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Try telling the people of Cockermouth that meters will combat water shortage in the UK

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Posted on 08/12/2009 at 10:55 by Gary Wright

Surely someone needs a bit of a slap for choosing this week to tell us we are all going to have to pay for water meters in our homes… even though global warming is set to bring more rain.

You could be forgiven for being confused over plans by the Government at this time to make us use less water in our homes but is set to cost us £200 each for the meter.

I’m sure even the people of Cockermouth could find it in themselves to chuckle over any claim that we need to save water.

Here in Kent we’ve ‘suffered’ more than most with hosepipe bans and alleged shortages for years.

But this week it was revealed that meters are the way to meet Government consumption targets for each person of down from 148 to 130 litres a day by 2030.

Why? How can that really help? Water addicts will shower in service stations, wash their car at filling stations and drink more water at work. It’s impossible to monitor. Will we visit people’s homes and they’ll tell us not to flush? Will they ask us to ‘go’ before we visit?

Anyone who has bought a house built in the past 10 years will already have a meter and, let’s be honest, it’s no big deal.

So long as there are houses without, then those naughty water bosses have to charge similar figures for metered and un-metered homes because people talk – though they are not necessarily the sort of people I’d invite around for dinner.

The meter is not really a big concern. But the new report suggests we are going to be charged £200 to have it fitted. Now that’s wrong.

(What will actually happen is we’ll be threatened with the £200 charge, then water bosses relent and tell us they’ll build it into our bills for the next five years to help us and we’ll all breath a sigh of relief).

It is of course another money-making scam to pay for investment in old Victorian infrastructure that has been ignored since privatisation.

And it’s being dressed up as encouraging us to ‘save water’, even though the climate change worriers tell us there’s going to be loads more rain across northern Europe.

Civil servant Anna Walker led the new study which concludes charging you for what is used will force us all to save.

Nonsense it’ll just mean rich folk can bathe whenever they want to and the poor will be even more smelly.

No surprise that the Environment Agency agrees. Its spokesman trotted out the old line that almost half of us in the UK live in areas where there is less water per person than in Spain or Morocco.

It’s a statistic that means nothing but the Environment Agency insists on using it. Spain can expect more rain too if the climate worriers are right, so, the Agency can continue trotting out the same useless line as though it means something.

As the great and good –15,000 of them – assemble in Copenhagen to talk about global warming to argue about who’s telling the truth and who isn’t and no doubt tie themselves in knots, I fear no one will be stupid enough to say water shortages in the UK will be a part of man’s destruction of our planet.

Only this Government, forgetful of water company profligacy towards top bosses and shareholders over the past two decades, would dare to suggest that.

Posted on 13/12/2009 at 20:28 by Paul Devall

Maybe the Cockermouth floods might not have happened had they not built a town below the level of a large lake and on a flood plain?

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