This is quite appalling. A water company being rewarded, at the bill payers expense, to pollute Lake Windermere, while the government turns a blind eye to it. Even my Tory mate thinks that the water industry needs taking back into public ownership. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67567323
Ok you lot - stop breathing, you're causing global warming... https://www.ndtv.com/science/humans...arming-by-just-breathing-study-claims-4680910
please log in to view this image This is The Mill in Banbury town centre, which is now a theatre and arts centre. Like the football ground, it is on the banks of the River Cherwell, which bursts its banks whenever there is heavy rain. A scheme to create a floodplain upstream of the town was proposed 10 years ago, that had the go ahead, and only needed government finance to compensate the landowner for loss of agricultural land. The Environment Agency has failed to come up with that money, so the town council is left each time there is a flood with a large bill for the clean-up operation.
Tories did this, they are responsible, need to be held accountable. A similar fashion to the way Thailand deals with drug smugglers, perhaps?
Made all the more puzzling by the fact that the Council is Tory-run, and the local MP is a Tory. They're not even prepared to look after their own.
For the first time ever, the District Council is not controlled by the Tories. The last elections saw a bit of a cull, and there is no overall control. Like most councils, they are starved of money by central government, so they are forced to do the bare minimum.
Blue sky here, and it was warm enough to feel like Spring had arrived. Nothing like south of here though. 30.7°C in southern Spain today. The highest temperature ever recorded in Europe in January. How much longer will people continue to say that has nothing to do with climate change?
As long as they're told to, it's now become a left/right issue, along with the covid-deniers/pro-Russian/MAGA/racist crowd. The internet was a wonderful tool that's been weaponised to 'brain'wash complete idiots.
Sadly the case ...and so difficult for the ordinary person to discriminate. I have a good friend who is into conspiracy theory who says if it is on You Tube it is believable......
@Ofwat tells select committee @CommonsEFRA it can't use all of it's legal powers to regulate water companies as it would force them into bankruptcy. So we let them blatantly and deliberately pollute the environment. Water companies know they can now do this with impunity, no repercussions, no fines, no public sanction. The UK Government and the official regulator will do and say nothing. Would have been illegal if the UK was still in the EU.
This is just bloody ridiculous on so many levels. Aside from the adverse environmental impact of such a plant - at a time when plastic pollution is a global concern - why is the UK government guaranteeing Jim Ratcliffe £600 million of taxpayers' money - the man who has just invested twice that amount of his own money in a football club? It's particularly galling for Scots - who will be charged for a percentage of this - after the UK government last year refused Ratcliffe £100 million to upgrade Grangemouth, the country's only oil refinery, meaning it will have to close. https://www.theguardian.com/environ...im-ratcliffe-carbon-bomb-petrochemical-plant?
I just do not understand why it is so difficult for the government in England to implement the bottle return scheme. 13 billion plastic bottles sold over the course of a year throughout the whole UK, but only 7.5 billion get recycled, with the remaining 5.5bn sent to landfill, littered or incinerated. Where deposit schemes exist in other countries, over 90% are recycled, but under pressure from manufacturers, the government is putting this measure off in England until 2027. Wales and Scotland are going ahead with the scheme. Possibly, party funds there are not finding such willing recipients.
If there isn't a profit to make a quick buck out of anything then this malevolent shower of tory **** in Westminster are just not interested.
That's the UK government for you. In their 2019 election manifesto, the Tories committed to the introduction of a DRS for metal, plastic and glass containers - yet nothing has happened yet - probably because they have been busy focussing on their 'Dump asylum seekers in Rwanda' Bill, which never appeared in any manifesto. All they have actually done about the DRS scheme is block the Scottish Government from introducing the scheme here, on the spurious grounds that it shouldn't include glass. They blocked it again a while back - forcing a delay until October - with Alister Jack claiming that the relevant information he had requested had not been submitted to him for perusal/approval - information that Michael Gove had already publicly thanked the SG for submitting. To be honest, I'm not sure why it needs an Act of parliament to go ahead anyway. Some supermarkets here who had installed the necessary equipment in readiness have just gone ahead and introduced it anyway - rather than lose the costs they had already incurred.
10 years ago, my son-in-law would bring me bottles of Belgian beers, but always wanted the bottles back so he could claim his deposit. So this is not an unproven idea that people are watching to see if it works. The scheme is not in place here, but every commune has a bottle bank, that is very well used.
The local bottle bank used to contribute to my school's trips back in the day. Luckily there were quite a few donated by thirsty French locals
