To flush or not to flush ?

The Mayor of London, Ken Livinstone (not to be confussed with The Lord Mayor of the City of London) informs the world (or that part of it that reads his sayings in the Evening Standard) that he does not flush the toilet at home.

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Well, no, that is not quite true. He does flush it but only sometimes. This blog does not wish to discuss the toilet arrangements of the Livingstone household, the Mayor is entitled to his own arrangements. But it would be awfully nice if he would stop interfering in other people’s private lives.

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What we do with our toilets is surely our own business as long as it is done in private and does not disturb the neighbours.

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Ken Livingstone tells his constituents that London uses more water than any other part of the country. It is not clear what that means. London is bigger than any other city, town and village in the country and that may have something to do with the use of water.

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Above Left - The Gaylan-hiytan (mark 2) based upon the orgiginal design of the 'Water Closet' patented by Victorian small businessman Thomas Crapper.

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Also London has more businesses than any other city, town and village in the country. That, too, may have something to do with the use of water.

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But no, not so and far from it we are told. The whole problem arises from … well, probably climate change, though that is becoming a somewhat outmoded idea … and the fact that we flush toilets too often.

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Then there is the problem of the alleged drought. Most people thought that we had quite a lot of rain and snow across the country this spring, though not so much in the winter. Not enough, apparently. Not if we want to continue to flush our toilets.

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Of course, London’s water pipes are old (the penalty of being first in technological development) and there are many leaks (pun intended). These ought to be fixed but that is an expensive business.

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So why is there a problem with water (or lack of) in our Capital City ? Well the answer is that the fault lies, as one would expect, with the EU - indeed.

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To explain: Billions are spent every year on implementing the EU Water Framework Directive, which is full of unnecessarily detailed, scientifically unproven but expensive and, above all, legally required details. That is why there are water shortages. And Ken tells us not to flush our toilets; not a bog standard situation at all.