Here we are in the grip of a hosepipe ban which must surely be music to the ears of Thames Water and its investors, who can see huge profits of untold billions on the horizon, as we all follow the road to the inevitable water meter.

We are surrounded in this county by rivers, streams and even a canal, all of which are nature's reservoirs, controlled, as you would hope, by locks and weirs to control flow and prevent flooding.

But hold on, here we are with the reservoirs only half full, and Thames Water blaming the weather and its own customers for the lack of water.

The question that begs to be asked is: Why are all our rivers and tributaries blocked solid with silt, weeds, and debris when, if they were managed competently by qualified people, they could, instead, be full of water?

This could then be available to top up our reservoirs, instead of the current practice of using locks and weirs to hold back silt and weeds and allow water, the thing we all need, to run off to the sea.

The River Thames should be seen as nature's own reservoir. It could and should be used as a back-up source of water.

It should be dredged regularly, as was done in the Victorian age, before profit and investor ruled. The Thames and its tributaries are now in a poor state of repair throughout Oxfordshire, only inches deep in many places and able to hold less than one third of what it should. That has got to be wrong.

Alongside the hosepipe ban, will pleasure boating be abolished, will Henley Regatta be under threat this year, or would that upset the rich investors too much?

We are short of water, that is a sad fact, but most of this has been caused directly by pure incompetence, and a total lack of investment by Thames Water, the Environment Agency, and a Government that cares for nothing and nobody.

Richard Anderson Wood Farm Road Headington Oxford