From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
They won’t be happy until they control every aspect of our lives:
Power showers could be banned from sale under Government plans to save water.
It comes as ministers want to cut individual demand from 144 litres a day to 122 litres a day by 2038 to protect supplies.
The plans include the development of new standards for showers and taps which restrict how much water they can use.
This could mean ending the sale of power showers, which use around 10 to 16 litres of water a minute, meaning a five-minute shower can use 80 litres – compared to around 20 litres in a typical electric shower.
It may also result in restrictions on certain models of toilet, amid concerns over how hundreds of litres a day are lost to leaks, mostly from dual-flush loos.
In its new Plan for Water, the Government confirmed it would “develop minimum product standards for water efficiency including for showers, taps, and toilets”, including mandatory labelling of such products.
But ministers want to go further to tackle water demand. The Telegraph understands one possibility considered by officials is banning ‘high flow’ bathroom products from sale.
It comes following warnings from The Environment Agency that parts of England could run out of water within 20 years because of the impact of climate change and leaks.
Water use could also be included on energy performance certificates, which are required by homeowners and landlords when they sell a property or rent it out.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2023/04/04/power-showers-ban-water/
The pathetic use of climate change as an excuse is an outright lie, as England is getting wetter, not drier:
No, the real objective is control. How dare we want to use water!
Meanwhile the government also wants to roll out smart water meters:
Water meters will be installed in more homes under Government proposals to cut household usage.
As part of its new plan to clean up and protect water supplies announced on Tuesday, the Government wants to cut household demand by 25 per cent by 2050.
As part of the drive, water companies will be told to rapidly increase the rollout of smart water meters to households across the country.
New build homes are also set to have more efficient taps, toilets and washing machines installed as standard.
Writing for the Telegraph, Therese Coffey, the Environment Secretary, says: “We need to make sure we have enough water – for our homes, our businesses, our farmers many of whom producing our crops are in drought zones, and for nature.
Most of central and southern England is considered water-stressed, but few of the regions’ water companies have rolled out compulsory metering.
The Government also wants to see the rollout of more smart water meters in other regions of the country as it tries to cut individual demand, currently around 152 litres per day.
The Environment Agency has warned that parts of England could run out of water within 20 years because of the impact of climate change and leaks.
The National Infrastructure Commission, which advises the Government, has called for water meters to be introduced across the country by 2030.
Around half of households already have a water meter, although the majority are “dumb” and not connected to a network.
The use of smart meters would enable water companies to charge different tariffs for households with a high usage, known as dynamic pricing.
Dynamic pricing is being encouraged by Ofwat and trialled by water companies including Affinity, which will charge some customers a higher tariff if they go over a limit set by the company.
The regulator expects water companies to set out their plans to reach 100 per cent metering and has warned they could face penalties if they continue to miss targets to cut consumption.
It has also speeded up £400m investment by water companies that will go toward installing 462,000 smart meters.
Just like smart energy meters, these will allow water companies to charge us more whenever they feel like it.
And the cost of installing them is astronomic, around £1000 per household, based on the Telegraph’s numbers. No prizes for guessing who will pay that bill!
They’ll be handing out bath permits next!
The articles specifically refer to central and southern England as being water stressed. They may be, for all sorts of reasons, but climate change is not one of them:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-and-regional-series
Finally the second article includes this comment:
Wettest? Why does the Telegraph not check simple facts before printing rubbish like this? (Needless to say, it was written by the useless Emma Gatten!)
England is getting wetter, not drier:
______________________________
Same is true of the United States:
a bit warmer and a bit wetter – sounds perfect for gardeners!
Facts are like women. Who can define them?
It is clear that a certain US Supreme Court judge cannot.
If Women can ‘self identify’ … why cant facts ??
The true problem is that the water companies are not spending enough of their vast profits on replacing very old and leaking supply pipes. This policy seems designed to protect those profits – despite so many of the water companies now under foreign ownership with vast profits shipped to overseas parent companies. Hmmm something doesn’t add up here.
Then there is rainfall – the Enironment Agency keep increasing the risk factor of flooding having modelled increased rainfall whilst DEFRA seem to claim the opposite. That fractured and opposing view is and should be labelled “Climate Chaos”.
This is the problem when you rely on models created by people who use their own, often very partial, assumptions with little or no basis on reality or fact.
Do water companies really make vast profits?
Yes by all accounts from recent media coverage of sewage leaks against a background of huge profits
Doesn’t mean that making the water potable gets cheaper or costs less energy. The massive flow heads are actually highly useful for actually getting clean but I’m happy with my 1980’s all metal properly designed 1.7gpm shower head that I’ve had to slowly bore out to 2.1 due to wear ruining the spray pattern over the years.
I still use the full flow hand-sprayer to rinse off tho since chemical burns are even less “green” than supporting the water treatment plant.
As warm air holds more moisture, we would expect islands on the edge of a ocean to be getting wetter in a warming world – not drier.
The problem is a lack of investment in infrastructure as the population of the SE has increased. Water privatisation has been a failure.
The sewerage treatment is inadequate too.
No matter what the problem, the only solution is government ownership and control.
I think it is rather the policy laid down in the EU Water Directive, to which the UK still adheres, that has proved to be the failure. No new reservoirs unless absolutely essential, after all other measures have been tried. Use price to ration supply. No new inter river basin transfers of water by pipeline or aqueduct for a start.
“Water privatisation has been a failure.”
Not for the directors & shareholders.
Europe’s population would have been falling were it not for massively importing foreign labor to substitute the natives. You wonder why those who come for a better place to live would want to have more and more ‘government’ control?
“Smart” water meters, eh? Well, taking my normal understanding that anything with “smart” in the title means “terminally thick”, we can all see that the “Government” is up to something. Now what could that be, I wonder?
Smart meters are on a development path almost 20 years behind the technological world. The highly regulated industry moves slowly.
Also capital intensive. There are generators older than you, which I am safe to say knowing nothing about you.
So it could have been even worse ? Luckily for those in control we all carry around our smartphone (chip) so they know exactly where we are every minute of the day. Advice, never bring that smart device if you are protesting government.
“Most of central and southern England is considered water-stressed, but few of the regions’ water companies have rolled out compulsory metering.”
We’ve had compulsory metering here in Woke-achusetts for many years. After the meters were installed, the price of water shot up dramatically- I suppose to pay for the meters, reading them, documenting usage, billing, paying for the water bureaucrats, etc. I bet the total water usage hasn’t decreased but the price has gone up- to pay for the “process”.
All by their insidious design!
One intent of radio meters is _not_ to pay for meter readers. An average USA/European human from outside the industry would be shocked by the era the systems were established and how little they’ve changed. Lead pipe in Michigan, USA, was not a conspiracy, it was a “well nobody’s complaining they ain’t got water from that pipe today”
“Government plans to save water.”
Everything has a price and the trick is to price the basics out of the reach of the lower orders. That’s not a problem for the elites, they can afford it…
“Rishi Sunak pays to upgrade electricity grid for heated pool at North Yorkshire home”
https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2023-03-13/rishi-sunak-pays-to-upgrade-electricity-grid-for-heated-pool-at-home
I believe it uses a fair few gallons to fill.
The use of less water in toilets is not very helpfull, as later you have to use 100 fold more fresh water to clean the main dirty water tubes.
Low flow toilets and an aging sewage infrastructure are now and will continue to be a bonanza for sewer rodders and plumbing contractors. After a period of time sewer lines are breached and taken out of alignment by natural forces, including tree roots, and require frequent rodding, treatment for root invasion, lining of pipes or even total replacement. The budgets for this work are ignored in favor of new projects, which eventually need maintenance themselves. Repairing and replacing urban infrastructure will be one of the great challenges of the future.
Yes
Looks like you blokes in the UK are going to get stinkier and stinkier!
Pheromones rool.
And this is a Conservative government! Has Nigel Farage retired from politics? Are Brits going to to be quiet about this?
In the UK, the conservatives are the ones who want to introduce socialism more slowly.
France isn’t better lol
Hyraulic Empire, aka Water Control Empire. It was either Niven or Heinlen where I first read about it.
Read them again. The old books are more challenging to get through as an adult. The SF visionaries of the cold war era built worlds around assumptions that fell behind 2023 culture.
Asimov in particular projected a changing world around a static culture – as if vastly increased freedom, luxury and mobility would leave an average human’s outlook unchanged.
Samuel Johnson sat down on a park bench in London, one “hot” summer day, and the lady next to him said “you smell”, whereupon he uttered the famous words, “No madam, you smell, I stink”. Hard to imagine the culture of Britain has not advanced in hundreds of years. Beam me up, Scotty, because my genes are British and I’m doomed.
Why would they want to meter and charge for water when it’s free from the sky just like solar and wind energy? What the Hell is going on here? Sic Nick and Griff onto these thieving carpetbaggers and robber barons.
The industry requires capital and labor. If your theory is correct, install a rain barrel under your gutter spout and make “their” meter a decoration.
There’s just soooo much garbage and Urban Myth in this.
And lies lies lies concealing a separate motive.
Leaks:Pity the poor water companies endlessly being beaten by this urban myth.
It’s because the water companies KNOW that they don’t have any great leak problem and that comes about because:
OK some rainwater gets in there but they can allow for that and to a very good first approximation, the water they get back equals the amount they send out.
So: No Leaks
The link we have to Smart Water Meters ‘fitted without knowledge‘ is from Thames Water and they, obviously, look after London’s water
That is where the problem is and the great problem Thames Water has have is how to explain it ‘delicately’ and within the bounds of Political Correctness.
It is that a great many houses, with no water meter, in London have been overtaken by illegal immigrants. Packed in like sardines by ‘less than scrupulous’ landlords.
Thus 20, 30 and even more individuals are stuffed into houses intended for normal sized families = Mum, Dad + 2 or 3 kids
It is those houses that Thames want to fit meters to because those 40+ people are using all that water and Thames Water damn well know it.
Money: just recently the issue of raw sewage flowing into rivers has come to the fore
How could it not: Government has decreed it wants vast numbers of new houses. Not least for all the tax revenue they generate.
But nobody wants new sewers and drains. Especially in SE England, things are ‘a bit cramped’ and digging great big holes and ditches to put sewer pipes into is massively expensive, massivly inconvenient, even before nobody wants them in their backyard.
So they don’t get built and the drainage from all the new houses just gets added to the existing sewers
Which were built by the Victorians, for a Victorian sized population.
Even worse and because of all the horses there were on the streets, the Victorian home sewage pipes were also used to take away the horse poo from the streets and roads.
The rain conveniently washing all that poo, muck and stink down into them.
Now you see a humongous problem.
It gets worse in that the Victorian drains were, very robust and advanced for their time, built using brick and cement
The ‘worser than worse’ problem is that human poo, also rainwater, is acidic and over the last 100++ years, has dissolved away the cement holding those sewers together
The entire system is now simultaneously overloaded and collapsing – hence how raw sewage is now pouring into rivers
You now understand the need for money……………
Runoff is a major problem
As someone who knows the industry, it is easy to identify you as someone who does not know the industry.
*(sanitary sewer) inflow, infiltration, & rainfall induced inflow are not something that are easy to figure out.
*’water out’ vs. ‘sewer in’ as any kind of a metric in metropolitan utility services is absolutely ridiculous.
I could go on, but KevinM has already stated it nicely.
If it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to check.
Never mind the fact that the birth rate is below replacement and the population will start to decline in the next twenty years. With the amount of rainfall they get to replenish aquifers there is no need for water conservation, but as noted, restrictions aren’t about responding to an imminent crisis that will never happen. It’s about assuaging the imaginary fears of the unintelligent who also harbor envy of achievers. Dumb, envious, and tyrannical. And we let these half-wits rule our lives?
“the population will start to decline in the next twenty years” I feel like I’ve been hearing that for … 20 years? We can’t be sceptics about only one data set, especially if the data comes from the same source.
Imagine if it happens, as it eventually must, the majority of humanity trying to live in retirement? I hope its not my generation.
Every projection I have read for the last 50 years, has put the point at which the population peaks and starts to decline at somewhere in the 2030 to 2050 range.
The only change over that time is that the time of peak population has been getting sooner.
Numerous data sets show it. The declining birth rate now well below replacement is common throughout Europe, North America, and other anglophile countries. The only thing sustaining their population growth is the elderly who haven’t died yet, and immigration. That won’t last long. Japan, Italy, and China are already in population decline. By 2100 China will have roughly half the population it does today. It’s a huge economic tsunami for a lot of countries as a smaller number of young people support a large aging population.
I think that peak population as least has some empirical support, as we are seeing that trend already in some countries. Unlike other “projections”.
Doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong, just that something exists to support it at least as a reasonable possibility.
(And yes, I know the difference with those specific countries vs. the rest)
I don’t know why the Govt don’t just ban running the hot tap to get hot water, and mandate those powered taps that provide instant hot water. Oh, that needs energy, which we must reduce consumption of. You can’t win 🥴
“… the Govt … ban … and mandate”
The other words exist too. I left the important ones.
The correct chart for an article would be residential water use, which is tracked very accurately for billing. Water used per citizen has certainly trended up at the same time reservoir projects have trended down. I’m not worried for England, but as a resident of the SW USA I see possible problems.
Nuclear desalinization plants are decades behind where I would have thought.
Point was – it might not matter how much more rain falls if more people are using more total water.
“Tragedy of the Commons”
These policies are not about the water or electricity. They are about money as cost of public service AND anticonsumerism BECAUSE the Nation as a part of the planet (the narrative) can’t afford economically or resource wise a general 1st World standard of life.
The West insists population growth is necessary to avoid an economic collapse. Because we are a stockmarket economy that exists through debt financing, an increasing population causing a growing economy is actually needed. But how to pay for and increase the water and roads and electricity needed for this larger population and economy (at 1st World levels)?
Can’t be done. There isn’t profit in the system – why we use deficit financing. The per capita cost of running the country has to be reduced to keep the clunker running.
15 minute cities mean road development and maintenance costs plummet. Consumption of all product goods drop as people stay home. Spend their money on services like pubs and restaurants and deliveries. Less water, less water pipes, reservoirs, treatment plants, all the power needed for those things.
We’re in error to argue there’s enough water. Or electricity prices will rise, cause manufacturing to leave/make products too expensive to buy. We are looking at these things as errors of thinking, unnecessary or having “unexpected” side effects. They aren’t. The drive is to reduce per capita and, possibly, gross Consumption and gross maintenance costs of the World, one community at a time.
This is the outcome of a scarcity philosophy which I believe is actually correct IF you want to have a 1st World lifestyle across the Western globe AND are unwilling or unable to produce essentially free energy a la fusion.
If you have “free” energy, you can access minerals at very low concentrations, recycle what is not currently recycled, and power whatever you want wherever you want it powered. It’s the Star Trek future. The cost of doing falls to the cost of labor, and what is that? The cost of food, shelter and clothing. All retirees understand this: once your house, car and furniture are paid for, daily running costs are pretty low. Certainly those on the dole and payments during the pandemic learned that: if you don’t have to save, build for the future, you don’t need much money.
We need to keep in our minds the grand narrative of reduced gross and per capita consumption as the underlying principle driving modern political policies. The elites aren’t changing the system to benefit the entirety of mankind but changing its management so that the top few percent can continue to live as they do within a shrinking global capacity that still insists on more people and more commerce.
As we see in France, Holland and Sri Lanka, the push is to have the majority have less and do less while asking for less. That’s the drive. Not to be alarmed because there’s not enough rain is falling on the Cotswolds.
You’re arguing againt econonomy of scale.
The economy of scale has limited benefits. A Monopoly on any goods is the ultimate example in practice of economy of scale. But that’s not my point.
An economy of scale reduces the COST per unit but actually stimulates consumption (by lowering costs). The goal of all these “sustainability” or planet-saving conservation movements is to reduce gross consumption. Reducing per capita consumption is a tool, but the project is to reduce gross consumption.
In a growing population, the Malthusian view is a limit to a sustainable gross consumption is inevitable. There is a limit to gross consumption, at which the renewable resource – cod fish, clean water or air, even wind/solar power – can’t keep up. The activists are very aware that the 1st World lifestyle of the few can’t be extended to the many. And the many ARE going to demand better than what they currently have. It may be a delaying tactic, but a reduced per capita in the 1st World consumption is necessary by fact and by example.
The activists know they cannot progress to controlling the rest of the world before handling the excesses of the 1st part. Yes, it’s often both unnecessary – shower heads in England – and ineffective – England’s water supplies don’t affect Saharan droughts – but they must do something more than talk.
Notice that nobody, including Biden, suggests E-cars are affordable for the lower economic classes while also mandating the end of ICE in 10 years. They aren’t focused on just reduced fossil fuel use. They want less cars, less driving, less roads, less travel, period. Less gross consumption – people have NO personal transport – with per capita reduction being purely a convenient but misdirecting mathematical artifact.
What is an “electric shower.”
Sounds like a good way to recharge.
“What is an “electric shower.””
A thunder storm.
Essentially, point of use water heating. Water is heated at the shower head as it is used.
That’s an option. I put in a propane in-line heater instead. More efficient, and less electricity (just for the igniter)
Our govts in Vancouver Canada keep harping on about how us peasants need to reduce our water usage as water is allegedly in short supply due to “climate change”TM. No new reservoirs or reservoir upgrades are planned. But in the next breath, they tell us our taxes need to go up to accommodate a million more migrants over the next few years. So “climate change” isn’t the actual problem, but more people drawing from the existing infrastructure is.
I find that invoking “climate change” in a conversation is the same as my folks back in the day saying solemnly “it’s God’s will”: it’s meant to end the conversation because the invoker has nothing to back up his argument anymore.
They haven’t started any of that crap where I live and besides, I have my own well with 62 ft, of head, as of a few years ago when I had the casing cleaned and a new submersible pump installed.
They need to go further, the water must be cold, soap contains something so shouldn’t be used, you must shave your head so no shampoo will be required as that contains something as well. As a general rule anything that contains something or requires heat must be banned. You won’t have to go anywhere because there will be nothing to do and anyway that requires energy.
But the state loves us and they will provide adequate nuts each day to provide the energy we need to continue to live in the necessary purgatory to make us feel so good that the planet has been saved. Thankyou State.
Here in the Phoenix area, in the Sonoran desert, there are, as I understand, some 200 golf courses. Green, lush golf courses all summer long.
So don’t tell me I have to use a flow restricted shower head. I enjoy golf but I don’t play golf nearly as often as I shower.
I wonder why the ancestors built dams? Now let me think…….?
Stunning satellite images show California reservoir drained by drought is nearly 100% full | Daily Mail Online
Governments created problem. Immigration without infrastructure.