I see @Southernwater are trying to spin even possibly bully their way out of trouble. Appears SW are complaining that the nasty horrible media are publishing misleading coverage regarding their River Test drought order application. The order they say only allows them to abstract the same amount of water as they've always done from the river so what's wrong with that they argue. stop picking on us you nasty media types. Except. Here's how it works. SW are licensed to abstract 80 million litres of water per day (Ml/d) from the River Test however that abstraction licence also contains a Hands off Flow (HoF) limit which in essence says you have to leave at least 355 Ml/d of flow in the river at all times, no matter what your'e doing you cannot and you will not reduce the flow in the river below that limit. Why? The River Test is not only a chalk stream but also one of the rarest salmon habitats on the planet the HoF is set to safeguard and protect that environment and those fish, reduce the HoF below that limit and you'll be threatening if not devastating that unique ecology. It's there for a bloody good reason. What do SW want to do? Yep you've guessed it, they want to reduce the HoF limit from 355 Ml/d to just 265 Ml/d 1/3 below the level which experts agree will cause harm to not only the River Test but further endanger River Test salmon a species of fish it transpires already on the endangered species list. NAUGHT NAUGHT SW, NAUGHTY NAUGHTY.

"Southern Water users urged to keep daily task to '4 minutes' amid hosepipe ban." Meanwhile @SouthernWater's fat cat CEO Lawrence Gosden has just seen his salary double to £1.4 million, customer's bills have gone up by a stonking 53% and the number of serious pollution incidents have tripled since 2022. Oh and the company leaks about 94,000,000 litres of water each and ever day. mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/so…

I'm going to try a little experiment. It's just gone 9:00am, London and parts of southern England are under an "Amber" weather warning, let's how long it takes for the sewage dumping to start and how it progresses over the next few hours. Oh look, it's only been raining for a few hours and the dumping's started already. Well done to @SouthernWater, @thameswater, @AnglianWater.