People should avoid flushing the lavatory if they go for a pee in order to help save water, a senior water executive has said.
Cathryn Ross, the strategy and regulatory affairs director at Thames Water, also called for people to take shorter showers to cut down on their water use.
Water companies have targets to cut per capita consumption set by Ofwat, the regulator. Most, including Thames, failed to meet those targets in 2021-22.
The targets have already been set and people aren’t curbing their consumption to meet the targets.
Which tells us nothing at all about whether the targets are sensible or necessary. Just that we, the folk, are being naughty by not meeting the bureaucrats’ targets.
How do they count leaks from a water main?
As part of the total consumption of the customer? If so, then they can STFU.
They can take my power shower from my warm, wet, wrinkled hands . . .
With UK water consumption levels ‘unsustainable’
The Conservatives have given us the worst of both worlds – all the immigrants we didn’t want, but also none of the infrastructure upgrades we need to maintain a late 1990’s standard of living.
Anyway, there is a clear and obvious conflict of interest here: naturally, the British government would prefer you didn’t flush away shit.
We’ll be flushing away a lot of it come the next general election.
She could tell us we need to hold it in for a bit longer. And if we drink less water, we won’t need to go as often, and we’ll get a double win.
Did I see it here on the thread about banning power showers? 5% of water used by industry, 5% domestic, 90% agriculture.
Grow a few less tomatoes and problem solved eh?
The Tories, even St Maggie of Thatcher, have lot to answer for. Water companies should be incentivised to invest, not allowed to just pay ginormous dividends to Johnny Foreigner. Just like all parts of the NHS should be paid for curing people rather than just pissing the money up the wall on diversity managers and lived experience managers. That’s like Auntie paying Gazza £1,350,000 under a dodgy tax scheme just to piss everyone off.
The water companies are incentivised to invest. They’re allowed a return on their capital base – their investments. Then OfWat limits their capital base, deliberately restricts it, to make sure their profits don’t rise.
The post-privatisation system was you’re allowed to raise prices by inflation plus x (because everyone knew water needed lots of investment, that’s why privatisation) with x% being controlled now get on with it.
It’s been falling out of the sky pretty much continuously for months now. We do not have a fucking water shortage. My sodden boots and waterproofs tell me this.
Oddly enough Waitrose is following the same principle of encouraging people to buy less stuff using the simple expedient of not filling its shelves.
The policy is currently undermined by the existence of Sainsburys but it won’t be long before Michael Gove -the ultimate four-letter man¹- insists that supermarket loyalty cards forbid access to all supermarkets barring the one he mandates for us.
_______
1. You are free to select your own choice of four letters (for now).
We should return to traditional practices – pee on your compost heap and get the nitrogen back into the environment the correct way.
AtC – absolutely! It also surprises the grass snakes who lurk therein.
I’m wondering if Anheuser Busch would like to burnish their ESG credentials by running an ad showing Dylan Mulvaney having a jimmy on my compast heap.
(-ost not -ast)
My information is that no reservoir has been built in the UK since 1962 – happy to be corrected.
In 1962 the population was 53M. Today it is 67M (at least).
Could there possibly be a connection between these observations and ‘water shortage’?
There is no sacrifice that won’t be made on the altar of the climate change gods. You will piss in a bucket* peasant!
*plastic buckets are banned
But there’s a hole in my bucket, dear Greta, dear Greta.
There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Greta, a hole!
The last reservoir was opened in 1992, not 1962. List is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reservoirs_in_the_United_Kingdom
the main reason none have been built since is as always, NIMBYs. See for example the resistance to the Abingdon plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Water_Abingdon_Reservoir
and opportunistic scum Lib Dem MP’s like Layla Moron https://unherd.com/thepost/layla-moran-and-britains-missing-reservoirs/
@Terry Ough
Rutland Water. Constructed ’71 – ’75
The regulator should be called Oftwat.
(Fucking Newspeak-style names for bureaucracies.)
TMB
My Sainsburys is a disaster of empty shelves. Their distribution system has been buggered for years.
There is a Waitrose opposite, which I never use because I can never find anything in it that I want to buy. I am forced to go to Aldi down the road because the cat likes their tinned food, but even they had empty shelves the other day because a delivery did not turn up.
As for reservoirs, we have none at all in my part of the county due to Nimbyism. Our water comes direct from the chalk and is rock hard. Population is increasing apace, with lots of new housing going up and no provision for this growth.
TMB
Why not cut out the middleman (LOL) and pour the AB product directly onto the compost heat?
– *plastic buckets are banned
But seven plastic bins from the National Bin Service will be compulsory:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11971321/Government-forced-delay-plans-make-households-pay-seven-waste-bins-backlash.html
It’s been falling out of the sky pretty much continuously for months now. We do not have a fucking water shortage. My sodden boots and waterproofs tell me this.
This. Britain is one of the wettest places on earth outside the tropics. If we wanted a government ‘make work’ project, a national water grid – to facilitate transfers between the wetter NW and the drier SE – would have been a far more effective use of our money than HS2.
. . . a far more effective use of our money than HS2.
Brilliant. Convert Birmingham into a massive reservoir (with suitable decontamination) and use the already cleared HS2 route to lay giant underground pipes to London and the sarfeast. You could build housing along the entire stretch just to keep Tim happy.
The fuss about dam building was why we built a desal plant here in Queensland.
I’m sure I’ve seen plenty of proposals in The Register for building them in the UK. Though now I think of it that was quite a while ago.
Boganboy
Indeed yes, Thanes Water wanted to build one in the estuary but Red Ken stopped them. The proposal seems to have “gone away” since then.
Oftwat has set the water companies targets to reduce per capita consumption – did I hear thast right? Shouldn’t that read that Oftwat has set the general public targets to reduce per capita consumption? The next question is why hasn’t it told us?
Maybe because it has no authority to order us around …
The next move will be for smart meters to cut off supply if we use “too much” and the water companies, rather than Oftwat, will get all the blame.
john77
Each time I see a comment like that, I’m even happier that I never got a smart electricity meter.
“Water, pee, & targets” recalls to mind a bar or tavern in the US which reduced missing the urinals by placeing decals of bugs in the urinals. Apparently men, perhaps especially dunk men, like to target their streams.
My current workplace has bulleyes with “Hit the target” written on them in the urinals. And this in a zero alcohol site, so clearly it isn’t just drunks who miss.
Boganboy, Melbourne’s desal plant is equally ridiculous. We’ve got enough water storage to cover a ten year drought, Thomson dam alone is more water than Sydney has in total, but we built the damn thing and have to order a pro forma amount of water every year just to fire it up and keep it in working order. Never been needed. Construction was late though – ironically, mostly rain delays.
tex, best urinal I’ve used is in ‘The Main Street Station’, Las Vegas. The urinals are mounted on sections of the Berlin Wall.
Best urinal I’ve used is the Maginot line. Obviously I wasn’t the first to piss all over that.