Should you grass on a neighbour who breaks the hosepipe ban?

We know many water companies are themselves guilty of profligate waste through unrepaired leaks. So to snitch on a neighbour, who is making a comparatively tiny personal contribution to the drought, seems petty.

But we are only human and it is hard to watch your flowers and vegetables wither and die while your neighbour is still drenching his own produce with gay abandon.

If you have a smart water meter you might be more careful about over-use as Big Brother is watching you. Candy, a wife and mother of three in my nearby town, showed me her own bill for water use. It announced that her total water use was 93m³ between January and July 2022. The bill declared: ‘That’s the same as about 372,000 cups of tea, OR 1,240 showers OR 1,163 baths.’

‘So I would be wary of using a hose during this drought,’ Candy told me.