You don't need a hose to wash your bike…thats what buckets are for. Don't need a hose for much really, most things that a hose can do can be done with a bucket or a watering can!

I expect they'll be flooding before long, then it'll turn out to be an average summer rainfall wise!

Last year I had the enormous privalidge of taking a group of kids to the arse end of Swaziland and installing a borehole & tank so a rural school could have running water for the first time. Went back this year & the school's orphange is now self-sufficient with food thanks to the irrigation they are running off the water supply and the kids are no longer spending 2hrs a day manually pumping and carrying water.

My attitude to water as a comodity has been changed by the experience.

as I said before perhaps UU are just rubbish 😉

the corollary of this thread is that actually you get a great service, as its so noticeable when its gone.

You could have an almost perfect service but it would be expensive.

You can't choose supplier yet (there are exceptions if you use more than 50 mega litres a year) but looks like you will in about 2 years. But just like electricity these people only bill and the actual commodity is no different and so if its not there, its not there.

Nicely put, convert. For those of us who were born / have lived / worked in the developing world, and/or work in the utilities, it certainly shapes how you think about water.

Rob's point about the service being notable when it's gone is spot on, and borne out by the research the water industry has been doing over the last 2-3 years, which shows very clearly that while (overall) people are reasonably prepared to pay their current bills and maybe even a small amount more for improvements to service, they would (rightly) expect one helluva compensation to accept any deterioration i.e. water and wastewater services have a very high value.

The 'overall' above needs taking into account though as there is a massive diversity of incomes, social perspectives, household budget priorities etc.

Welcome to the future …
Enjoy your fuel / utilities whilst they're still there …

as I said before perhaps UU are just rubbish

Yep, that's the ofwat perspective too. But then ofwat also said that UU have made the biggest investment in the last year to addressing the issue than any other water company and that perspective will be the same in their next review.
In a couple of years time UU will be the best performing water company because of their extremely aggressive approach to rectifying the issue, mark my words.

The problem is that water is too cheap at the moment – there is bugger all incentive to install rainwater tanks etc when potable water is 1p a litre.
http://www.water.org.uk/home/resources-and-links/waterfacts/waterprices

a big Scotland/England pipeline, gravity fed, going all the way to lundun.

one end in loch ness, the other in 'ammersmith. branches off it at each major conurbation.
Scotland's not actually higher than England just because it's at the top of the map. 😆

Loch Ness elevation: 15.8m
London elevation: 24m

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London