Tim Worstall

Guardian Watch

Those layers of editors, subs, fact checkers, reporters all highly trained, the inevitable superiority of the national newspapers over mere bloggers tapping keyboards in darkened rooms:

Plans by Britain’s biggest water company to impose drought order
restrictions on its eight million customers may be challenged in court
following revelations that its pipes leak 800 gallons a day.

800 gallons a day? In that overlapping heirarchy of paid professionals working out of Farringdon Road, is there in fact anyone who is numerate? Given that a bath uses 40 gallons or so you mean that Thames Water is so hopelessly inefficient that leakage from the pipes means that on each and every day an amount of water is lost that a whole 20 Londoners (our of some 8 millions) are unable to wash properly?

A Thames Water spokeswoman said £500,000 a day is spent on reducing leaks…

And that 1/2 a million a day is being spent on bringing the liquid necessary for these 20 ablutions?

BTW, not just a simple typo, it’s on the front page too:

Move may be challenged in court following revelations that pipes leak 800 gallons a day.

All together now:

Don’t These People Have Editors?

In

4 responses

  1. P. Froward Avatar
    P. Froward

    They’d probably have to spend that much again to get leakage down to 400 gallons anyway. And so on.
    They’re operating on the principle that any number, howled in a sufficiently anguished and panicky voice, sounds big.

    Reply
  2. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    Me, I just wonder how anyone knows what the leakage is. They meter the stuff into the pipes, but not out. So how do they know how much leaks?

    Reply
  3. Robert Marchenoir Avatar
    Robert Marchenoir

    I think you have got it wrong.
    The equivalent of twenty baths a day, for a whole city, is a very small amount of water. The point, in a leak, is that water is flowing continuously. Thus, even a small leak means a lot of waste. Multiply this by the size of the network, and 800 gallons a day seem to look like a very modest leakage.

    Reply
  4. T.Bag Avatar
    T.Bag

    Did any other commentators actually bother to follow the link? The article actually says 894m liters (that’s 196 652 427 Imperial gallons for you misty eyed “oh where is the golden England of our past” types) or 4,900,000 baths.
    Maybe, whilst you are protecting the world from the “sensationalism” of the guardian, and accusing them of being innumerate, you should have a look at yourselves, that is, if you can see beyond your sloping foreheads.

    Reply

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