'Two taps' neatly sum up Britain.

Firstly, they illustrate the singular British tendency to embrace failed, floundering models and practices which other countries have long substitued with far more workable and effective alternatives. Britain is the only country in the world that has separate hot and cold taps. No one else has them, because everyone else's designers and engineers realised - around 1900 - that two taps are crap. (See under: leasehold, imperial weights and measures, National Health Service, the A-level system).

Secondly, two taps remind us that this is a country that values 'tradition' over quality of life and practicality. Two taps are, you see, inconvenient, wasteful and unhygienic. They are inconvenient because to wash one's hands, one must play 'tap-tennis' - moving hands left to right, in a relay of cold to scalding and nothing in between. They are wasteful because in the process of playing tap-tennis, running two taps not one, you use more water. They are unhygienic because many people, to avoid being scalded, skip the tiresome tap-tennis routine and simply wash their hands in cold water or, half-heartedly, in very hot water. Indeed, the whole concept is unhygienic, for to use the basin-plus-two-taps in its intended manner, one is supposed to put the plug in and fill the sink to wash one's hands. Trouble is, said basin is often used by countless other people for washing, gargling and other beastliness I dare not mention. Said basin might indeed have been used ten minutes earlier to wash a tramp's privates, or rince some really ill-fitting denchers - or both. No, no one puts the plug in to wash their hands.

But practicality matters not: two taps are traditional, and therefore good. They emerged, either side of the basin, from the dressing table of the Victorian boudoir, filled, originally, by hot and cold jugs of water. Better to continue to imagine the sink as that porcelain basin than be hygienic or practical. Better to emulate the Victorians - ablutions followed by ten minutes of brisk self-flagellation and Empire. For traditional is always nicer in Britain. Hence Laura Ashley, hence the 3.4 million National Trust membership, the 'Past Times' catalogue, Wimpy-Georgian-with-Cashback and Prince Charles’s Poundbury. Hence too the Monarchy, the Duke of Westminster, the unelected House of Lords, First Past the Post and Clocks Going Back for Scottish Farmers. It’s rubbish, but it’s traditionally rubbish – so it must be right.

Thirdly, two taps neatly demonstrate the British love for half-baked compromise. A half-arsed middle way is cheaper (short term) and less awkward than doing something decisive when faced with a new challenge. For, behold, there is a new challenge: in the celebrated age of no-win-no-fee and health and safety, hot water can, someone has discovered, be hot. And if someone is scalded, they might sue. At last, where hygiene or practicality have failed to motivate reform, legal concerns finally prompt a first brave look at the two taps. But what form does this reform take? Can we rip out the two taps and start again?

No - just put up a yellow sticker saying 'Caution Hot Water'.

In precisely the same way the British won't ban smoking in public places - no, ban smoking in some public places that serve food. They'll not be in Europe - but 'neither in nor out'. They'll have electoral reform - but only in Scotland and Wales for the elections that don't really count. They'll not have a fully elected Upper House - just a bit less unelected. We'll have advanced biotechnology and a knowledge economy - but we'll stick with the two taps if-it's-not-too-much-trouble-lovely-weather-for-this-time-of-year-isn't-it.