Living in London means that my supplier is Thames Water, which makes a profit out of pollution. I decided that if the government wouldn’t act, I could at least do my part and not pay for this travesty.
The case for not paying these outrageous charges is clear. The water companies are not fulfilling their duties and instead they are discharging raw sewage into our waterways and lives. Beyond that, they have brought in hosepipe bans, despite last winter being one of the wettest on record, because they haven’t built enough reservoirs to store water for use in the summer.
You’re actually in the House of Lords. Therefore you know that some – some – sewage in the rivers is allowable under the terms of the licences. Also, that the reason reservoirs aren’t bing built is that the planning system denies the ability to build reservoirs.
So the bint is complaining about the system not the company, yet is protesting the company not the system.
Sigh.
I hope they take her to court – she won’t have a leg to stand on!
It also really just shows how rich we are, doesn’t it? People used to take moral stands because of poverty, discrimination. There were white people that marched with Dr King and got arrested. The likes of Sophie Scholl died in their stand against Nazism.
It’s also, I think, cosplaying doing the same thing. Being the brave champion of the people. Jenny Jones won’t end up in Cell Block H. Worst case, the bailiffs will take some goods.
And of course because the Greens are nutters and don’t do trade offs, they’re both against polluting rivers, and against building reservoirs.
https://share.google/Lqhfe74ZYiFijyD2L
And why has it become so expensive? Because of Green demands. Same as Hinckley. Same as HS2.
The Thames Water issue is about the reservoir in Stanford-in-the-Vale, which is more about Nimbyism.
The greens have made a lot of gains in rural areas by being hardcore BANANAs.
Greens are full of daft, middle class women. Debating one is debating on easy mode.
It does seem to be a type. Superficially articulate but lobotomised. There are plenty around my way, some of whom still wear masks.
Have you ever seen so many utter wankers in one place?
I hope they throw her in the Thames.
Letting rivers have more shit in winter only became an issue when drone photography came along.
Everyone lived in blissful ignorance. You didn’t sit on a beach in Winter, your tap water was clean. Rats and otters shit in rivers all year.
The only people affected were a few fishermen like Feargal Sharkey. So in order for him to not lose a few days by the riverbank, we have to spend billions.
W.C. Fields was right.
I met Sharkey a few times when he was head of Music UK. Full of himself and knew how to grift. Horrible voice, too. One day, unannounced, he left Music UK and completely disappeared from the music lobbying scene. I wonder why…
I was amused to see that Viz magazine takes the piss out of him as Frugal Sharkey, characterised as someone who makes toast by holding a slice of bread over a candle.
Teenage Kicks is a banger. But there are these people (see also Billy Bragg) who are known, but really didn’t do a lot of great songs. I can name more great Billy Ocean songs. There are more great songs on Dare by the Human League than 40 years of Billy Bragg
Hot Chocolate? Over two hours of top-10 hits. Every night.
It’s a little before my time, and I can only think of 4 or 5, but I will do a deep dive.
You could say that every one’s a winner.
Happy days.
Baby!
‘You don’t remember me do you!!!’
Don’t forget they were multi racial and made no fuss about it – just good friends who had formed a band together. Errol Brown was fairly a political but said he supported Thatcher so that put him into the ‘persona non grata’ category!!
Never forget the level of evil you are dealing with – these people killed billions and want to kill billions more!!
Disclosure: I was with the band 83 to 86. Best time on stage I ever had: they were a truly kickin’ live band. “It Started With A Kiss” is one of the greatest pop songs ever written and it never failed to have the desired effect. Those boys never went short, let me assure you.
Fun fact: it was my job to speak Alexis Korner’s line in Emma: “There’ll be no spooks in my family.”
Somewhere in the garage I have a cardboard box containing all of my backstage passes and tour schedule booklets, which are, er, somewhat annotated. It’s next to the box full of cassettes of rough mixes from sessions I did.
Brother Louie surely?
Ah yes. It’s been 40 years…
Some friends of mine are big fans of Billy Bragg. I never get tired of pointing out that capitalism has made him a very wealthy man.
It’s occurred to me that because it’s just Billy Bragg, writing the songs, playing the songs, the money doesn’t get split much. Maybe a few session musicians. The production is pretty basic.
If you listen to those Spiritualised albums like Let It Come Down, it’s got a choir, orchestra. Over 100 singers and musicians worked on it.
Which is amazing, really. Because he has no musical talent.
Also, Teenage Kicks is the song, not the singer. They could have dragged just about anyone off the street, given them the words on a scrap of paper and stood them in front of the mic, and it would not have made any difference.
Bragg’s ‘A13 Road To The Sea’ is the most memorable of his stuff for me anyway. A lot of the political stuff that he did in the 80’s/90’s is looking and sounding incredibly dated and somewhat naive now in the light of current issues.
Gosh. That sparked memories. Headbanging to T’Undertones on their tours at Bath Pavilion 3 years in a row. All standing venue, sticky floor (probably from the Beer fests)…good times!
Can one assume that she won’t be shitting for the duration of her protest?
As shit comes out of both ends she needs to shut up as well.
Jones is absolutely appalling – the equivalent of one of the major war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. May even have killed more indirectly with her advocacy of Green policies. One of the few that could be considered on a par with Murphy for evil. I hope Thames Water take her to the cleaners but my guess is the largely communist judiciary and legal profession will stymie any attempt by them to do so.
They certainly elevate the high IQ’s to the Lords don’t they?. University graduate?
Just look at the woman. What do you expect? Is there any chance at all of a coherent thought being in there?
From wiki “Jones grew up on the Moulsecoomb estate in Brighton. As a child, she mucked out horse stables so she could get free horse rides. She attended the co-educational Westlain Grammar School (later Falmer High School and now BACA). Before entering politics, Jones worked as a financial controller in London. She studied environmental archaeology at the UCL Institute of Archaeology as a mature student, graduating with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in 1991”
She should be used to bathing in shit
I decided that if the government wouldn’t act, I could at least do my part and not pay for this travesty.The case for not paying these outrageous charges is clear.
I must be missing something. Here, if you don’t pay your water bill, they cut off your water.
She’s probably registered as vulnerable so they’re not allowed to cut her off.
They aren’t allowed to cut anyone’s water off. Forbidden by law. Against their ‘uman rights innit? They either have to take you to court for bad debts, or maybe get your benefits garnered instead.
In US, that would lead to the water company reporting the failure to pay to credit agencies. Credit rating probably isn’t significant for older, wealthy people like Ms Jones, but she’s luring her followers into a personal finance blunder.
Surface drainage and some streams and rivers drain into the sewers, by (Victorian) design to flush them through and move the contents to the treatment works.
In modern times, far more hard surface, rooftops, etc exist meaning greater surface run off, far more grey water goes into the sewers. At times of prolonged or heavy rain, sewage treatment works cannot cope with the volume, so raw sewage discharge is necessary.
Plus we have 14 million too many recent arrivals.
The long term solution is to separate surface drainage from the sewers… ££££. I am sure Lady Whatever would be happy to pay extra.
The Thames Gateway Water Treatment Works is a desalination plant designed to take brackish water from Thames outflow as the tide turns so it requires only part desalination by reverse osmosis. It can provide 150 million litres of fresh water daily and was built at a cost of about £250 million in 2010 as back-up insurance for London in times of water storage.
It has on,y operate five times in 15 years providing overall about eight days worth of water. Currently it is out of service for maintenance so cannot help with current water shortages, but will be back in operation by the end of this year when the drought is over.
Make of that what you will.
Surface drainage and some streams and rivers drain into the sewers, by (Victorian) design to flush them through and move the contents to the treatment works.
That’s not actually true. Victorians tended to separate sewage & rainwater. There’s a good engineering reason for doing this has to do with flow rates. You need a certain flow rate to clear pipes. So if you have a problem with sewage pipes blocking. For instance where inadequate fall to cause sufficient flow. You reduce the size of pipes, not increase them. Flat conversion I did, where we had to run the pipes between the joists & were limited by the depth of the floors to get sufficient fall, we ran the wastes in 3″ rather than 4″.
If you combine sewage with water run off, you need a pipe of a diameter will cope with the envisaged run off. That pipe will not clear when it’s only running sewage. Not sufficient flow..
So who built the 100,000 km of Combined Sewage pjping in the UK?
https://www.water.org.uk/news-views-publications/views/we-must-invest-our-sewers-regardless-their-age
Dodgy builders seeing a surface water drain and plumbing their development’s waste water drain into it.
“so raw sewage discharge is necessary”
I’m not sure that’s right. The sewage is discharged but it has been filtered, it’s just not been treated, you won’t see a dead sheep or chicken in the river. Overflow of the filtering system can occur of course, but aiui raw sewage is not the same as untreated.
And it is, by very definition, heavily diluted by rainwater. Hands up everyone who thinks we can stop farm animals from shitting within 50m of a watercourse?
Privatised Thames Water has recently opened its largest ever project, the Thames Tideway, which takes sewage from dozens of outfalls all the way to Beckton. It was only one billion over budget, largely accounted for by covid restrictions and general inflation.
Compare HS2, Hinkley Point…
And Andeh and this bint want to nationalise it.
Not forgetting Thames built rhe London ring main, 50 miles long, completed pretty much on time and on budget. At under a quarter of a billion pounds it cost a fraction of the Channel Tunnel, (but but bat tunnels & fish discos)
Not going to pay for the service, but still going to use it? Whilst talking of the company not keeping their side of the contract?
Got to hand it to her – all the sense of “doing something” without the inconvenence and cost of actually doing something. And getting someone else to pay for all your stuff to boot. A masterclass in luxury protesting!