Surprised your mobile didn’t sound the apocalyptic alarm to notify you about Wessex Water’s hosepipe ban?! Then, you’re a gullible idiot!
But being 22,239 voters in one seaside town opted, again, for a fascist criminal ringmaster to lead them, and, similarly as stupid, a man named Bruce shoved nine Creme Eggs up his rectum, perhaps we’ve entered the satirical realm of Mike Judge and Ethan Cohen’s Idiocracy, and, therefore the alarm last week was necessary, even if you jumped so much you knocked over your barbecue.
Let’s clear this up before we rap hosepipes. If you’re subject to domestic violence and own a secret phone, yes, you should switch the alerts off on it. Otherwise you should realise any Conservatives or other climate change denying opposition party members taking to their social media encouraging us to switch the alarm off, on a system they themselves installed, are not doing it for your safety or peace of mind, rather an irresponsible and dangerous attempt to slander the current government.
It was not as the dirty Rees-Dogg yarned uninvited on my Faceache newsfeed; Burnham unnecessarily alerting us that it’s summer. While the usage of the emergency alert could be debated, wildfires are spreading on an unprecedented scale across the UK, due to the now undeniable climate change that the previous governments did absolutely zilch to address, therefore, triggered at the request of overloaded fire and rescue officers, the emergency alert was justified. Unless you, your family and friends wish to burn in hellfire whilst erecting flags on lamposts and painting rural roundabouts, apply some common sense and avoid using disposable barbecues for the time being; big ask!!
Equally, a hosepipe ban is unfortunately understandable if we are to reserve the little water we retain in reservoirs. Though this announcement is far more easily attacked, being Wessex Water has faced intense public and regulatory backlash over widespread raw sewage discharges, environmental damage, large shareholder payouts, and rising executive pay amid mounting network failures, it should be the privatisation of public services under question, rather than if you should, or shouldn’t, water your rhododendrons or wash birdshit off your Tesla.
It’s hard to take orders from a company Ofwat finalised an £11 million enforcement package against, requiring Wessex Water shareholders to fund local environmental and infrastructure upgrades after the company failed to properly maintain and upgrade its wastewater network. Even worse when the company was criminally convicted and fined £500,000 following a prolonged sewage pumping station failure at Bowerhill Lodge near Melksham, which discharged untreated waste into Clackers Brook and killed over 2,100 fish.
Or, hey there was that time when a backed-up sewer spilled into a River Yeo tributary in Somerset, resulting in a £300,000 payout by the company toward local river and habitat restoration trusts. But who are we to judge their Chief Executive Ruth Jefferson, after she received her pay rise, taking her total package to roughly £791,000?!
Even if the company itself acknowledged it risked breaching sector-wide environmental bonus restrictions on this pay rise, because they clearly cannot be trusted any further than be thrown, the responsibility remains on us, the public, to not only save water during a drought, but vote for a party with core environmental concerns and pledging to renationalise our public services.
And I say this not because of political sway, but that I consider the extinction of all life on Earth a pretty fundamental concern and “big deal.”
I therefore condemn irresponsible reporting on all environmental issues; that’s relevant, isn’t it? Rather you support your chosen party who backs companies where the utility recorded tens of thousands of sewage spills spanning hundreds of thousands of hours across the south-west of England, if you want to. Free country last time I checked, but tomfoolery on this to sway popular opinion is criminal against no one but ourselves and our future generations, of which we hand them the world in a state similar to what Wayne and Waynetta Slob might leave their council flat.
Therefore I call out reporters like Neil Shaw of Wiltshire’s gutter press Wiltshire Live, for publishing a story about a consumer expert pointing out “a little-known fact about hosepipe bans – claiming not one person has ever been prosecuted for ignoring the orders.”
How insanely irresponsible, despite evidence, it is to encourage rebellious acts against protecting our water supply, for clickbait. For if you continue to ignore the warning, it is akin to acknowledging an absence of police and speed cameras implies you can accelerate to your heart’s desire, only to rundown a child.
Oh, quick, BBC Wiltshire, the Crammer in Devizes has dried up, what should we do?
Send down a reporter who looks like Borat to interview a Conservative town councillor about the Moonrakers folklore!
This is not a novel by Frank Herbert, yet, but, like Lemmings, we strive on with the madness, councillor Maria Hoult for Devizes South complaining that the “Town Council are no longer permitted to water the floral displays and trees.” And good folk perhaps need an emergency alert as they gather online to rage at Wessex Water, throbbing the very backbone out of the water guzzling data centres spreading their message. When the real message should surely be, just because our water companies, politicians and media can’t act responsibly it doesn’t mean you have to follow their example.
The hosepipe ban comes into place on Tuesday the 18th August and lasts forty days, coincidentally the same time period Jesus fasted in the desert with the devil on his back, before they nailed him to a cross, for asking people to be nice to each other. Obviously they didn’t have Facebook back then; is this going to happen every fifty years? It’s an attack on my civil liberties!!
devizine.com 