German police are investigating a €0.15 water butt theft – and I fear they’re on the right side of history

I've often laughed at those who are voluntarily extremely frugal. But in a world of dwindling resources, aren't the real weirdos the ones throwing yacht parties and sending Katy Perry into space?

Here's a silly season story for you: a 51-year-old woman in the German town of Spaichingen in Swabia is under criminal investigation on suspicion of filling watering cans from her neighbour's water butt. The total estimated value of the purloined water: 0.15.

It's wonderfully daft. She allegedly hid behind a bin to evade detection and, according to reports, the police declared, with Solomonic gravity: Once it is in the barrel, [the water] no longer belongs to the heavens." Who knows what motivated this nano-crime: a moment of midlife madness? Some kind of grudge? But water is metered in Germany so there might be a kind of extreme parsimony at work (Swabian housewives are legendarily thrifty, apparently).