The hosepipe ban

The inverted commas weren't meant to imply that you weren't actually knowledgeable, JessM - I wouldn't cast such an aspersion.

What you say is undoubtedly true; I just felt that this thread had been been quite light-hearted but was in danger of being turned into another debating point.

Hope no offence anagram - but these ideas get thrown around by politicians (we're having a "drought summit" and we have to have a press release.) Despite the fact that the government no longer have control of the water industry. And the press pick it up and spread it around. It does not help anyone.
I worked for a water company for 8 years, just after privatisation and it was talked about as a dead duck then. Welsh W would have loved to sell water to the English if it had been feasible!
So the inverted commas are probably unjustified on this occasion.
The only thing that a government might do is to tackle the issue of extraction licences. These are licences to use untreated water from rivers and aquifers. When you see a farmer in east anglia spraying crops for hours on end they are not spraying treated water - they are just sucking it up having paid for a licence from the environment agency. No incentive not to do it, even in a drought.
There would have to be a major piece of legislation to unpick this arrangement. Not sure how feasible this would be - and there would be an uproar from farmers and some industries.

Hello, good morning folks.

Talk about water yesterday - I was in Oxford helping my daughter shop (and that may be a whole other hospital story today as she has hurt her back...)

...and we ran into an absolute downpour of a thinderstorm...had to wait in the car while it went off. It really threw it down. Went home, and half way realised the road was dry...my garden still dry as a bone. Grrr! ...........So I STILL had to water!

Oh, well, I stand corrected, JessM!

Yet again, someone's opinion has been shot down by a more 'informed' member of GN.

As is partly evident from this article it is not practical. There have been several attempts to do the hydraulic modelling and they have all come to naught. That map was constructed in the 1970s, in the pre privatisation, isn't that a pie up there in the sky, era. (even engineers have dreams)
There are hills in the way. There is no handy downhill sloping route from Cumbria to the Thames basin. Even if there was, it would be covered in cities, factories, roads etc.
Even if it was feasible it would be a vast expense. Would make HS2 look like peanuts. The government isn't going to shell out (not their problem - its been privatised) and who would pay - the water company that is maybe going to sell its water to another water company? (they could not afford to borrow the many billions required with no return on investment for a long long time) or Thames water, at the other end of the pipe? Ultimately it would push someone's water bills sky high. And take a decade or two to accomplish - planning permission alone would be mind boggling.
So you have a daft idea being aired (yet again) just to create a news article.

A National water grid?

Or:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17078727

Victorian canals

And how, exactly, do you think they could get the water down to the south Anagram?

The fact remains that there would be no water shortage if water was delivered to where it was needed - the UK is awash with water in the north.

Anagram they fix leaks all the time. They are incomparably better at it here than they are in N Ireland where they never had privatisation. If you wanted a zero leak water system it would put the bills up significantly as it is labour intensive - most leaks are invisible and you can't track em down unless you run night time projects. People don't want their water turned off for hours just so you can try to check if there are any invisible leaks in the area.
And no amount of leak fixing can fix the fact that we have just had 2 incredibly dry winters in a row.

The water companies may not be an evil empire - but they'd rather put the onus on us to limit our use of the water we've already paid for rather than fix their leaky systems!

And if you have a power shower that goes on for 15 minutes, guess what... But the water companies are not an evil empire - they just want to make sure there is enough water to keep the taps running all summer and are very worried.
Just saying "please use less" doesn't work. Hosepipe ban is a way of saying "we really mean it"

We just had a downpour for 15mins so my water butt is half full again and the garden and pots are well watered..

Saddened by the fact that our local crematorium are not keeping the 'vases' half full of water. So unless you take water with you ... the gift of flowers for a loved one, will not survive

But surely washing a car is totally un-necessary in a time of drought, no? What is the point?? Very different to watering vegetables imho.

It's probably not - but they don't trust us to use common sense!

my little waterbutts are now nearly empty but have an outside tap at least-to fill watering cans.
I washed the car with a bucket filled up using the hose and I swear I used more water than if I'd just sprayed it quickly with the hose. How is it that a shower allegedly uses less water than a bath but filling buckets with water for washing the car is supposed to be less wasteful than a quick spray over with the hose!!

Yep.

Off the roof etc. My thought processes are going along the lines of - green algae will only grow in the light. So a closed water butt is going to get its edibles from the roof and gutter and not from photosynthesis in the butt. Don't think enough light could get through walls of butt to cause photosynthesis. Make sense?

Oops. Didn't finish. So I guess mosquito larvae eat whatever's in your butt water. Since ours was water off the garage roof, there was probably plenty of lovely edible stuff in it already that didn't need much light for it to be useful food for larvae.

Even tap water contains algal spores. We store water in open reservoirs, after all. Try this experiment: fill a glass carafe or similar container with tap water. Put a lid on it. Put it on a windowsill and forget about it for a while. Eventually green algae will have grown in it.

why do they need light? Puzzling. Maybe a lack of food for them in the dark? What do mosquito larvae eat - must be a food chain that goes back to plants?

I've set up my big butt (no, the water one) down the garden, and fill it with a long hose (allowed, and run permanently by the hedge roots.). Then I have water down there that I can put in a can or set to run the trickle watering - leaky pipe with mulch over it - from the butt right to the plants. I check and I can run it for two hours and it only uses about 4 cans. All into the exact right places.

I now have a trench, well half done, for the runner beans, and I will set them up with a water trickle too, in the trench if I can work it.
Garlic is doing fine without watering so far!

The pots near the house though I have to do by hand...and the greenhouse...but it's manageable.

We don't need a water butt here. Takes all our effort to channel the excess water away.

Nuff light must have got in through the plastic, I suppose.