Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Thursday, 27 September 2012

water, water, everywhere...



Not sure what to write about tonight so I will just tap away until the muse wakes up and helps me with something interesting. It seems that in the week we wee away in hamburg the weather has undergone a bit of a shift an d has become quite cool and wet.  Morning temperatures have been between 8 and 11 degrees.
Talking about water reminds me of a headline about NZ I saw on stuff this morning. It was about the threat of water shortages again in Wellington this coming summer. Why is it do you think that the powers that be always wait until there is a crisis before encouraging people to conserve water. It was the same here last summer. Now Britain is in the midst of the worst storm in 30 years which has caused flooding and even contributed to a couple of deaths. But back to the water thing.  I remember when The Man and I lived in NZ’s Bay of Plenty. In The nearest city (about a 20 minute drive away) the local council changed the rules and installed water meters in every household. OK it didn’t happen overnight, but after a relatively short time the every house had a meter. So what happened next?
I’ll tell you. What happened was the people who were using the water suddenly realised how much the precious liquid was costing them and became very conservative in their use of it. That meant that the expected income from the water usage dropped considerable, well it wold wouldn’t it if folks took more care. So what did the council do then? They put the fee for water up.  Incentivising the population even more. People bought special set ups to catch rain water from their roofs to use to water the garden.

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