Up a dry creek with a powerless paddle!

Are the UK's utilities disappearing - is its population up a dry creek without the power to turn a paddle? Cork Monkey finds more evidence that the UK has not been served well by its political classes.

As an update to yesterday’s piece we can report that the Environment Secretary has suggested that standpipes in the street may be on the cards if England suffers another dry winter next year. The standpipes would replace water coming out of the household taps for those affected.

While soil moisture has increased with the recent severe rains groundwater remains low so large parts of England remain in drought. This has led to concerns that, in some places, there will not be enough water to meet the UK populations needs and fears that draconian water conservation measures could become necessary.

Caroline Spelman has apparently said the UK would have to look at other ways to supply water if shortages continued. This could lead to third world style standpipes in the street as an attempt to control water usage – effectively water rationing.

Underinvestment in power means that we may well have shortages in this sector too. As older dirty power stations are decommissioned before newer cleaner facilities become operational we could have controls put in place here to ration supplies. This could be by disrupting or managing supply but this is more likely to be controlled by price. Electricity and gas simply becoming more expensive leading to lower consumption.

Either way this would probably affect domestic customers disproportionately as steps would be taken to ensure UK has enough power for business to be able to grow its economy.

Now is this the state a first world country should be in? It is quite possible that in the future there could be patronising pictures on Nigerian TV telling the story of Millicent Hyacinth Smythe - Bassett who has to carry water to her sick Grandma  who is freezing in her cold and damp care home.

If we consider that most non - primitive societies have reasonable access to fuel and water and that  a lot of the primitive ones do too, someone - and we mean a lot of someones - should be very very ashamed!

CM (:-(|)