"But the main reason I would suggest is that we don't have beaches to keep up to EU standards (minimum) so that tourists come and visit"
HELLO! They are not OUR beaches! They belong to the whole world! WHY has it now become the responsibility of all those people who live in Devon and Cornwall to pay for the beaches down here????
That's the biggest load of Corporate Bastard Twaddle I ever did hear!
Holy Jumping Water Butts!
We should all be paying exactly the same rate for our water, no matter WHERE we live in this country.
The vast majority of people down here haven't 'chosen' to live here, they were born here...and yet they are now lumbered with the financial responsibility of maintaining the South West Beaches?
It's utter nonesense, as is the rest of the Twaddle they fed me earlier on when I rang them....and 'Lucas' never rang backk either....No surprises there then... :0) But I'll phone them again tomorrow...get to the bottom of this...
Oh..and when I wrote to Ofwat about this fiasco, they came back telling me that the average bill down here was around £400. (!!) I told them to update their figures, then check the average wage down here and match it to the price we pay for water...
Ofwat are the ones who are now going to decide if South West Water can go ahead with these outrageous charges...so more letter writing is due tomorrow....and if anyone would like to also drop them a line, here they are...
"Families face paying up to £1,000-a-year for their water after industry regulators bowed to press from suppliers.
Ofwat had demanded average household water bills be slashed by 4% to £330 by 2015.
But after a summer of heavy lobbying by industry bigwigs it yesterday accepted a mere 1% cut to £340.
The fact that the firms got off lightly was reflected in an immediate jump in their share prices.
When inflation is added, the actual amount people pay seems certain to rise over the next five years.
The hike will give the water firms an extra £400m towards metering and other urgent improvements. But they claim they still need to invest more than £22bn replacing pipes and sewers, improving drinking water and environmental work.
Among the worst hit will those served by South West Water, already the country's most expensive supplier. It is being allowed to up the average unmetered bill by an astonishing 29% to £935-a-year."
And now, I'll leave you all to talk about ducks, or whatever, but just remember that from now on, if you see water running off a duck's back, catch each and every drop of it, because the Corporate Water Lords now own the very stuff that falls free from the skies and they about to charge many of us £1,000 a year for it.