A choice of catastrophes

[apologies to Asimov]

An Englishman, on the subject of water (catastrophic shortage of).

Now a while ago, when it was still called ‘global warming’, we were told that the planet would turn into Venus, and all the water would evaporate, because of our original sin of lighting a fire some time prior to the Paleolithic.

In South-East England, where we used to live, this might at the time have seemed not wholly incredible, because there was a series (albeit short) of hot summers, accompanied by hosepipe bans. There were also regular scares involving the water company’s loudspeaker-vans, every time someone dumped a load of chemical waste into a reservoir and thus tipped the balance from ’scarcely drinkable’ to ‘actually poisonous’.

Where we live now the water is excellent. Naturally, on moving in, we applied a number of water-saving measures, as we were accustomed to do (though not including the 100 gallons of emergency water holding down the foundation-slab).

When the drains blocked up, we called out the water company, who sorted it out for nothing, bless them.

When it happened again, they did it once again for nothing, but explained that they couldn’t keep it from the office any longer and so next time it would be some fabulous sum of money.

As we discussed this in the road the fellow had a thought.

“You’re not a… local man, then, are you?” said he.
“Dear me, no. From London.”
“You not lived here long, then?”
“Year or two.”
“Ah, so would you be having all that stuff, you know, the water-bags in the cisterns and all that?”
“Oh yes; we’re quite careful.”
“Well, that’s the problem, y’see. Now a few years ago, must have been a few years ago, now, we had to go round and give out those water-bags, didn’t we, Arthur? And then only a few months later we had to go round again, and make ‘em take ‘em all out again, weeks that took, and some of ‘em cut up quite nasty. Reason was, the drains was all blocking up, same as what yours has done, again, and the reason for that, y’see, is there’s not enough water flowing in ‘em to keep ‘em clear.”
“There’s no water shortage here, then?”
“Never has been. More of a surplus, as you’ll see if you try crossing them fields after more than an inch o’rain. Now we’ve got those daft idiots in suits saying we’ve got to get everyone put on a meter, to make more money out of ‘em, and of course soon as you do that they’re all putting bricks in the cistern and putting in them grey water systems and whatnot, so there’s us in maintenance trying to tell ‘em, you’ll cost us more money in blockages than you’ll ever make with the meters, but will they listen?”
“Did they ever?”
“Fair point.”
“So what’s the problem round London?”
“Too many people and not enough pipes, if you ask me.”

So now it is called ‘climate change’ and we are told that it is responsible for flooding. But they still want to put everyone on a water meter, to make more money out of ‘em. So on the one hand we are expected to accept that ‘climate change’ means flooding, and all of a sudden our house insurance is worthless, but also that it means dessication, so we are expected to accept increased charges for strictly metered water and punitive taxes on top of the charges.

Once again: just how stupid do they think we are? Damn it, either ‘climate change’ makes the country wetter, or it makes it drier; if in fact either could happen, and nobody knows whether it will rain or not, then I would suggest that normal English conditions obtain and that in fact the climate has not changed at all.

Of course, the reason why television advertisements are 30 seconds long is because that is widely believed by advertisers to be a reasonable average of their target population’s attention-span.

{sigh}