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The June 2026 UK Temperature Records

During the current heatwave I’ve been drifting outside my habitual South West England lane into East Anglia. For additional background information please see also the June 26th section of “The June Heatwave in West Devon” article, wherein I surmised that:

The 06Z UKV run suggests that the pan UK record for June may well be broken in East Anglia later today:

Somewhat later in the day I further surmised on the “Summer 2026 max temp heat watch” thread on the Netweather forum that:

Based on the current UKV I’ll plump for Norwich

Can you imagine my joy when I subsequently recorded the following image from the Netweather “Live Weather Stations” map?

Can you also imagine my surprise when the Met Office then published the following image on their X/Twitter and other assorted (anti)social media channels?

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The Parliamentary Debate About the “Performance of South West Water”

On March 5th a debate was held in the Grand Committee Room next to Westminster Hall concerning the “Performance of South West Water”.

You can read the transcript of the entire session in Hansard if so desired. Alternatively you can watch a recording of the entire session.

The debate was opened by Simon Jupp MP as follows:

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of South West Water.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Henderson. I am delighted to have secured this important debate, one year on from another debate that I secured on the performance of South West Water. It is another opportunity to hold South West Water to the highest possible standards in the House.

Last year, I described the performance of our water company and its historic lack of investment as “shameful”, and many of my constituents shared my point of view. This year, I want to focus my speech on the facts facing my constituency of East Devon. The public want to see evidence of improvement and delivery of the promised investment, and they want South West Water to clean up its act and our water. South West Water must deliver better services for our constituents, improve our bathing waters, and protect our natural environment. Not doing so puts the vibrancy of our coastal communities under threat.

More on all that later. However, we’re going to start our discussion with the speech given by the Member of Parliament for North Devon, Selaine Saxby. Here is a recording of her presentation:

Ms. Saxby’s opening remarks were as follows:

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A Trip to Meldon Reservoir

A fine evening was forecast yesterday, so we jumped into Lisa, our trusty albeit ageing Nissan LEAF electric vehicle, and headed for the car park at Meldon Reservoir:

Leaving the dam for later we left Lisa in the car park and set off down the River Okement valley. Here’s what we found once we eventually reached the river:

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