How can England possibly be running out of water? • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #125

KingOfCoders wrote: post #26

As a German, what amazes me, it seems like many people in England are on a water flatrate, as far as I understand it. No one (?) in Germany is.

In most of Quebec, water is not billed nor metered. It's considered as a "public good" and paid for through property taxes. That does lead to overuse and waste though.

Chicago also, at least historically. On the shore of Lake Michigan, there is no lack of fresh water. It was billed however. You paid a flat rate for water service, but it was unmetered. I'm not sure how much this is still the case.

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

#342

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

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 ?

Likewise, if it's nationalised, poor water management should result in different voting behaviour, particularly in favor of parties that will improve it.

But I think the other issue there is that for the past 30 years, there hasn't been an issue with the water supply; it's invisible when it's working well, so it doesn't get attention during voting season.

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

#343

Post by qcnguy » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

ahartmetz wrote: post #320

qcnguy wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tories are a centre-left party. That's why they lost the support of conservative voters at the last election and are now in the doldrums, with much of their base having defected to Reform.

Maybe they are now (I doubt it), but they surely weren't under Thatcher.

Correct. But by "decades" I meant in the 40 years since Thatcher.

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

#344

Post by qcnguy » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 2:29 PM UTC

4ggr0 wrote: post #316

qcnguy wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their voters obviously don't agree. Not only have they defected to Reform on a massive scale, but Reform recruiting former Tories like Dorries is hugely controversial within the party base, exactly because Tories are viewed as being too left wing.

that's like saying the CDU in germany is left because CDU voters started voting AfD. people flocking to an even more conservative party does not mean that the original party is somehow left.

Good example. The CDU is in a coalition with the left wing parties and refuses to work with the AfD in any way, not even winning votes with their votes, on the basis that the AfD is right wing and thus inherently evil. So the CDU is indeed not a recognizably right wing party anymore, and has suffered mass defections for that very reason. If it were, it would enter into coalitions with other right wing parties rather than being taking orders from a partly literally called Die Linke.

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

#345

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

dukeyukey wrote: post #141

bilekas wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the system of privately owned farms moving food via privately owned logistics companies to privately owned grocery shops works very well.

Does it? Food prices are up, millions of people rely on food banks [0], etc. This may not be entirely down to farms or the governmental oversight thereof, but food security is not a given.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/09/britons-vuln...

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

#346

Post by ch4s3 » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

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…

Someone down thread posted that the private company has proposed several new reservoirs starting in 1992 and they've all been blocked on environmental grounds by the government or by NIMBYs.

For example the Abingdon Reservoir has been in planning for 19 years[1]. It is opposed by GARD[2], the Group Against Reservoir Development. It's hard to see how this is the fault of privatization.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abingdon_Reservoir

[2] https://groupagainstreservoirdevelopment.org/

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

#347

Post by fredrikholm » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #334

fredrikholm wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden's conservative government are pressuring building regulators to re-evaluate whether "all rooms require windows" in order to make the construction of apartments cheaper. "Perhaps a better plan would be to replaces cranes with horses and ropes such that we can once again afford windows" was my first thought when I read that in my turn of the century starter apartment with giant windows in every room. Like, GDP a…

That's a good thing to re-evaluate. The government shouldn't dictate people's preferences. People's lifestyles have changed. It's now normal for this generation of people to prefer a dark cave-like room where they play video games and socialize online. Glare from windows restrict where monitors could be placed. If they want natural light, they would prefer to go outside for a walk or a hike. And that's not to mention…

Sweden is very green and comparatively car free. Having open windows during summer to let in light, fresh air and bird sound is culturally strong here.

You can buy curtains, you can't retroactively insert a window as easily nor should you have to my lord.

I can't imagine living in a dark, centrally ventilated container. Most Swedes agree (massive pushback when this happened, gov backtracked).

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

#348

Post by bethekidyouwant » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

master_crab wrote: post #176

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…

And yet we are still in this position in the UK. Flip the question: What were the dividends paid out by the companies over the same time period? Assuming they gave out $100bn in dividend, then we wasted money that should have been spent on more infrastructure.

This assumes a parity in government efficiency. A bit laughable innit?

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

#349

Post by gjm11 » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

qcnguy wrote: post #310

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Decades of populist left or centre-left governments have kept the prices artificially low whilst requiring investment The overwhelming majority of people would disagree that the Conservative Party can be described as "left". Since 1979, the Conservatives have been in power for all but 14 years.

Their voters obviously don't agree. Not only have they defected to Reform on a massive scale, but Reform recruiting former Tories like Dorries is hugely controversial within the party base, exactly because Tories are viewed as being too left wing.

Within whose party base? If you're saying that the Tories are viewed as too left-wing by Reform voters, then I assume that's true because Reform are further right than the Tories, but so what? If you're saying that Conservative voters find it "controversial" (whatever exactly you mean by that) that Reform is recruiting former Conservative politicians -- well, I'm sure they don't like it, no one likes it when some other party poaches their politicians, but I would like to see your evidence that their dislike is "exactly because Tories are viewed as being too left wing".

So far as I can make out, here in the UK the near-universal view is that the Conservatives are a centre-right party, Labour are somewhere between a centre-left and a just-plain-centre party (unsurprisingly, people who are further to the left see it as further to the right and vice versa), and Reform are a not-so-centre right party. (People who aren't Reform supporters would mostly describe them as far-right. Not many people like to use that sort of terminology to describe themselves, so people who are Reform supporters would say other things.)

Pretty much no one other than extreme rightists would describe the Conservatives as a centre-left party. Likewise, some people further to the left would describe Labour as a centre-right party. I think more people would do that than would describe the Conservatives as centre-left, but that may just reflect the people whose opinions I happen to be most exposed to.

(I mean, specifically, in the UK. Other countries have different overall political leanings. Someone in the US, comparing with the parties there, might accurately describe the Conservative Party as centre-left. But in terms of the UK political landscape: no, of course they are not a centre-left party.)

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

#350

Post by bethekidyouwant » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 2:40 PM UTC

KoolKat23 wrote: post #288

AussieCoder wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends in the Abingdon area and the primary objection, from what they've told me, is that locals objected to a reservoir that would mainly be used to supply London. Little Englanders at their worst.

And that's when parliament should step in and pass it as standalone infrastructure under its own bill.

Yeah but don’t forget all the eminent domain shit that happened in the 70s and destroyed neighbourhoods left and right. The power structure set up to make sure that doesn’t happen again are now impeding important progress.