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Message: [QUOTE="headfullofbees, post: 22885, member: 408"] What happened is that, here in Britain, until 1989, the publicly owned regional water boards were responsible for all water infrastructure, reservoirs, river clearing and dredging, pollution control, domestic, agricultural and manufacturing water services, the lot. People and businesses paid water rates to those water boards. For ideological reasons, the far-right government of Margaret Thatcher decided to privatise the parts of the water boards which could generate profits, and dump the rest onto the National Rivers Authority. Since then, we have had extortionate rises in cost for our services, coupled with neglect of water courses to reservoirs, which exacerbate shortages, and the NRA has been denied funding equivalent to cross-subsidy, which would have allowed it to continue to perform the necessary dredging of rivers. It is estimated that the rivers in the flood-affected areas are 41% silted up, and this has contributed greatly to the flooding. It will now take many times the cost of dredging to put the problem right, and that doesn't include the cost of human misery. Penny wise, pound foolish.:mad: [/QUOTE]