Water

http://news.uk.msn.com/blistering_britain.aspx

I read this and I have a rant to make. The following is a rant-speak. If you do not enjoy such things, look away now.

If we weren’t so busy in this country we could cope with the heat. It is the fact that our economy is built around a rat race mentality which doesn’t allow shorter working days, siestas, and time spent in the shade. Bills would fall and the need to work every hour God sends us would change due to the savings made to users in terms of energy prices for air con and mineral water, bathing etc.

I believe that if we operated as many hotter countries such as Malta & Greece do, we would be fine. It is our rigidness and inability to accept changed behaviours in the heat wave months of July and August that screw us over. We also do waste water and better investment into improving the pipe system and storing up water in wetter, winter months must be initiated. Face it, we had one of the wettest winters EVER this year and now we’re facing a drought? That’s insane.

The only downside to copying behavioural patterns of more third and second world countries in the heat wave months here would be that these nations cannot compete economically at the top of the food chain as it were, because of their lifestyle and other factors – but lifestyle is a factor. Admittedly by adopting some of these measures, we would become less competitive.

Stand pipes would be terrible, but really teach a few people lessons about what we have ‘the right’ to and what we don’t. In this country, basically speaking, you can get anything so long as you’re willing to pay for it or bitch enough for it. We’re spoilt, really, if you look on a global scale.

This generation has never been told NO, never been rationed for anything. The closest thing we’ve had is the odd hose pipe ban and many people openly flaunt that in ‘the right’ of their flowers to be watered, I even heard one radio show host advertising tips for how to flaunt the hosepipe ban in one area, when he had a guest on the show openly saying ‘screw the ban, I’ll do it because I have just bought some little pines and I wanna’ water those in case they wilt’.

Whilst I hate water bans and stand pipes as much as the next person, it’s attitudes like this one above that cause these water wasting issues half the time and mean the rest of us have to pick up the tab for greedy persons who feel they are somehow above the law. It may suck but if there is water rationing here, I for one will observe it. Not because I want to, but because to do otherwise would be anarchistic.

-=George=-