What time is it, Eccles?
Now, all is changed: as water companies discharge untreated sewage into rivers, and more visibly, into the seas around England’s coast - thereby putting nearby beaches off limits for holidaymakers - the backlash has begun, with Tory MPs who helped vote down that amendment being individually named and shamed on social media platforms. What to do?
Sadly, all that could be done was for Gammon Broadcasting News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) to bring forth an alleged “fact check” from Tom Harwood, formerly replacement teaboy to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog. Teaboy Tom claimed that the vote wasn’t really about that, and, moreover, that dumping of raw sewage was “relatively rare”.
But, as Captain Blackadder might have observed, there was only one thing wrong with this idea - it was bollocks. And the Tweeter known as The Prole Star said so. “There were at least 470,000 "sewage spills", where sewage is intentionally dumped into waterways, in England and Wales in 2021. Combined, they add up to over 3.4 million hours (the equivalent of 388 years!) in a single year. The GB News teaboy thinks that's 'relatively rare’”.
Also, the BBC reported bad news for Teaboy Tom: “Water companies have been accused of failing to monitor sewage discharges at popular British seaside resorts … In Seaford, East Sussex, where the beach is popular with swimmers and families, a monitor was only working a third of the time, according to a review of data from the Environment Agency”.
There was more. “Southern Water was forced to apologise last week after beaches in East Sussex were closed due to untreated wastewater being released into the sea at the shoreline. Pollution warnings were put in place across more than 40 beaches and swimming spots in England and Wales after heavy rain overwhelmed sewer system”. And yet more.
Water companies say it's all going swimmingly
As Marina Purkiss observed, “Tory MPs (and Tom Harwood) now saying they had good reason to vote against sewage restrictions … That this would have left the taxpayer open to a £600bn repair bill … That this ‘would have led to sewage leaking into people's homes’”. The truer figure for not dumping raw sewage into rivers and onto bathing beaches is around £15 billion.
SOS Whitstable has taken each point made by Tory MP, Maria Caulfield, who represents Lewes (a Lib Dem target), showing she is being disingenuous, if not dishonest (thread HERE). As they put it, “We are concerned by the [Conservatives’] response to the ongoing sewage crisis and the manner in which they are trying to shape the narrative and rewrite history”.
But then, had the Tories really wanted to rewrite history, maybe they shouldn’t have selected Teaboy Tom as their standard bearer. Not with his track record, and the inconvenient fact that those Tory MPs voted, effectively, for the continuation of the status quo, whereby water companies could just carry on literally pumping crap into rivers and seas. Which they are now doing.
One might urge them to Get In The Sea. Except the beaches are closed.
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The Tory leadership frontrunner, Liz Truss, was responsible for cutting millions of pounds of funding earmarked for tackling water pollution during her time as environment secretary, the Guardian can reveal.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/22/liz-truss-environment-agency-cuts-sewage-water-pollution
One wonders if Harwood et al would be comfortable drinking a glass of water with "relatively little" poo in it. You know, just a bit, hardly any...what do you mean the entire glass has gone brown?
Harwood is a typical far right bought-and-paid-for lying propaganda clerk. As "trustworthy" as any other blue, red or yellow tory......which is not at all. A mere bureaucrat in a corrupt capitalist state.
It is way beyond time to finally rid the country of this privatised filth. All essential services should be nationalised, properly funded and managed efficiently in community interests.....and NO COMPENSATION except in cases of proven need: The polluters have had their miserable ill-gotten profits.
Polluting beaches with poisoned filth is NOT a community interest. But you can't expect a ranting rightie idiot like Harwood to understand that.
There is little skill, and no financial risk, in managing a regional franchise to collect rain in reservoirs and then disperse it through pipes that were already there. The least that you can do is not defecate into the rivers or the sea. Yet that is what is happening.
Yes, MPs, including one who was now a Labour frontbencher, did infamously voted down an amendment to ban this. But I refuse to believe that there is no law that could possibly be invoked against what amounted to defecation into our waters, and thus onto our riverbanks and our beaches. You would be breaking the law if you let a dog do that.
As soon as the Criminal Bar Association had won its strike, as it must, then we all need to get on with this. Even if trade unions or others had to bring private prosecutions.
Harwood does talk a lot of shite.
A little turd floating in a sea of right wing CRAP …. YEP …. welcome to GB NEWS
But British fish are happy fish!
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