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How can England possibly be running out of water?

theguardian.com

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Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#141

Post by dukeyukey »

bilekas wrote: post #140
graemep wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Water should never have been privatised. At least not without a framework for a national strategy for water. State ownership is not a panacea either. State owned Scottish Water has more sewer leaks than the privatised companies in England and Wales do.

The responsibility to look after the citizens basic needs such as water is on the government. Not private for-profit companies. If they can't do their job, then we shouldn't pay our taxes ?

You could say the same argument about food, but the system of privately owned farms moving food via privately owned logistics companies to privately owned grocery shops works very well. Yes, it's the responsibility of the state that it's citizens can acquire their needs, but that doesn't mean it has to be government owned.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#142

Post by metalman »

Here in Nova Scotia(new scotland), with weather much like, and conected by the jet stream to England, it rained after the longest rainless period ever, yesterday.Normal rainfall is several times a week, or weeks of rain every day, 3 months of no rain is a new thing.We are lucky in that there are thousands of lakes and a system of dams and locks to direct water so shortages are not a problem, yet.

Though as we are aprox half the size of England, with 1/56th the population the the urgency in a drout will be less acute. 4 years ago we had unpresedented rain and floods with people getting washed away and killed, roads and bridges destroyed and comunities cut off with damage from that still evident, which would be truely devastating if it were to happen now.

Civil engineering calculations were based on max rain bieng 1”/hr, and now there are regular reports of twise and three times that, and I am sure that drout planning was based on now irrelivant tables of average rainfalls and resevoirs sized acordingly. The issue for England is if the will and capacity to build better infrastructure is there, as hydrology is governed by geography and cant be put just anywhere, ie:we are talking water frontage here, dams to raise lakes, and other popular types of projects.Given that it's England, some of the water rights will be written into ancient law, and will be essentialy impossible to override, and then require buy outs of breathtaking proportions. Which leaves tunnel boring machines, sand hawgs, epic infrastructure that has to be built to last forever, and not one but of it suitable to pose in front of.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#143

Post by throw10920 »

jameslk wrote: post #36
bayarearefugee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we're not going to lower the taxes on normal wage earners, silly. But we need to lower the taxes on the wealthy and corporations (and reduce or eliminate regulations) so they can distribute their capital to make new water! Don't you know anything about modern economics? :D

Does this snarky point you’re trying to make connect with anything in the article? I saw no mention of taxes

Just flag them. They're blatantly breaking the guidelines and they don't care because they're not getting flagged enough.

HN is largely user-moderated and we'll continue to see more drivel like this if people aren't diligent about downvoting, flagging, and reporting especially egregious comments to the mods.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#144

Post by mschuster91 »

graemep wrote: post #118
PaulRobinson wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

I think you are misrepresenting Thatcherism. Thatcher was pretty pragmatic and did not want to privatise everything - e.g. Royal Mail and the Post Office - those were done by the very non-Thatcherite coalition government in 2013. They were also messed up (e.g. private ownership of the postcode database). https://www.ft.com/content/1057f722-75d5-11e1-9dce-00144feab... A lot of NHS privatisation was done by Blair and B…

> I think most people would agree the government should not own oil companies, airlines, car manufacturers, steel manufacturers, or telecoms, etc.

People are starting to revisit the idea that oil and steel manufacture should at least be held domestically, if not run by the government outright, given the current geopolitical situation. Let's talk straight: if China and India would close down export for steel, or if OPEC decides to repeat the 70s... the Western world is fucked. And yes, that includes America, because most US refineries need OPEC oil for chemical composition reasons. The US is only net positive on oil imports and exports, it is by far not self sufficient. Add in a major war, we'd not be able to produce ammo, much less vehicles, even if we somehow found enough staff to man the plants.

As for telecoms: the base infrastructure should belong to the government. That is a lesson we in Germany are learning at the moment...

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#145

Post by krona »

autoexec wrote: post #64
sandbags wrote: post #34

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…

When it comes to things like utilities every penny of profit comes at the expense of the public. Either prices are raised so that a small number of people can stuff their pockets with extra cash above what it costs to deliver the service and maintain the system or they get that extra money by failing to deliver the service or they do it by failing to maintain the system itself. I think the neglect and failure to inve…

> I think the neglect and failure to invest in infrastructure is the worst

Cumulative capital investment by water companies in England and Wales since privatisation: £250bn.

The infrastructure they inherited was never designed for the things it's being asked to do today, and it has a life expectancy. It would literally cost trillions to upgrade the entire sewerage system.

This isn't apologia, it's just reality. The road network will also face the same fate since much of it was built >50 years ago and has a life expectancy of roughly 50 years. The country simply can't afford to replace it.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#147

Post by derriz »

gpderetta wrote: post #88
derriz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hydrogen? It has an extremely potent greenhouse effect and is obviously the leakiest of gases - the leakage alone could make it more environmentally damaging than actually burning natural gas. And have you seen how hydrogen burns or how easy it is to trigger an explosion? I wouldn’t live anywhere near a “jerry rigged” hydrogen storage facility.

I think the parent was extremely sarcastic.

Doh!

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#148

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

atoav wrote: post #57
sandbags wrote: post #34

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…

Privatization just means that if you were interested in the outcome before (having water), they are now interested in the money that can be extracted from it. And that means their interest is to but a modern branding onto an operation that has been stripped for wires as long as it works. I grew up during a privatization wave in my country and the promise of the proponents always was that private ownership means waste…

The "waste" argument is standard neoliberal nonsense. There are very few situations where the private sector provides a better service for less money. (See also the UK's NHS, which still provides a very efficient - if increasingly broken - service, while being starved of cash.)

Like most neoliberal nonsense, it's not just a lie, it's a misdirection. What it really means is "Government money is being spent on providing a service for poor people, when it should be handed out to rich people."

It's driven by entitlement, not generosity.

You can see this very clearly in the way privatised CEOs are paid. The water companies quite obviously and literally prioritise CEO pay rises and dividends over service quality.

That's not an accident. It's the true meaning of privatisation.

That is what privatisation is.

The "customer" in privatised industries isn't the public, it's upper management and other big shareholders.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#149

Post by OJFord »

bilekas wrote: post #138

I remember they tried to privatize water in Ireland a good few years ago and there was so much backlash that it had to be binned. Basically everyone was destroying the meters that were being installed. Water is a human right, not a commodity.

Is there not currently a charge for it (other than general taxation)? Metering is orthogonal to privatising - you can be metered or not in the UK, it's usually cheaper to be on a meter.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#150

Post by [deleted] »

graemep wrote: post #120
sandbags wrote: post #34

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…

> Water should never have been privatised. At least not without a framework for a national strategy for water. State ownership is not a panacea either. State owned Scottish Water has more sewer leaks than the privatised companies in England and Wales do.

[deleted]
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