We live on an island surrounded by water on a planet that is two-thirds water. If you want to make water a commodity to make profit then you have to intstil the idea that there’s scarcity of water.

So, I agree that there is plenty of water available to the UK. But…you can’t just wave away distribution and processing costs, either. Those are real. And it’s in those services that there is scarcity, thst there is cost to bui’ding out capacity.

Most people are after freshwater rather than saltwater, so you’ve either got to desalinate saltwater or draw from freshwater.

And most people care about the location of their water. Like, they want to turn the knob on their tap and have it come out there, not have a bunch of water at the beach.

If you want to go to the beach, you can collect all the saltwater you want, without restriction. And if you transport it home and want to desalinate it, you can run a small electric still yourself (not the most cost-effective way to desalinate at scale, but just to demonstrate that it’s possible at an individual level). More or less, just an electric kettle plus a condenser. They’re on Amazon in the US, and I expect also the UK.