This sounds like an excellent idea to us:

‘Citizen scientists’ to check UK rivers for sewage and pollution

Big River Watch scheme asks general public to help monitor state of rivers after years of deregulation

Not that there’s been any deregulation of course. But still, Burke’s little platoons going out and doing it for themselves, of ccourse we support such. Who wants to have to try and fight through whatever a bureaucracy might tell us when pure and clear information can be gathered by the populace?

We have just the one small concern.

British waterways, pollution in England, around the UK, rivers in England, England and Wales, targets and milestones to phase out spills of human waste into rivers and seas

There seems to be a little variance there about whether this is UK or England or England and Wales and so on. Which we take to be - as the cool kids say these days - problematic.

For the grand question in water politics these days is over the State running the water system or private companies. Which means that we want to see the difference between the private and capitalist companies in England, the social company in Wales, the state companies in Scotland and Northern Ireland. That’s exactly - for of course it is - the information we don’t get from the official, bureaucratic, figures. Near all of England’s overflows are monitored, for example, while only 8% of Scotland’s are. How amazin’ that the State does not check its own performance, eh? And exactly the thing that the little platoons could, possibly should, check up upon.

So, we do, we do, we look forward to this survey of all of the United Kingdom’s waters. With the raw information presented to us all so it is possible to actually check which system, that private or state, produces the best environmental outcome.

That is, obviously, what they’re going to do because of course they are. Right?

Tim Worstall