Thatcher era privatization has been proven to be epitome of "short term gains for long term pain". Water, Power, Gas and Rail all privatized in a short span of decade and now the future generations will be footing the bill.
How can England possibly be running out of water?
71–80 of 524 posts
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meanwhile, the average lifespan in the UK has shot from 46 years in 1900, when the primary heating and power source was coal, to 81 years now. It's easy to forget how much worse things were before.
I wonder what Sweden was doing differently > Take for example this distribution of age at death in Sweden in 1900. You will see, that in 1900, life expectancy was 52 years. However, the median age at death (the age above and below 50% of the population die respectively) is 63 years. Although the life expectancy is only 52 years, an individual has thus a chance of 50% to live past 63 years. Thus, if you went across a…
UK industrialisation started earlier, is my guess. Crowding and horrible working and living conditions. Swedish cities were horrible too but smaller.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#73> 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…
Nothing can be fixed if it's always someone else fault. For a while it was the EUs fault. Then came Brexit. After Brexit, it was somehow also EUs fault, because the EU is mean or something. Also, blame immigrants.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#74> Forecasts indicate that by 2055 England’s public water supply could be short by 5bn litres a day > Water companies in England and Wales lose about 1tn litres of water through leaky pipes each year. Seems like there's most of a solution here, just staring us in the face, no? Problem being of course, that the privatised water companies have little incentive or investment in order to tackle the problem. Are we ready t…
The system works fine for electricity and gas, because the grid itself is maintained by the government. You have private energy producers competing to produce electricity, and private energy companies buying it off them and selling it to the consumer. Maybe it would be more efficient if it was maintained solely by the state, but it's not too bad. Unfortunately, the water system doesn't work that way. It has been parc…
I’m not sure “works fine” is a great descriptor of the UK energy sector… people do get the energy they need, at least, but they have to be on the watch for better deals all the time and make sure not to become a ‘profitable customer’ aka sucker.
The price-discovery aspect of supply seems a bit broken as well - suppliers bid daily on their price to supply power, and the cheapest X units are selected (where X is the daily demand), then they all get paid out at the level of the most expensive provider in the selected mix. Seems to me that it leaves the consumer significantly overpaying, though it must be a nice little earner for those that can provide cheap power.
But you’re right that water is in a worse state due to the monopoly side of things.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#75By the time the water issue become very serious in England, there would be other far more serious issues, globally and locally, that will dwarf the water issue. For instance, water issue around the world would drive the people out, water wars breaking out, drought and food crisis, powerful nations simply taking over resource-rich lands globally and so on. A swing back to medieval times.
On the other hand, dried-up England will not be a target for migrating to so that's a net positive for the current political constellation.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#76> Forecasts indicate that by 2055 England’s public water supply could be short by 5bn litres a day > Water companies in England and Wales lose about 1tn litres of water through leaky pipes each year. Seems like there's most of a solution here, just staring us in the face, no? Problem being of course, that the privatised water companies have little incentive or investment in order to tackle the problem. Are we ready t…
In a free market, if clean water gets expensive enough, then infrastructure overhauls to actually cut down on the leaks become economical. If everything is nationalized, you're relying on political goodwill instead to pay for those overhauls. I have no clue how UK's "privatized water companies" work though. I'm not going to be too surprised if UK's system somehow manages to combine all the disadvantages of private ow…
It does, AFAICT, there is no competition in infrastructure or supply. There are only targets to meet on service standard and agreed price levels with the state.
The companies seem to operate on a model of doing as little maintenance as they can get away with while taking on debt and paying out to shareholders and the C-suite whenever possible. This has been done in complicity with the regulatory body who wanted to keep bills as low as possible for as long as possible, so played along with the zero-investment model.
It is a clusterfuck.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The system works fine for electricity and gas, because the grid itself is maintained by the government. You have private energy producers competing to produce electricity, and private energy companies buying it off them and selling it to the consumer. Maybe it would be more efficient if it was maintained solely by the state, but it's not too bad. Unfortunately, the water system doesn't work that way. It has been parc…
I’m not sure “works fine” is a great descriptor of the UK energy sector… people do get the energy they need, at least, but they have to be on the watch for better deals all the time and make sure not to become a ‘profitable customer’ aka sucker. The price-discovery aspect of supply seems a bit broken as well - suppliers bid daily on their price to supply power, and the cheapest X units are selected (where X is the da…
Huh, I did not know about the wholesale price issue, that's pretty bad.
It also incentivises avoiding cheap sources from dominating the market.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#78> 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…
> 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. This is something that needs to be solved at the state level, blaming citizens for the crimes of oil producers is false, morally wrong and unproductive.
To blame others than the oil producing companies that bribe politicians and lie to the public is just a stalling tactic to continue destroying the world while most people is actually trying to stop that destruction.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure “works fine” is a great descriptor of the UK energy sector… people do get the energy they need, at least, but they have to be on the watch for better deals all the time and make sure not to become a ‘profitable customer’ aka sucker. The price-discovery aspect of supply seems a bit broken as well - suppliers bid daily on their price to supply power, and the cheapest X units are selected (where X is the da…
Huh, I did not know about the wholesale price issue, that's pretty bad. It also incentivises avoiding cheap sources from dominating the market.
It's my understanding, though don't take it as 100% gospel truth.
I can see that the model does incentivise both cheaper energy sources (more over-pay leads to greate investment possibilities) and pricing honestly. If the scheme chose the cheapest X units and paid them out at their bid rates, there would be incentive to bid as close as you can to what you predict the day's cutoff would be... but it does seem likely to not achieve the best overall price.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#80As 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. But one can make a very fair argument where you can have a strong regulatory framework to ensure investment goals, exit clauses, and penalties in case of missing goals, no?
Yes, but that would make private investment in utilities not attractive as the profits would be low or non existent.
Competing forces