Rob’s Blog

Britain is wet, it normally rains almost constantly and we happen to be surrounded by water (although it’s not immediately drinkable). However, we are now being warned that we face a drought, even though it is Winter and it has been raining and snowing for the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately these are the wrong types of snow and rain and they are therefore useless to us to put into the water supply. The Government is calling for a hosepipe ban to prevent excess use of water. I am not sure about the rest of the country, but here no-one has used a hosepipe since the middle of September, so a hosepipe ban will be about as useful as… Miss Harding. They say it will be just as bad as the drought in 1976, and therefore we need to do lots of different things to save water. For example:

• Switching the tap off when you brush your teeth.
• Washing fruit in a bowl, so you can save the water to water small plants with (presumably during the hosepipe ban).
• Keep water in the fridge so you don’t have to run the tap and wait for it to be cold.
• Stop taps dripping as each one wastes a gallon of water each day.
• Throw tissues in the bin (can someone tell me how this would help?).
• Collecting rainwater and watering plants with that. (Yet this won’t work, as the reason there will be a drought is the lack of rain)
• Replace all the plants in your garden with cacti, so they don’t need watering.

One final piece of advice offered is to take a shower rather than a bath, as it uses less water overall. Well if the Environment Agency is willing to fit a shower in my house then fine, but I’m not paying for one.

On the subject of water, or the lack of it, here is a list of the longest rivers in the UK

1. River Severn (220 miles)
2. River Thames (215 miles)
3. River Trent (185 miles)
4. River Aire (161 miles)
5. River Great Ouse (143 miles)
6. River Wye (135 miles)
7. River Tay (117 miles)
8. River Spey (107 miles)
9. River Nene (100 miles)
10. River Clyde (98 miles)
11. River Tweed (96 miles)
12. River Eden (90 miles)
13. River Dee (85 miles)
14. River Avon (84 miles)
15. River Don (80 miles)
16. River Bann (76 miles)
17. River Ribble (75 miles)
18. River Tyne (73 miles)
19. River Dee (70 miles)
20. River Tees (70 miles)

Just for your information there are 3 rivers beginning with the letter ‘V’, but none with Z or X in the UK.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2006 at 11:23 am and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.