111–120 of 524 posts
I think you mean stereotypically rainswept. 25m people, >40% of England, live around London where it actually doesn't rain very much at all.
> The UK is one of the rainier places in Europe
Yeah, that includes Wales, Scotland and NI, where it really does rain all the bloody time.
Can't they get water from the ocean?
All of this requires lot of electrical power, large pumps, cleaning, corrosion-resistant materials, etc. Desalination is generally the last resort when there are no other options.
It is much simpler, more efficient and less expensive to properly manage freshwater resources, maintain networks, eliminate losses and leaks, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except in Scotland where your water charge is added to your council tax and so there are no water meters. I pay £190 per year for unlimited water.
Don't you also pay for waste water? My waste water charge here in Fife is quite a bit more than the water charge.
However I rent in a new build block of flats so maybe it doesn't apply to me, or is included in rent.
> People across England are already banned from using hosepipes, with more restrictions probable over coming months. > So how on earth did famously rainswept England, notorious the world over for being green and wet with our national symbol pretty much a furled umbrella, come to this? > The UK is one of the rainier places in Europe. Some areas are wetter than others > Water companies in England and Wales lose about 1…
* the UK's economic growth has been poor since the 2008 financial crisis, so government resources from taxation have similarly not been growing as much as they used to
* demographics (more elderly people) mean that spending on pensions and healthcare has been steadily growing
* so the spending on every other aspect of government and other public-realm type things has been steadily squeezed: there are no resources for improvements on either the big scale or the small
* plus we have (like the US) a setup where many people and organizations have an effective veto or delaying ability on building things (houses, public infrastructure, etc), which makes fixing public infrastructure problems very expensive and time consuming.
As a water-related example of the last point: there's a proposal for a new reservoir near me which is classified as a "nationally significant infrastructure project". The timeline outlined at https://fensreservoir.co.uk/proposals/process/ started in 2022 with "pre-application consultation" in multiple phases, doesn't even submit the formal planning application until 2027, hopes to get a government decision in 2028, will not start construction until 2030 and might finally get the reservoir up and running by 2036 if nothing is delayed. And this doesn't account for the possibility of legal challenges to it which could add extra delay even if they are dismissed.
Incredibly overpopulated. 434 people per km^2. 1.81 times the population density of Germany. I think the question should really be, how can it not be out of water? There's literally only 48x48 metres per person.
I would prefer it was metered so companies that use a lot of water are charged commensurately. Council tax in itself is a regressive tax, so adding water charges to that makes things worse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources Why does privatisation mean that the government can't build infrastructure? I think the answer is more likely nimbyism than privatisation. I personally think it makes no sense to privatise infrastructure for which no competition can reasonably take place, and I'd include distribution networks of many…
"Privatisation" does not preclude government investment in infrastructure. "Thatcherism" does, however. It is a warped [Ayn] Randian view of capitalism and those who drive it. State intervention into the machinery of capital, even when it comes to essential infrastructure, is considered a corrupting influence. Nobody able to change national policy within Downing Street or even ministries in Whitehall, at the time - o…
But if private companies are taking the equity out of the service via profit, then why should the government spend public money to build new infrastructure to support them?
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That never happens because the appointed regulator has no incentive to efficiently and effectively regulate, either.
Particularly when, as in the case of UK water privatisation, there's a fairly convenient revolving door between the supposed regulator and the privatised water companies. Poacher turned entirely ineffective and rather friendly gamekeeper...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources Why does privatisation mean that the government can't build infrastructure? I think the answer is more likely nimbyism than privatisation. I personally think it makes no sense to privatise infrastructure for which no competition can reasonably take place, and I'd include distribution networks of many…
"Privatisation" does not preclude government investment in infrastructure. "Thatcherism" does, however. It is a warped [Ayn] Randian view of capitalism and those who drive it. State intervention into the machinery of capital, even when it comes to essential infrastructure, is considered a corrupting influence. Nobody able to change national policy within Downing Street or even ministries in Whitehall, at the time - o…
https://www.ft.com/content/1057f722-75d5-11e1-9dce-00144feab...
A lot of NHS privatisation was done by Blair and Brown - especially to facilitate Brown's use of off-balance sheet debt to fund spending while pretending the government was not increasing national debt.
A lot of privatisations were a good idea. I think most people would agree the government should not own oil companies, airlines, car manufacturers, steel manufacturers, or telecoms, etc. I think the mistakes need to be seen against the backdrop of a necessary correction of a lot of nationalisation.
The problem has also been regulatory. Why were water companies not required to build capacity? Why were they allowed to borrow in order to pay shareholders? This was all entirely foreseeable.
I think the problem is not an ideology, but the lack of a coherent ideology. Privatisation has become an end in itself, backed by politicians who do not seem to understand that its not a magic bullets, and there is no incentive for efficiency in the absence of competition. A private monopoly is usually worse than a state monopoly unless very closely regulated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't you also pay for waste water? My waste water charge here in Fife is quite a bit more than the water charge.
Don't think so, it's not mentioned separately on my CT bill at least. However I rent in a new build block of flats so maybe it doesn't apply to me, or is included in rent.
https://www.fife.gov.uk/kb/docs/articles/housing/council-tax...
As the article mentions, privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources. What the article doesn’t mention is that pre-privatisation a new reservoir was built every year up to about 1960 and then every few years until privatisation in 1992. So we are about 30 years behind in adding capacity to the system. This combined with the inadequate levels of i…
State ownership is not a panacea either.
State owned Scottish Water has more sewer leaks than the privatised companies in England and Wales do.