Lead article: Water, water everywhere

Scottish readers may be puzzled to see so many newspaper headlines about drought. Parts of the country, notably the Borders and the western Highlands, have already received one and a half times their normal rainfall for May. On Monday — as the water companies proposed seasonal tariffs to discourage customers from watering their gardens and taking baths in dry summers — Rannoch Moor in the Highlands received two and a half inches of rain.

Where the headlines were written, however, the drought is acute. In London, Kent and East Anglia, there has not been a full day’s rain for nearly three months. Rainfall in May over a wide band of eastern England has been less than a fifth of normal. Crops are threatened and reservoirs are emptying. All of which raises a question: is there not some way to bring water from the soaked parts of Britain to lubricate the parched gardens and fields of the south? After all, Birmingham has drawn water from the Welsh hills since 1906; surely, with the benefit of a century of technological improvement, it would not require too much effort to bring it 100 miles further, to London?

Almost 20 years ago, a report by the National Rivers Authority came to just this conclusion.