Water

For a decade I was heavily engaged with the water business in the UK. Much earlier, as a development economist in the nineteen-seventies I was made fully aware of the vital role of water in influencing the survival of many peoples, and standards of living worldwide.

I could also note that as the 'green revolution' [already forgotten] was implemented in the 'seventies to enable the huge growth of the human population - without mass starvation - to take place [as it has in the past four decades] there were bound to be problems for the future, deposited by the changes that were being implemented in world farming.

One of the biggest engines of global economic development was the massively increased use of nitrates in fertilising the soil, enabling yields to be increased massively as new combinations of crop breeds with farming techniques pushed up the typical yield per acre; on both peasant farms in emergent countries to the massive acreages under single managements in North America, parts of Latin America, the former USSR and adaptable areas of the European Union like East Anglia.

The cost of treating water for human consumption has included rising costs for reducing the nitrate content of riverwater as more of the stuff has been washed into the rivers in the decades of heavy use. Now the appropriate government agency has produced a report about the 'nitrate time-bomb'. Some of the nitrates that have been absorbed into surface water have filtered down into the middle strata of rocks, and it is inevitable that it will continue to descend until it reaches the deep, porous layers known as the aquifers. These are the rocks that are approached by boreholes, to bring the trapped water to the surface and to be used for human consumption. The aquifers in much of China and some regions of India have been heavily exploited already, and in those zones deeper and deeper bores are needed to maintain the water supply to the growing cities. Although the problem is less acute in Europe, the south-east of the UK [for example] has low rainfall and rising population, and therefore makes significant use of aquifers in periods of relatively low rainfall so that abstractions from rivers has to be limited.

The unstoppable progress of nitrates from past decades' farming towards the aquifers presages a greater cost for water suppliers [whether state controlled or corporate], This is absolutely inescapable: people may be persuaded to use less water - perhaps even by the imposition of 'rationing by price' - but the demand will continue inexorably to demand the expenditure on potability.

As the seas fill with plastic and the toxicity of urban air is increasingly recognised - and redressed - humans' access to the basic absolute necessities of air and water is becoming more costly. In an economy where real-terms growth faltered in the Thatcher era and has since been negative in many years, affording the essentials is becoming more expensive: and 'we ain't seen nothing yet!'

Theresa May: Competence and Comprehension

It is increasingly a matter of speculation, as to how competent a person the Prime Minister is. Despite the great achievements of people like Professor Ron Johnston, the general perception of geographers among the intellectual hierarchy is pretty low. Mrs May read geography at Oxford, which may rank higher than media studies at Mid-Montgomeryshire but it is not regarded as a particularly powerful component of the university overall. She has had a steady political career, indicating that she is content to take orders and vote at the call of her party whips; most of the time. When in the safe-hands role of party chairman she voiced the popular view that the post-Thatcher Tories were regarded as the 'nasty party' she spoke no less that the truth: and the import of her message to the party was that 'we have to invest more in improving our image', rather than telling the Buffton-Tufftons to change their personalities. Her mention of the'nasty party' was frequently cited over the ensuing years, almost as her defining achievement; it certainly got her name nationally known, which ultimately helped to get her the leadership.

In six years as Home Secretary she 'failed' to get net annual immigration reduced below 100,000: by a margin of several hundred per cent. Now, as Prime Minister, she declares herself determined to try again, harder. The reduction of immigration is at the heart of her determination not to retain the EU obligation of free movement of people in the European Economic Area: it virtually sets the tone and terms of how she sees 'Brexit'.

She appears to be incapable of understanding that she had to 'fail'. If intending immigrants had simply been turned away from the ports and airports of a fortress Britain, the economy would have been undermined catastrophically. Market gardening would have collapsed, at least until the firms in the industry moved their capital to countries where they could find labour. Many of the rising 'knowledge industries' would likewise have emigrated. The City of London would have imploded as a global financial centre. British users would have had to pay foreign firms inflated prices for the goods and services that had ceased to be made or grown in Britain; with a disastrous detriment to standards of living.

Meanwhile many thousands of non-EU immigrants would still have got into the UK under threat of  appeals to the human rights industry on the ground that 'family reunion' is a human right: so there would have been more non-English-speakers appealing to the benefits system and using the NHS in the face of a collapse of the state's revenues. The 'racial' dimension to the anti-immigrant mood would not have been exorcised; though fewer ethnic  groups would be scapegoated.

Mrs May still seems to want all those bad things to happen. She is deaf to appeals from industry and commerce. Unless she can clarify quickly that she has not meant these things, her government must fall quickly.