Can water companies impose a hosepipe ban, if we're paying via a meter for our water? This is not (I hope) similar to power cuts being enforced on us, as happened in the Seventies, unless water companies stop supplying individual premises. As you say, if you're on a meter, the use you make of the water is down to you, as you're paying for it.
As we are talking about "watering the garden" I can see a good reason not to water the lawn. Grass is oñe of the toughest.plants out there. So be it if it turns brown. The colour will return.when the rains arrive.
Smoke and flames for the arsehole to burn in plus the GB news double standards with it's coverage of Huw Edwards whilst Wootton's years of criminal activity goes unmentioned. How it's allowed to keep broadcasting is diet of right wing propaganda is beyond me.
I held my nose and watched some of Wootton's programme last night, to see if he mentioned things (he didn't, other than to say that Carol Vorderman had spread some scurrilous rumours about him). It really is an absolute bin fire of a channel, I was quite shocked at how bad it was.
I'm surprised, well maybe not, that he's not been suspended given the calls for Huw Edward's head. I've only seen snippets and read bias reports which reinforces my view of the abysmal standards at GB news.
Listen up, critics: first let Labour win power. Then scrutinise its real record Guardian Time for some perspective. Even the prospect of winning a rock-solid Tory seat should remind doubters of what has been an epic climb by Labour from the despair of its 2019 near-death experience. Labour’s leader had a strategy mapped out from day one, and nothing has distracted him from it: two years to fix the party, ruthlessly expunging any who damage it; a set of five cast-iron missions; and fiscal discipline, avoiding all spending traps ahead of the manifesto. And the result is an astounding 20-point lead. Are Labour people satisfied? Of course not. We see glum faces among the left-leaning commentators, who say Labour will only win as the result of the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss catastrophes. They want to know a Labour government will be transformational, exhilarating, brave, inspired: instead they complain of extreme caution and affronts to Labour values. But this is the time to remember May 1997, and how euphoric that Labour victory felt. Understand that the closer Labour gets to the winning post, the greater its fear of one false step, one fatal slip. It won’t matter how excellent Labour’s policies were for the poorest people in Britain if it returns to the miserable opposition benches. Keir Starmer has said from the outset that winning is his purpose ^This
Guardian 2 I too yearn for more, always more. But to the glums complaining Labour will be Tory-lite, lacking vision and ambition, remember this: we have just lived through 13 appalling years of austerity vandalism. Remember that every Labour government improves the lives of those with least, raises benefits, raises taxes on well-off people, leaves schools, hospitals and public life better, while every Conservative government trashes those things. Will it be enough? No. It never is. But my bet is that Reeves and Starmer will be bolder than anyone now expects. Without doubt they will do, as New Labour did, far more than they dare promise while tip-toeing towards the finishing line
Yeah, I don't have spectacularly high hopes for Starmer, but job one -- and the job his three predecessors failed miserably to accomplish -- is to actually be in a position to do something. They're going to be inheriting the ****show to end all ****shows, which almost demands some sort of radical action, but the sort of radical actions it'll take (mostly raising revenues from the rich and upper middle class, quite possibly some re-nationalization) aren't actually as broadly popular as they are within Labour, even if they're blindingly obvious and tend to be favoured in retrospect.
I have reservations about Starmer and the Labour leadership. They've ruled out rejoining the customs union and single market during the next Labour government and I think refusing to move on the conference vote for electoral reform. Two issues at the top of my wish list.
Electoral reform has to be brought in. Our two party system is rotten to the core. Everyone's vote should count.
They'd be two items on the top of my list, too. Problem is that they're also two of the most polarizing issues on the docket. With a large enough majority, I think you can probably sell rejoining the customs union as an economic necessity (and it is) and sidestep relitigating Brexit, but you probably can't do that pre-election.
Maybe Starmer et al are playing the long game: If they came straight out now, and said "We're going to rejoin the EU", the Tories (and anyone to their right, there must be some) would immediately put this at the top of any election literature, just to scare people into thinking that links with Europe must be bad, because...well, Brexit has been a success, hasn't it? If the Labour party don't say that they will re-join the EU, or similar, the Tories will have to find something else to scare people with. Or they could just highlight the successes that they've had over the past 13 or so years. Oh, wait...
I think/hope their long term plans are for a closer relationship with the huge single market next door. After all they need us more than we need them.
