Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Ni

No mention so far of collecting water from roofs, all houses should do this, starting with all new build. This non drinking water can be used for toilet flushing and showering.

Also were paving over our land for parking, and reducing the groundwater recharge, and increasing the damage from flash flooding. Use methods that dont seal off the ground.

For your information.
At present, those on un-metered supplies are actually subsidising those on meters. The reason for this according to the water regulator is that there were so few on meters the costs involved made it uneconomic. Now that there are so many on metered supplies, this subsidy cannot be justified so expect a jump of about twenty percent in your bill soon.
Many people are suspicious when private companies “Want to save them money” this actually means the business wishes to make itself less profitable. Not something the shareholders would welcome. Water companies WANT people to go onto meters, this is the main reason so many were going for a drought order recently as they could then force people to have a meter installed.
I suspect the cost of water will rocket once everyone is on meters. This then adds to the burden for the poor. Many poor people are in fuel poverty and I suspect many will be in water poverty. This may have an added problem, as poorer people try to use less water to keep their costs down, they may choose not to flush their toilets or not to wash so often. They may choose to drink less water. Dehydration is a major problem for the elderly and is a killer.

Water is essential for life and as a wealthy country we should not deprive our citizens of it through economic policies.

I was a major supporter of Mrs T and her privatisation of many of our state owned industries, however I feel it is very wrong for water to be in the hands of a private company and in our area, a foreign company.

reply: What is wrong is for water to be in the hands of a monopoly - just look at the problems Scotland has had with state monopoly water.

More intelligent, actual solutions involve increasing water supply and actually using technical solutions to make new and existing towns less prone to flood damage.

Population growth! Virtually all mankind’s problems - including those associated with water - surely stem from the excessive global population. Politically difficult it may be, but logic dictates that the period of growing population must come to an end. Surely it would be better to manage this process now and at least to start talking about the issue seriously before this, mankind’s boom period, is followed by a catastrophic bust.

One thing I think Parliament should do is finally get rid of the water rates - they were supposed to be gone by now but clearly the water companies persuaded the government that they shouldn’t have to introduce meters in all homes. In my flat the rate was something like double the metered bill - I don’t see why single people should be subsidising large families and a flat rate doesn’t encourage economy.