16 Comments

• Andrew Lye 18th Jun '12 - 4:31pm

  I can understand why someone went to the press…….

  Labour would certainly have done it had it been a Conservative or Lib Dem councillor.

  He may be “wet behind the ears” being a new councillor, but he STILL should have known better. People expect far better of their elected representatives and stop making pathetic excuses and trying to justify it and then trying to blame someone who could be jealous.

  I am a Lib Dem member and former Councillor in West Wiltshire, but now live in Preseli Pembrokeshire constituency.

• toryboysnevergrowup 18th Jun '12 - 4:49pm

  And my LibDem councillor gave me a dirty look last week.

• John Dunn 18th Jun '12 - 5:16pm

  And my Lib Dem councillor deliberately allowed her library books to become overdue.

• Steve Way 18th Jun '12 - 5:28pm

  He should move to Devon, my hosepipe has yet to be required this year, nature has provided a suitable alternative by the bucket load!!!!

• Chris 18th Jun '12 - 5:33pm

  Don’t pretend that observing a hosepipe ban is anyone’s civic duty. The bans were only imposed to ‘send a message’ in the usual fatuous way, by private companies who like the getting paid part of providing a service, but are rather less keen on the providing the service part.

• tonyhill 18th Jun '12 - 5:33pm

  Lots of us have repeatedly asked what the point of putting stories like this on this site.

• Richard Dean 18th Jun '12 - 6:00pm

  Grease? Jealousy? And a BMW? The fellow is definitely a slippery character! I bet there’s a fascinating scandal waiting to be revealed! Some form of community work would seem to be an appropriate sentence here. 🙂

• Cheltenham Robin 18th Jun '12 - 6:55pm

  I’m surprised the press made a SPLASH out of this.

• toryboysnevergrowup 18th Jun '12 - 10:27pm

  Perhaps if LibDems are really interested in the issue of fairness when it comes to water they might wish to pay some attention to how water metering is being extended butr without giving extra credit to people with children who by necessity have greater water usage. For some of the families concerned this is going to mean an extra £200-300 per annum on their annual water bills at a time when things are difficuly enough for families, especially since in many of the local authorities affected are also starting to charge extra for school travel. On the other hand they could carry on mouthing platitudes about standing up for families and pursuing trivia such as this.

• Simon Shaw 18th Jun '12 - 11:09pm

  @toryboysnevergrowup

  What a very silly comment!

  If you are going down that route, why don’t you start with the disgraceful fact that larger families tend to spend more on food than smaller families. Is that fair or not?

• Tony Dawson 19th Jun '12 - 7:52am

  Water rates in my area are now £10-15 per week for virtually unfettered usage. if you opt for metering, almost everybody’s bill goes down because people tend to take more care but obviously people with large families flush the loo and use their washing machines more. The answer, surely, would be to include water rate relief in the same package of housing cost benefits as Council Tax Benefit – so that only the poorer large families were protected. The real big question is how anyone ever allowed water &sewerage to be privatised. Can you remind me of where we see the ‘benefits of competition'(sic) in this ‘industry'(sic).

• toryboysnevergrowup 19th Jun '12 - 9:37am

  Simon

  The difference is that families could work out beforehand that a larger family would lead to increased food costs – when you chage from fixed tariff water and free school travel to metered water and annual charges for school travel in excess of £400 per child, introduced all of a sudden then it is much more difficult to handle. Imagine the howls of protest if those without children were required to contribute more to national insurance to reflect that they hadn’t produced enough future tax payers to support the future costs of pensions (which is how state pensions are funded). The reality is that this Government is proving to be quite anti-family in how it operates, despite all the noises to the contrary. It is worth reading the Guardian today on this very issue.

  Tony

  I dobn’t think you are right almost everyone’s bill will go down under compulsory (which is what I am taliking about) metered usage – the water companies are certainly not anticipating any fall in their overall revnues – in fact quite the opposite. I think you are right that there needs to be some relief based on the number of people in a household – and kids probably need a higher allowance than grown-ups – there was a vague promise that something of the sort would be provided with the switch over to metering, but as usual there was no delivery.

• Alistair 19th Jun '12 - 9:49am

  I got a Thames water bill the other week for more than £500 – unmetered. They should be forced to cut their bills if they impose hosepipe bans. They have reduced their storage capacity and failed to address leaks, so bans are common, but they have a virtual monopoly.

• toryboysnevergrowup 19th Jun '12 - 10:21am

  Alastair

  As you will see here Thames Water are pushing for the introduction of compulsory metering

  http://news.sky.com/home/politics/article/16213885

  If anyone thinks Thames Water want to incur the capital costs of providing meters just because it will reduce consumption and the bill customers will pay might I suggest they wake up. And I’m afraid the impact of this will fall most on families.

• tom 19th Jun '12 - 12:13pm

  I really wish LibDem voice wouldn’t cover these kind of stories. One would hope they are a bit below us….

• Tony Dawson 19th Jun '12 - 8:41pm

  @tom :

  “I really wish LibDem voice wouldn’t cover these kind of stories. One would hope they are a bit below us”

  Tom, Lib Dem Voice is many things. It is not, however, ‘us’, nor does it claim to be.