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Water and Politics, A Dirty Business

05/06/2023 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Water In 2021 I wrote about the crisis we were having with water in N Ireland.  To put it bluntly, our waterboard has left a lot of things undone, and on reading a current article by Sandra Laville which stated that our Ministers were warned over 20 years ago on how private equity would affect the water industry and ultimately our safety and well being (The Guardian 20 May 2023).  Basically, privatisation would lead to (as it normally does with private companies), the concentration on those areas which made money, and then left to the side those areas which didn’t but are necessary for the well-being of the population, i.e. sewage treatment, water pipe replacement etc.  According to figures released, which Sandra reported on, our rivers in the GB receive 11bn litres of raw sewage from 30 water treatment works in a year, and in 2021 the Guardian reported that 7m tonnes of raw sewage were discharged into Northern Irish rivers a year, NI Water said at the time, that these overflows were required to reduce the risk of sewage escaping from sewers and causing the flooding of homes, schools and businesses…

The difference between Great Britain and N Ireland is N Ireland’s water is controlled by the state (so far), and in Great Britain, it is privatised.  The privatised water companies are led by profit as I have already stated, whilst a state-owned enterprise should be led by safety.  It is not to say money isn’t a consideration, but it is to say that the planning should be different.

Privatisation

2023 Richard Seymour wrote in ‘A Short History of Privatisation in the UK’ … The emerging doctrine was that privatisation would make the large utilities more efficient and productive, and thus make British capitalism competitive relative to its continental rivals (1982-1986: Lift-0ff) …

However, the experiment cannot be seen to have worked, and certainly, Margaret Thatcher would be shocked to discover how many of our privatised industries are now controlled by extremely large organisations outside the United Kingdom, who only consider profit first!

The future

Currently, the water companies are saying that they will have things fixed by 2030, but, it will come as part of its £10bn investment, but that this will have to be paid from users.  So the observation might be, we pay the rich, including the shareholders, but we suck from the poor.

Water runs out as bosses rinse utilities for profit

Water tap. Free public domain CC0 photo.

I want to quote from an article about the Full Monty TV Series:

…The political destruction wreaked by successive governments wasn’t about destroying industry:  it was the infrastructure of the country they’d come to asset-strip, slowly and incredibly successfully.  Schools, hospitals, dental care, social care, mental health care, transport, the courts, water:  all of the structures that allow people in need to function were now on the edge of collapse…

If you wish to survive in today’s society you must be extremely rich, or be a politician, the ordinary working person is going backwards.  Only the ordinary working person can change this by voting in elections, both local and general, and if the right candidate isn’t there, then again do something about it – it is your country

 

…The structure of an oil molecule is non-polar. Its charge is evenly balanced rather than having one positive and one negative end. This means oil molecules are more attracted to other oil molecules than water molecules, and water molecules are more attracted to each other than oil, so the two never mix… (Science Sparks)

I think from looking at all the parties in or out of Government, we can now say that ‘Water and Politics’ don’t mix most definitely for the benefit of those who are not wealthy!

Links:

  • Taking their clothes off was a metaphor – The Guardian 20 May 2023
  • Rivers ‘receive 11bn litres of raw sewage from 30 water treatment works in a year’ – The Guardian 27 May 2023
  • Warning about privatised water kept secret for over 20 years – The Guardian 20 May 2023
  • POLITICS AND WATER DO NOT MIX – The Dark Side
  • Why water politics matters
  • Northern Ireland Water and Meter Charges

Filed Under: Community Journalist Tagged With: Northern Ireland Water, politics, sewage, water, water boards

Course 2 Day – Day Five – Moment of Motion

18/08/2016 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

#developingyoureye #moment #motion #chance

That ‘Moment’ in Time

Today’s project set us the task to define a moment in our lives and share it with the viewers!
But, the task must convey to us movement, as a way of conveying time and fleetingness.

I then started keel-hauling my albums to find that one defining photograph and one defining moment.

The Ensemble of Moment

Lots of photographs came up, and some came close to defining that moment; for example:-

  • Spooky Funfair
  • You missed a beat
  • A burst of speed
  • A spectre awaits
  • Carrying the torch
  • Regal afront
  • Dead to the world
  • Leading the charge
  • Let’s exchange
  • That’s a stretch
Motion - Spooky Funfair
Spooky Funfair
Motion - You missed a beat
You missed a beat
Motion - A burst of speed
A burst of speed – wet bottoms

Oliva - Motion - A spectre awaits
A spectre awaits
Motion - carrying the torch
Carrying the torch
Motion - Dead to the World
Dead to the world

Motion - Leading the charge
Leading the charge
Oliva Motion - Peacocks display cymbals crash
Peacocks display cymbals crash
Motion - That's a stretch
That’s a stretch

Various cameras/smartphone cameras were used to take the photos, depending often on what was available; on most occasions taking photographs had not been the main thought of the day (hic).

Job to Do

What has come out of this review of some of my albums, is that I need to reorganise and re-title and also to tag my pictures to make them easier to find and analyze.

My choice of the Moment

So which picture have I decided to use as my main one, well it is the one titled ‘Dead to the World’ – it is the complete opposite of all those movement ones,it is off two lads (backpackers I believe) who completely exhausted fell asleep in Cardiff Museum in the main hall, where all the attendants allowed them to sleep, and even quietly directed visitors away from them.  The frame of the pillars again was chance, I was upstairs, looked over the banister rail and saw the lads and took the photograph – poor chance

Motion - Dead to the World

Dead to the world

 

 

Filed Under: Community Journalist Tagged With: backpacker, band, cymbal, parade, peacock, slide, water

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