Hands off our water Boris

Tory clown (aka mayor of London) Boris Johnson is suggesting a solution to the current drought facing parts of south-east England. He wants canals built that will transport water from rain-sodden Wales and Scotland to the drought zone:

"Since Scotland and Wales are on the whole higher up than England, it is surely time to do the obvious: use the principle of gravity to bring surplus rain from the mountains to irrigate and refresh the breadbasket of the country in the South and East. It is amazing how much hostility this idea provokes from the very water companies who are currently warning of shortages. If you go to the website of their front organisations, you will find the notion of a water grid denounced as "absurd" and "inefficient". But if you talk to the excellent Professor Roger Falconer, of Cardiff University, he will tell you that they are blinkered and wrong. He has been looking at all sorts of proposals for improving our current network of canals so as to integrate them into the water supply. He talks of linking up Welsh mountain reservoirs via the Wye and the Severn with the Thames, or of sending the water from the Severn and the Trent round to East Anglia – for many years the driest part of the country.
I believe we might go even further, and retrieve J F Pownall's magnificent 1942 plan for a Grand Contour Canal, which would follow the 310 ft contour of the hills all the way from the Scottish borders to the South East."

Apart from confirming our status as England's playground, dumping ground and reservoir of water/labour/energy, it raises the issue of who benefits? Parched parts of England obviously. Less obvious is the benefit to Wales and Scotland.
Back in the 1970s the slogan was "It's Scotland's Oil". Perhaps today we should counter Boris's plan with "It's Wales's water" and charge a fair price for it.