As my Granny used to say "T,is either a feast or a famine" !

Despite severe flooding early in the year 2022 is the driest year in the UK since 1976. Strangely it's also the driest year ever recorded in California whilst North Texas had 2 feet of snow. Just examples: unusual droughts, downpours, heatwaves, extreme cold, doldrums and storms all around the world. Extreme weather extremes that occurred a few times per century are now happening every 5 years or so.

I wonder what could possibly explain turbulent weather across the whole planet? I thought scientists had a jolly good explanation but the forum put me right: obviously you can't trust anyone who knows what they're talking about! Common-sense innit.

Dave

I seem to recall that shortly after privitisation, Yorkshire water sold 2 reservoirs and bought a large hotel in Wales so the directors could have free hols there.

The air con is U/S and the head gaskets gone ! A second class ride is better than a first class walk, This REALLY was the right year to have a motorcycle ! Noel.

Ady, I am definitely with you, our energy and water is too precious to let the wide boys destroy, we need to get this sorted as soon as possible, unfortunately it looks like all we can look forward to are more years of the same, the country is rudderless at the moment while a pantomime is being played out, the meeting with energy chiefs yesterday appeared to solve nothing. Dave W

We get 2400mm of rain a year where I live. And we still have restrictions on garden watering in the dry season.

It's all about reservoirs, pipes and pumps, oh and government incompetence, which seems to be globally universal.

Normally the 'El Nino' and 'La Nina' cycles in the Pacific run in fairly regular cycles, however we have been 'enjoying' a 'La Nina' event for the last three years which is unprecedented, I think. More here – scroll down to see the the background;

Severe-Weather-Europe – Long Range

..interesting stuff, the predictions made earlier this year were pretty good..

Edited By DiogenesII on 12/08/2022 12:02:28

Be careful what you wish for. In the days of the GPO it took months to get a phone put in. Competition makes them smarten up their act. Having said that, with a natural monopoly like water/sewage there has to be regulated prices, so the water companies cut costs by dumping sewage in the river and allowing lots of water to leak from their pipes. All a balancing act, politicians and civil servants seem to be totally incompetent, at least in the UK.

YorkshireWater, French-owned now? (Like EDF – French State-owned…)

At least France is nearly local. It starts less than 400 miles South of Manchester Ship Canal.

My supplier, Wessex Water, is owned by a cement-hotels-&-quarrying outfit called YTL, based in Malaysia.

'

I used to be in favour of private-ownership, Not now, and not just because Mr. Blair sold me via a very dodgy deal indeed.

The services being State-owned avoids the heavy profit overhead that so often vanishes abroad, losing the nation's money, under the deceitful guise of "inward investment" – American lack of 's' , and all..

State ownership's problem is not the principle itself, in my view. It is that it lets Governments of all flavours, and a Treasury that only ever knows cost not value, keep playing with things they don't understand, in their efforts to be seen Doing Something Useful.

Nationalising them does not require all the administrators V8Eng alleges are thought necessary. It is politicians who think that, and won't let the real managers who know the business, manage them properly.

As for Government oversight… we have that now, more so than in the past! Whether effective or not is another matter. Maybe we need an OffOff to oversee the OffWat, Offcom, Offqual, Offxxx bodies set up after the great sell-&-destroy drives, to ensure that the new, privatised companies behave themselves. In theory.

(Is an Offqual, an unwell marsupial?)

.

Hopper –

I do not recall there ever being State-owned insurance companies. The other services you list, were, and I think should be, but insurance has always been commercial – but probably just as adept shysters then as now.

Come on water companies put your hands in your pockets the UK is surrounded by water build some desalination plants

H

Like much of Thames Water (eg interface with customers) it doesn’t work