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Last week, Tunbridge Wells went without running water for days on end, for the second time this winter. Over the course of this decade, the town has suffered a run of outages and on-off supply, or what South East Water is pleased to call “resilience issues”.

One of the richest towns in one of the richest societies in human history shows the rest of us that even lavish private affluence cannot make up for the really important forms of public scarcity.