...nor any drop to drink.

One of our recent holidays was to Madeira where, centuries ago, they recognised the need to move water from the areas of the island with high rainfall to the more arid areas, and to this end constructed a network of "levadas" or aqueducts to do the job. We have much the same problem in these islands - plenty of rain up north, but much less as you move down south, and particularly in the south-east, and what there is tends to run straight off into the sea. Unfortunately, we've never had the foresight to do anything about it, so once again the papers are full of dire warnings about water shortages, hosepipe bans and so on. It's a solvable problem, but have we got the political will to solve it?