The absurd way we're ruled now
This caught our eye:
British households will need water butts in order to cut use by 20 per cent, says Environment Agency
The idea that we’re going to run out of water in a country as damp as Britain does raise an eyebrow. It’s to make the same claim that Italy is going to run out of excitability, or Finland stoicism.
The new National Framework for Water Resources, launched on Monday, warns that the average person needs to reduce their water use from 143 to 110 litres per day.
An Environment Agency spokesperson told The Telegraph this will include encouraging households to invest in water butts, dual-flush toilets and eco-friendly showers in order to cut waste.
The department has been working with NGO Waterwise to find ways the average person can reduce their water use.
Ah, Waterwise, that’s these people. Who state that their target is 100 litres per person per day. For no clear reason other than just, well, everyone should be smellier apparently.
As to facts:
The UK receives a large amount of rainfall, however there are limited natural or man made methods for water storage. This means that there is a relatively small volume of water available per person in the UK.
The solution is thus to build more reservoirs.
Apparently that’s not allowed these days. Despite the obvious point that we’ve already got a very useful, rather large and entirely efficient water recycling system in the country. It’s called “clouds”.
Leave all of that aside and assume that there really is the requirement to use less water. We have two methods in front of us. We can use the labour of an NGO, the government, society at large if you will, to hector the population into reverting to medieval practices instead of using modern technology to supply the desired resource. Rather than the efficient method of changing the price.
We desire to ration something, price is the efficient method of rationing. One of us lives where there is just such a system. A flat monthly fee - a low one - is paid for the usual reasonable supply for a household. As consumption rises above this the price per unit rises. A missinstalled stopcock led to a leak and a £600 monthly bill. People don’t - OK, people learn not to - waste water. And gardens simply are not irrigated with potable water, not at those prices they’re not.
That is, everything that is being said and done about water supply is, in this British scheme, wrong. There is plenty of water, we’re just not collecting it. Instead of collecting it the solution is to limit household consumption. But instead of doing that they efficient way - charging for it - we must be bureaucratically managed into the correct obsequies to the current religion.
This is absurd. And we should therefore stop doing it. Price water by level of consumption and leave the efficient method we’ve got, the market, to deal with the problem.