ICANNOT be alone in thinking it absurd to "Carry on Waterboard" levels that we are facing hose-pipe bans and the looming spectre of stand-pipes in our "green and pleasant land" as early in the year as March.

I give you England a country renowned throughout the world for its climate that produces high rainfall, lush green meadows, occasional localised flooding, when rivers burst their banks, and a very low demand for outdoor swimming pools.

Who would have thought that an essential resource that has seemed not only omnipresent but excessive for centuries let alone decades should now be at risk?

Anyone who spent any time in countries that are blessed with hot dry climates will have marvelled at their seeming ability to have lawn sprinklers regularly busy during the early mornings.

That's because they have husbanded their valuable water resources for generations.

However much the water boards protest that they are trying to stem the country wide leaks that are costing the country a staggering three-and-a-half billion litres a day, it doesn't seem enough.

In Bucks we live in the area served by Thames Water, the biggest water supplier and also the worst performer in the leak-loss tables, losing a massive 915 million litres a day.

We are told, as if to reassure us, that the company is committed to cutting this waste of a precious natural resource to 725 million litres a day by 2009/1O.

I'm sorry? Am I missing something here?

If the impending threat of standpipes is as serious are we being led to believe in the media, should we not as citizens be demanding slightly swifter and more effective action than this. Whatever level of manpower and resources has been committed to reducing the leaks by around 20 per cent over four years should be multiplied by a factor of ten in order to reduce it to zero in half the time. Expensive? Yes, but over the long term much cheaper to the nation than the cost of the rationing, standpipes and the public health implications over a longer period.

If we do have to pay more in the short term for the luxury of good clean water in our homes in a globally warming world, then so be it. But let's not wait until the holes appear in the dyke wall before we stick our fingers in. Or to put it another way to the water authorities "Get your fingers out!"