Soak the English: Welsh want paying for any water piped across the border

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Originally Posted by Treffie

Which English? The South, the Midlands, the North? Seeing as the West Midlands has the 2nd highest unemployment levels in the UK, my guess it's the South that's paying for it.

Nice strawman btw. :p

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Well I went through some data the other day and put the different nations (regions for England) of the UK in order based on total GDP.

It goes like this:

• Total UK economy
• Total English economy
• Greater London
• South East England
• Scotland
• North West England
• East Midlands
• South West England
• West Midlands
• Yorkshire
• East Anglia
• Wales
• North East
• Northern Ireland

Who subsidises who is debatable though, but I don't think the West Midlands is going to be subsidising anybody.

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Do you view it as an acceptable thing that these areas pay more than they receive?

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Within England - yes. If we whined about who pays more all the time we'd end up dividing the country and moaning about the next village / town / city receiving more than the other one.

For the benefit of the country there has to be some givers and some takers. Many of the areas subsidised today were industrial giants in the past and paid more than their fair share then, only now it is forgotten about.

For a similar situation on the continent, see Belgium.

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...And continuing on consequences, responsibility and debt. USA should be watching it's $15 Trillion plus debt bomb go up, as it buckles under it's own weight with it's high debt to GDP ratio. Take action or there may be trouble ahead.

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The thing with American and UK debt is that they mostly owe it to themselves. It's largely to companies and bond holders.

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They're not devolved regions either.

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Home nations don't you mean? English regions shouldn't charge each other, but devolved nations can does as they like.

Let's not get into this whole fight about who pays for who again anyway, lets discuss the matter at hand.

I think a few things must be addressed about water usage in the UK, namely that as a nation we are very wasteful with it and take it for granted.
I think the whole image of Britain being a wet country means people don't think about water usage very much because more will just fall in rain. However this attitude may be all right in the North and West of the UK where there is abundant rainfall, but not in the much drier and heavily populated South and East.

Water runs away down drains, off roofs and gets flushed down toilets. The UK actually uses costly drinking water to do something as trivial as flushing a toilet, and it uses a lot of it to do so.

The wasting of water can't go on. Maybe if we keep getting these droughts it will act as a wake up call to people. The thing is, there probably wouldn't even be a drought in the South and East if water wasn't so lavishly wasted.

So what can we do? Well the old techniques are often the best, namely:

• Using greywater to flush toilets and water the garden - and what is to stop sinks drainage pipes being diverted to the tank of a toilet? Flush the toilet with the previous water used in the sink, wash your hands and replenish the tank.
• Capture rainwater in rainwater barrels positioned in line with gutter pipes. Then the water can be used to water gardens or wash cars. In parts of the midlands they used to collect it in tanks on flat roofs to use for washing clothes and bathing I thing. Whilst it isn't as clean as tap water, it is clean enough for most purposes. Personally I'd use tap water for cooking and drinking, but rainwater would probably be clean enough too.
• Don't use as much flushing toilets. Put a brick in the toilet tank.

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Originally Posted by Albion

Well I went through some data the other day and put the different nations (regions for England) of the UK in order based on total GDP.

It goes like this:

• Total UK economy
• Total English economy
• Greater London
• South East England
• Scotland
• North West England
• East Midlands
• South West England
• West Midlands
• Yorkshire
• East Anglia
• Wales
• North East
• Northern Ireland

Who subsidises who is debatable though, but I don't think the West Midlands is going to be subsidising anybody.

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Don't worry, I was giving a silly reply to Wulfhere's silly strawman.

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Originally Posted by Albion

Home nations don't you mean? English regions shouldn't charge each other, but devolved nations can does as they like.

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I was discussing the fact that English regions do not possess devolved powers such as business/economy, environment/countryside etc. The difficulty I see is that the water authorities are in private hands, but I doubt that if they did charge for the supply of water, that the price would be unreasonable. However, supplying water to populated areas would make average water bills more expensive for the recipient. South-West Water for example is the most expensive water supplier in England and Wales, followed by Dŵr Cymru. The main reasons are due to revamping the regions` sewerage system since privatisation and also maintenance of the coastlines, so even if water from Wales was to pumped to the south-east of England, the incumbent water suppliers would have to increase the cost of supply.

Drought in England - interactive map

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I was discussing the fact that English regions do not possess devolved powers such as business/economy, environment/countryside etc. The difficulty I see is that the water authorities are in private hands, but I doubt that if they did charge for the supply of water, that the price would be unreasonable. However, supplying water to populated areas would make average water bills more expensive for the recipient. South-West Water for example is the most expensive water supplier in England and Wales, followed by Dŵr Cymru. The main reasons are due to revamping the regions` sewerage system since privatisation and also maintenance of the coastlines, so even if water from Wales was to pumped to the south-east of England, the incumbent water suppliers would have to increase the cost of supply.

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Well, yes. The infrastructure needs the investment and attention anyway. The costs involved would push prices up, but the South and Midlands have large populations so I doubt the prices would go up by much per household.