Have you heard the one about the bedridden granny who was charged by her water supplier for drinking a million cups of tea in six months? Estelle Mendoza’s monthly direct debit was raised from £33 to £215 by Thames Water because of an undetected leak.
This story caught my eye because I, too, am a Thames Water customer. And I, too, have been puzzled by the company’s recent decision to explain my water consumption to me in terms of cups of tea. My latest bill tells me I have drunk 324,00 cups of tea in six months, or taken 1,080 showers, or 1,013 baths.
At least they haven’t resorted to that other cliché, of how many Olympic-sized swimming pools I could have filled, because I frankly don’t have a Skooby-Doo what that means.
I know that now we have left the European Union we are free to use whatever units we want. In fact, the Government’s Business Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has made clear that he wants the UK to return to Imperial measurements. That’s gallons, quarts and pints. Even Jacob hasn’t suggested measuring water using china teacups.
For me, this represents the “dumbing down” of our culture. Water is sold to us by the cubic metre. That’s a thousand litres. Not too difficult a concept to grasp, you would think, for a society where everyone is supposed to have been to secondary school for at least five years.
Milk is sold in litres. So is petrol and diesel. I don’t go the cashier at the petrol station and expect to be told how many “cups” of petrol I’m being fleeced for.
It’s the same with areas. How many times have you heard on the News that an area the size of x football pitches has been burned / flooded / concreted over? Now, I know how big a football pitch is. I have spent most of my life either running up and down a football pitch, or else sitting watching other lucky people getting paid to do so. But I think I can manage to understand 10,000 square metres without having to imagine Harry Kane standing in the middle of it.
Or, for bigger events, it’s amazing how often an area the size of Wales, or Kent, gets quoted. I can sort of imagine how big those are supposed to be, but still, I’d sooner be given the actual scientific size in square kilometres (or even square miles, in the unlikely event that Jacob is still in the Government by the time you read this).
I’m afraid most newspaper journalists seem to be scientifically illiterate, and in order to understand their own stories they have to reduce volumes and areas into multiples of visual everyday objects.
Thames Water has copied this approach and, in doing so, it has made the classic mistake of underestimating its customers’ intelligence
