[endtime]

The subtitle of the article mentions it:

> While famously rainswept, climate crisis, population growth and profligacy mean the once unthinkable could be possible

Also from the article:

> No new reservoir has been built in 30 years despite significant population growth

[arrowsmith]

I stand corrected.

[specproc]

The problem with the UK is not population growth. 20 percent over 30 years is neither exceptional nor unmanageable.

Population growth is by and large a good thing, it means more people working, paying tax, making pension contributions. More doctors, scientists and devs, but also more carers, cleaners, builders and farm workers. If you want to see what a falling population does, go check out a small town or village across most of Europe, it's not pretty.

The problem is that we've sold everything important to a private sector that has zero incentive to invest for the long term. The government has a vital role to play in everything from water to homebuilding, which a cross party consensus has abdicated.

In the case of water, we've not had a new reservoir built since Major. The argument for privatisation was that the market would allow for more efficient allocation of resources in line with supply and demand, but the experience of the last thirty here has pretty conclusively disproved this logic. See also the retreat from housebuilding.

Yet somehow this is all the fault of population, and implicitly immigration. We're hurtling towards Nigel Fucking Farage as PM because no mainstream politician is willing to rock the boat with our rentier "investors".

[bufio]

Lots of Uber Eats drivers.