351–360 of 524 posts
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…
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I mean, all the more reason it shouldn't be privatised. If it only makes sense to have one of something (road network, water system) it's a natural monopoly, _and_ it's going to require large public investment to be maintained, why wouldn't you in-house the expertise needed to do that and avoid the shareholder dividends overhead?
The overhead of having shareholders in this case is minimal. The profits they make are small, but having a goal of making profits does create discipline in resource usage. The water system is like the electricity system. It's perfectly possible to have inflows and outflows be fully private, as long as the government keeps its hands off the pricing. The network itself can also be run privately, as both supplier and bu…
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Tesco's is infrastructure?
You've heard of "food" I assume?
Food distribution networks might be infrastructure, but POS stores aren't, generally. Drinking water supplies are infrastructure; drinking fountains aren't.
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…
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> 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 ?
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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?
> Future generations, who will be dealing with long, dry summers, would probably be shocked at the profligate way clean tap water was used to flush toilets, water gardens and run washing machines. Climate change means societal change. There was a time that Northern Africa was one of the best places in the world to grow crops. They were at the top of civilization for thousands of years. Climate changed, what people co…
> we did this to ourselves I would argue that a small minority of the human race did this to the rest. > the lack of foresight Everybody on the planet is well aware of what is happening and why. Its not lack of foresight, it is pure ignorance and apathy of those who are making money off the backs of these tragedies.
Yes, just the people that use fossil fuels to drive, heat their homes, power their electrical lines, and so forth. /s
You can't dodge responsibility by pushing the blame upwards on everything. Are you posting these comments from a computer powered by solar panels?
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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…