Dancing in the sunshine. Appropriate clothing. Thoughts about water.

This morning Facebook sent me one of their ‘we thought you might like to remember this’ messages: in this case a picture of people folk-dancing in the square in Pontevedra, on a day as sunny and undoubtedly as hot as it is here today. It’s very picturesque but the costumes have always seemed to me to be very impractical for dancing in hot weather. Mind you, when you consider how silly and impractical Morris dancers costumes are and the fact that they dance around in the sunshine as well, we shouldn’t be disparaging about Galician national dress! 

The hot weather continues here and there’s still talk of more hosepipe bans and lots of comparisons with the long hot summer of 1976. As I listened to news programmes’ discussions about water provision in this country, I was struck most of all by its inefficiency. Water leaks out all over the place! If a company making shirts, for example, continually provided shirts without buttons, or with sleeves of different lengths, or with the short tail not properly hemmed, pretty soon they wouldn’t be able to pay their shareholders any dividends. Indeed customers would go and look for an alternative source of shirts. 

Here are some extracts from an article by Caroline Lucas:

“It’s clear that the privatisation experiment for water companies has failed. They’re fit for profit, not for purpose. The head of Thames Water – the company responsible for the supply fiasco at Northend in Oxfordshire - is set to receive a £3.1m “golden hello” for signing on as CEO. English water firms across the board have handed over £72bn to shareholders in dividends.”

“Public ownership works, and is popular. Publicly owned Scottish Water is the most trusted public utility in the UK, while not-for-profit Welsh Water has helped 60,000 low-income customers to pay their bills. They invest more, too. Scottish Water has invested nearly 35% more per household in infrastructure since 2002 than privatised firms in England; it charges 14% less in water bills; and it doesn’t pay out costly dividends to shareholders.”

“During last month’s heatwave, Boris Johnson ducked out of chairing several Cobra meetings, and has barely been seen in public since. Prospective leader Rishi Sunak thinks letting his daughters do the recycling will help us get to net zero. This is hardly the muscular and resolute decision-making we need to tackle the climate emergency.

Meanwhile, Liz Truss is on a bizarre crusade complaining about solar panels in fields, when solar is the cheapest form of energy and covers just 0.06% of UK land, far less than the amount of land used by airports. To top it all off, Truss has also refused to increase the windfall tax on energy companies, and has pledged to lift the ban to on climate-wrecking fracking.”

I might have to start voting Green! 

A number of companies - quite a sizeable number - have closed their outlets in Russia in protest against the war in Ukraine. But according to this article individuals are bulk ordering stuff from companies such as Zara and then selling the goods on to the Russians who want to buy them. I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!