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British water company dumps sewage, claims "no right to swim in the sea"

inews.co.uk

11–20 of 68 posts

Re: British water company dumps sewage, claims "no right to swim in the sea"

#11
Is there an actual "right to use the sea"? ! My city dumps dozens of wild dogs on beach, they attack people in large packs, and everyone is told to use beach at their own risk. No right to swim on public beach!

Or environmentalists dumps dangerous bears into public forrest. They routinely kill people, even roam city streets [1]. But there is no "right to safely use forest".

1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68675794

Re: British water company dumps sewage, claims "no right to swim in the sea"

#13

Imagine a world where ‘no legal duty’ was the default mindset for everyone.

Individuals and corporations quit caring about the environment; Which, is why there is sewage and microplastics in the sea and ocean.

There’s been sewage in the seas and oceans for as long as there’s been sewage in proximity to those places. Long before caring for the environment as it’s now understood was even a concept. I’d hazard a guess that on a population density normalized comparison for developed countries there has never been a better time for responsible sewage handling. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of problems like this article highlights, just that it probably has not been better in the past. Hopefully the UK courts will hand this lady a decisive win and reinforce the idea that industry does have responsibility.

Re: British water company dumps sewage, claims "no right to swim in the sea"

#16
The British government have been diverging their water quality regulations from the EU’s since Brexit. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/27/england-...

Now Britain enjoys some of the worst polluted swimming waters https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/04/uk-waters-are-too-pol...

Re: British water company dumps sewage, claims "no right to swim in the sea"

#19
post #8

What is the libertarian solution for situations like this?

The business owners have no right to keep people from dumping sewage on them in public

That's probably assault if doesn't have a profit angle. Maybe its expected that everyone should just screw the rest as much as they humanly can without petty crime.

For example, maybe can be a good business to create a company that takes control of all the coffee production/distribution and algorithmically price the cup of coffee to be about 5 quids or %0.1 (whichever is greater)of the monthly income of the customer.

To facilitate this, of course the company will need to collect information like the cars they drive or the house they live so it will require an account with their financials for the individuals displaying wealth.

If that sounds monopolistic, alternatively all the independent coffee shops and coffee sellers can start running the same algorithm and have the exact same effect but technically they won't be price fixing. Why would they do that? Well, it's called catching a whale, they may end up losing the opportunity to make 5 pound of few billionaires but may end up making a fortune of one that really really needs a fix.

Re: British water company dumps sewage, claims "no right to swim in the sea"

#20
post #3

Yet another example of why privatisation of utility functions is privatise profits socialise losses. Of course they believe pumping torrents of shit into the sea is OK.

[dead]

Non-profit and state owned are not the same thing. State owned companies care about profit.
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