Swimming pool owners, those with large gardens and those in areas prone to droughts should be moved onto water meters as a matter of urgency, with companies using satellite images from Google Earth and aerial photographs to ascertain heavy water users.You can just imaging her little heart swelling with delight at the thought of commanding all that power, can't you?
These are just some of the recommendations put forward by Anna Walker, a leading civil servant, in her 220-page interim report into domestic water bills, commissioned by the Department for the Environment.
And don't think it's just millionaires who have to look up anxiously in the sky - she has plans for everyone:
Every household in Britain should eventually be moved onto a water meter, at cost of £3 billion. (Ed: Yes, that's three more billion we haven't got..)But, you say, aren't we a notoriously wet island, surrounded by water?
Lavatories with large cisterns and large shower heads should be banned from being sold.
Domestic appliances should carry water efficiency labels, with the least efficient washing machines and dishwashers outlawed.
Yes. And don't think that makes a difference:
A spokesman for Anna Walker said: "This should be seen as a wake up call. Water is going to become much more scarce in summer because of climate change, and the population is increasing.Well, if we're going to 'spend billions' anyway, it might as well be on the desalination plants and water storage, shouldn't it? That's the sensible thing to...
"We either spend billions on desalination plants and building extra water storage, or we do something about saving water now."
Oh. What's that?
Ah, right. Of course. That doesn't give the State the opportunity it desires to employ even more people and poke their noses even more into our private lives than they already are doing...
10 comments:
Households struggling to pay bills in areas where tariffs are high should receive a "water benefit" of up to £170.
Ooh! The government forces up the bills and then creates a new benefit to dole out to its favoured groups.
The benefit will require people to administer it; managers to manage it; auditors to see it's honest - oh, and premises, lighting, heating, insurance, equipment, internet access, intranet, servers, email, anti-virus, IT security staff, stationery, pensions, union representation, and advocacy groups and charities when the benefit just isn't high enough or misses out helping the most vulnerable in society, a professional body and recognized qualifications required to achieve higher places in the new profession, consultants to train and advise management and policy-makers and run conferences, um, and possibly its own special medical/psychological hazards to treat and compensate, and...
From non-problem to major new industry stuck at the taxpayers' throats for evermore.
Yey Anna.
If you're on a meter surely there's no need to start banning certain shower heads and dishwashers - if you can afford the higher water bills you should be able to buy whatever you like, but if you want to keep your water bills down you'll try to buy the most water efficient products you can. Besides, banning an inefficient shower head doesn't prevent someone using water inefficiently by spending an hour and a half in there. Fucking stupid idea.
FWIW everybody's metered here, we're in a bad drought, we've got some really restrictive water use regulations in force, and they're still only telling us to get down to 155 litres each per day, which is still 10 litres more than the UK average. On the other hand the bills are going to go up a hell of a lot in the near future.
Hmmmm, so instead of using £3bn on water storage facilities (a dam), these barking mad prodnoses just want everyone to have a water meter.
That wouldn't be so they can keep increasing the unit price per kilolitre for water usage, would it?
Google Earth must give some civil servants wet dreams every night. The thought of spying on people legally must bring them so much joy.
Easy solution - cover your swimming pool with a green cover when you aren't using it. When Google Earth takes a photo, it will look like your lawn!
Water is going to become much more scarce in summer because of climate change
What gets me is the complete ignorance. Yes, water could get scarcer in the UK due to climate change, but only if it gets colder
A warmer world is a wetter world. The whole ridiculous AGW theory is based on the assumption that the tiny increase in CO2 is amplified by a much larger increase in water vapour, the dominant greenhouse gas. Since our prevailing weather comes from the South West across a large expanse of water, we will get more rain not less, (unless the Atlantic dries up and the Rockies are knocked flat).
Our reservoirs and aquifers are topped up from November to February and since the theory predicts that the largest rises in temperature are in higher latitudes, at night and in winter, we should face warmer, wetter winters.
Build enough reservoirs and treatment plants and fix the bloody leaks and we'd have enough water for an Olympic size swimming pool in every back garden in the land.
Kevin B
I know about those lo-flush loos.
They are so ineffective that you have to flush them twice.
Good old unintended consequences!
As for lo-flow showerheads - those ones where you have to run around to get wet - they are utterly useless.
Somewhere in America, when faced with such nonsense, a company starting selling showers which had four or five or six heads, so as to re-instated a reasonable flow of water. Naturally, the Statists found a way to stop them.
But I do my own plumbing. My showers will remain thunderous.
And in the West of Scotland, surely NOBODY could manage to run out of water? Does it not fall plentifully from the sky, almost every single day of the year? Oh, sorry, I forgot, it's the STATE that's in charge here. If anyone can cause a drought in a wet land, they're the ones to manage it.
"The benefit will require people to administer it..."
It's getting easier and easier to see through their cunning plan, isn't it?
"Besides, banning an inefficient shower head doesn't prevent someone using water inefficiently by spending an hour and a half in there."
Certainly not the ones who'll get a 'water benefit' to pay for it, no!
"That wouldn't be so they can keep increasing the unit price per kilolitre for water usage, would it?"
Of course. Yet another stealth tax.
"Google Earth must give some civil servants wet dreams every night."
Just made for them. So many uses!
"..cover your swimming pool with a green cover when you aren't using it. When Google Earth takes a photo, it will look like your lawn!"
I bet someone's going to put that in a business plan the moment this thing looks like getting to Parliament!
"What gets me is the complete ignorance. Yes, water could get scarcer in the UK due to climate change, but only if it gets colder."
Yes, but with the MSM sold on the 'OMG!We'reallgonnadie!' aspect of 'climate change', who's going to write any kind of rebuttal?
"Build enough reservoirs and treatment plants and fix the bloody leaks.."
Yes! It's amazing how the old complaints about the leaky state of the water system & how they needed more 'investment' (read: public money) have dried up in the last few years...
"Yes, water could get scarcer in the UK due to climate change, but only if it gets colder."
Well actually, it IS getting colder.
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