BEING rather fond of the English language, few things irritate me more than attempts to distort it f

Drought lie hides flood of cash

This, water company spokesmen said, was because all the floodwater and further torrential rain, plus a few scatterings of snow, will run off rather than seep into the soil where its needed.

Effective public relations people are, of course, mad as hatters. What makes them so good at their job is that they have an unnatural ability to convince themselves that the corporate claptrap they are spouting in an attempt to hide the truth from a sceptical public bears some relation to the truth.

Faced with such unshakeable conviction, sane mortals tend to accept what they are being told.

The problem arises when the people who are supposed to interpret this twaddle on behalf of the public, for example members of my own profession, either through ignorance, laziness or a combination of the two, glibly repeat the phrases they have been told, which tends to lend authenticity, making untruth, truth and distortion, accuracy.

The word 'drought' according to the Oxford English Dictionary is an 'abnormally prolonged spell of dry weather.'

It does not mean a shortage of water caused by the inefficient use of copious resources, nor can it apply to a few weeks without torrential rain in the middle of summer.

As far as I can see privatised water companies have set their own management agenda of putting vast salaries for bosses and large dividends for shareholders before creating an efficient fresh water supply.

To conceal the lack of investment in water supply infrastructure, the water company public relations people keep spouting the word 'drought' everytime they get the chance, hoping to convince Joe Public that water shortages are caused by an act of God rather than the result of a deliberate policy of underinvestment by greedy and irresponsible company executives.

It is what you would expect from public relations people, but it is just a shame when sloppy TV and newspaper reporters, without being aware of it, continue to help them get this entirely false message across.

The point is that if everyone swallows the lie that British water supply shortages have been caused by freak Saharan weather year after year, despite the fact that we haven't had any, the water company bosses can continue to wallow in vast profits without ever fixing the pipes.

If everyone writing or talking about water companies thought for a few minutes about effect of the language they are using, they would prefer the accurate phrase 'water supply shortage,' to the wholly innacurate word 'drought' and the emphasis would be on a situation which can, with the right investment, be easily remedied.

The answer to the problem would lie at the feet of the people responsible for the situation not with the vicissitudes of the weather.

Incidentally, the latest water company practices of lowering the pressure in the pipes to reduce leakage rates instead of spending a lot of money fixing the holes is an obvious indication of just how far they will go to maintain soaring profits at the expense of ensuring a long-term water supply.

Because of its geographical position, Britain is a naturally wet island and always has been. As far back as Roman times soldiers used to hate being posted here because it was considered a dark, miserable, soggy outpost of the Empire.

Our washing never dries, our barbecues parties are postponed, our cellars covered in mildew and fruit never ripens properly for one reason alone - it is almost always wet.

Yet I still see and hear the word 'drought' in every TV and newspaper report I come across where water shortages and water companies are concerned.

So please - once and for all - there is no, there never was, and in Britain there never will be, a blooming 'drought.'

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.