War on gardeners colluded by snitches

I've started this post several times, and keep back-spacing out the swear-words. I'm mad as heck, and I'm going to... well, probably just mutely comply.

What am I het up about? Well, the hosepipe ban, of course. It's Day 9 of the War on Gardeners and already there are casualties. Scoffers might say - "What casualties? Are the wittle flowers thirsty?" No actually, the flowers are not thirsty, because it's been raining... a lot.

The real casualty in this War on Flowers is civility. In the nine days the hosepipe ban has been in place, 90 people have been reported to my water company Thames Water for ban breaches. But that's nothing, Southern Water (the company which serves the area south of me) has had no fewer than 1,500 tipoffs.

According to Jacqueline Maling writing for the Guardian:

Even tiny Folkestone and Dover Water, which service 65,00 households, has taken three calls since its ban began last week. Unfortunately, all three reported fellow villagers for actions not actually banned. Still, hats off for laudable civic mindedness.

Hats off for laudable civic mindedness? Shopping your neighbour in furtherance of some petty boundry dispute is civic minded? Has England lain in wait these many years for a hosepipe ban in order to use bureacracy and the threat of a £1000 fine as a weapon in neighborhood feuds? It disgusts me. Why not just resort to violence or property damage, at least it would be more honest.

And some nosy parkers go even further. Three Valleys Water has a "supergrass" (Brit speak for a really good informant) who snoops as she takes her daily jog. Sick. Sick. Sick.

Some water companies have encouraged this behaviour, establishing rat hotlines. This despite the fact that my water company has never even taken the trouble to write to me about the ban. I could be sprinkling in blissful ignorance until the fine came through.

Zoe Williams, also writing for the Guardian despairs:

If vocabulary is any index of shared culture, then we don't like informers. This is, I would argue, because they remind us of Nazis. Totalitarianism needs the collusion of its citizens; so the best way to guard against it is to be as uncooperative as you can, in any given scenario.

This is why, in theory at least, the only time the British have, historically, been prevailed upon to side with authority against any other entity is when that third entity is a bag. Unclaimed bags we will grass up to the authorities, though if you've ever been on a tube with one, you'll know that most people would prefer to give it the benefit of the doubt. (Stare at it for a bit ... see what it has to say ...) But is all this really true these days? Have we become snitches all?

Yes, well Zoe, I fear that might be the case. I'm glad you're defending the character of your country, but I'm afraid its indefensible. The British are all too willing to accept the yoke of authority, be it the insane and regressive tax on tv (the television license, a subject for another day), the interference with the nannying state or eager compliance with the hosepipe ban. She even cites this:

But the Mail ran an internet poll on the matter, and found that one in three respondents would shop their neighbour for such a crime, given half the chance.

And it's because I know this to be true, and because one of my neighbours seems to me to be just the kind of sanctimonious bourgeois who might grass me up, that I'll be humping buckets to water my precious plants this summer.