Water, Water Everywhere and not a Drop to Drink

I never fail to be irritated by short-sighted stupidity.

I live in the South of England and have been watching all the green spaces where I live being relentlessly developed. I often feel that in order to eliminate the North-South divide, the government is trying to get the entire population to live in the South. Every few months there seems to be a new diktat that several thousand new homes be built in one of the Southern Counties.

One of the problems is that we are in the middle of one of the worst droughts to ever hit the Southern Counties. Why are we moving thousands of people to an area that does not have the infrastructure to support them? It seems that someone is failing their basic planning course - ensure that you have sufficient resource available before you start.

Something that adds heavily to the irony is that, as the South is already very densely populated, most of the decent land has already been used. This means that many of the new developments are occurring on less-suitable land such as flood-plains. Already people are being flooded out of their homes while they can't use their sprinklers.

Will the time come when people are forced to use stand-pipes while their downstairs is under water?