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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?

#241

Post by teamonkey »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #192
teamonkey wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the same site: https://theferret.scot/water-pollution-scotland-england-most... One thing of note about Scotland is that water is free (i.e. paid for by taxes) there.

It isn't free but it is less expensive. In fact in Scotland the annual water bill averages to £490 compared to £603 in England. This is despite a lower population density (which means more infra required per person comparatively). So despite the best efforts of critics, they can't really show that Scottish water is any worse in terms of sewage outflows etc - if anything it is marginally better on that metric, and sig…

I fully agree. Moreover, it’s clear that Scottish Water actually has (if slowly) moved towards improving infrastructure and sewerage monitoring since that 2021 post I replied to, unlike a number of English water companies.

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

#242

Post by alephnerd »

MrDrDr wrote: post #240

This highlights one of the big problems with liberal democracies - how do you provide efficient (and even innovative) public services? There is no free market for many public services like water (and where there is I’m all for privatisation). But the people (I am in the UK) do not tend to elect a government on its ability to manage these types of services. I do wonder if there some other structure that blends a not f…

> I do wonder if there some other structure that blends a not for profit ethos with employee ownership and just enough competition

Legislate that certain public services are to only be managed and administered by the civil service managed and autonomous statutory boards. That's probably the easiest thing to do in a parliamentary system like the UK. Sort of like a "Water Management Board".

Not every function in a democracy needs to be democratic in nature.

Heck, this is how the UK managed colonial territories like Singapore and HK with the civil service run HDBs, and how a lot of the UK was run before Thatcher's privatization.

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

#243

Post by lazide »

jdietrich wrote: post #201
krona wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

The regulator (Ofwat) also deserves a great deal of the blame. They determine the maximum prices that water companies can charge. Since the start of privatisation, they have prioritised low bills above all else and are proud of the fact that water bills fell by 45% in real terms between 1989 and 2020. The consequences are obvious - the supposed "efficiency" that pays for those lower bills inevitably means neglecting…

A lot of this is (imo) a desire to keep juicing returns - often encouraged by things like pension funds, which happily look the other way.

The economy always goes through these cycles - people find a way to scam/‘extract economic value’ from something no one is worried about at the time. They weren’t worried at the time, because it was well run and ‘what is the worst that can happen’.

Over time, what was working well gets blown up as part of the resource extraction, leading to the thing being a giant expensive scandal now.

The issue starts getting resolved - in the case of a public service often by necessary price increases because of stuff that wore out/deferred maintenance/disasters caused by the prior situation. If it’s a private company, bankruptcy.

Eventually, even the dumbest of the population realizes the prior attitude was wrong and they got scammed. The thing starts maybe not being terrible for awhile.

Scammers move onto another part of the economy as people are looking for them now.

After a generation or so, people forget. Lather, rinse, repeat.

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

#244

Post by mhh__ »

drowsspa wrote: post #182
mhh__ wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By definition every penny of profit always comes at someone's expense but I don't think we'd advocate for nationalising Tesco's?

Tesco's is infrastructure?

You've heard of "food" I assume?

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

#246

Post by [deleted] »

alt227 wrote: post #225
walthamstow wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I included the East of England region which includes home counties like Beds, Herts and Essex. Any measure of "around London" must include Essex, surely.

IMO 'around London' is Greater London. If you mean the whole South East of England, then say that.

[deleted]

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

#247

Post by FridayoLeary »

refurb wrote: post #168
komali2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thatcher's been dead for 12 years and out of power for 35, so I'm not sure why it should take much gumption. Reagan, Thatcher, all the same, and their ideology kept alive by neoliberals (basically every politician that isn't an out and out socialist or snidely toeing fascism) and the Chicago school of economics. Find me a national leader that believing in the flourishing of the country (and all the people in it) an…

I’m assuming you’re really young. The US and UK were in terrible shape before Reagan and Thatcher took office. Both improved after they were elected?

In the UK the improvement was so massive that socialism died and Labour had to reinvent itself as a centrist party in order to stay alive. Thames water is horribly mismanaged and the rail as well is overpriced but i don't trust nationalisation to fix the problems. The government can simply cover up issues by providing subsidies.

Again if any politicians today were half the person Thatcher was things might actually get done. Even Blair might be an improvement.

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

#248

Post by walthamstow »

alt227 wrote: post #225
walthamstow wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I included the East of England region which includes home counties like Beds, Herts and Essex. Any measure of "around London" must include Essex, surely.

IMO 'around London' is Greater London. If you mean the whole South East of England, then say that.

Anyone local would not think a number of 25m pop was referring to Greater London.

South East England is a defined statistical region, using it like that could be confusing

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

#249

Post by KaiserPro »

p1dda wrote: post #135
KaiserPro wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK also doesn't have enough power, well not enough to do whats needed for desalination. It would be _vastly_ cheaper and easier to build reservoirs.

Build new power plants genius

congratulations, you now have 8x the debt, breaks the legal requirements for decarbonising the grid, diverts money away from uprading the grid from where its needed, and pisses off the most of the locals. Then you discover that all your fresh water is by the coast, so you now also need to build huge water moving infrastructure.

you might as well just do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Contour_Canal and spend the rest of the money building homes.

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

#250

Post by foxglacier »

Frieren wrote: post #78
chii wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so a few oil countries can squish some extra money so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?

>so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then? - Ecologists and native-right defenders being killed in many countries. - Politicians being paid off by corporations to fight against wind and solar energy. - Newspapers paid to mislead the public. But you blame the guys that cannot make ends meet and buys the only thing that they can afford. Stop blaming the victims. T…

Instead of blaming oil users, you think the producers should restrict the supply to them, forcing them to reduce or stop their use? But you just said they cannot make ends meet - will they die if they can't afford or aren't allowed oil? How can oil producers do anything at all about climate change besides producing less oil?
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