failing to actually supply its customers. The company failed to meet its target for reducing leakages for the third year in a row, to the point where it now claims to haemorrhage 894 million litres of water each day, and is thus not even capable of controlling its own stock.

Anybody fortunate enough to own a water company in the UK could feasibly hibernate for the winter months while the rain pours down. They need only wake up in time for the end of the tax year, announce the profits, spout a selection of reasons why they haven't enough water to last the summer months, and then buy shares in a car wash before flying off to the Caribbean to soak up sunshine and Bacardi. Thames Water is owned by a German company called RWE, and although this is quite normal in the modern global economy, it is a rather bizarre notion that a large percentage of the UK 's water supply is controlled by a foreign company.

Thames Water takes its main supply from the River Thames and the River Lee, however it also has access to an underground reservoir in north London known as the Droughtbuster. This reservoir is artificially filled with water during the winter months in order to serve London in times of drought, and for the past two years the company has had to dip into it in order to maintain a supply. At the risk of over-simplifying the issue, the national news regularly mentions rising sea levels in the Thames , and the river has its own flood barrier in place, so surely some of this water could be tapped into and purified for supply? I can foresee a ludicrous situation in the not too distant future whereby half of Norfolk will be submerged in water due to rising sea levels, and yet Thames Water will still have a drought order in place.

Water is a precious resource and yet for the most part we treat it quite carelessly. In the UK we are used to having it on demand whenever we like, and there are very few restrictions in place regarding its use. Even the government only takes a passing interest, imposing targets for the water companies to meet, knowing full well that they won't, and then failing to deal with them when the inevitable excuses appear. Imagine the chaos if an oil supplier claimed to be losing 894 million litres of the black stuff each day; the Government would be in a state of absolute panic over the potential lost fuel duty.

With water shortages set to increase over the coming years and UK supplies dwindling, I think I have found the answer to our problems and it is inspired by none other than the Americans. We must to establish control of water supplies outside our own country in order to satisfy future requirements. To this end, we need to investigate any country with a plentiful water supply, e.g. Finland, for potential terrorist cells (they will most likely be hiding in caves brandishing water pistols of mass destruction), and if we suspect they are up to no good, we must invade immediately, thus eliminating any threat and giving us access to a whole new supply of water in the process.

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