Should the taxpayer or the water companies pay to improve our rotten flood defence systems?

Question

Lady Young, Head of the Environment Agency, said today that water bills would have to rise across the UK to improve our flood defences.
The water companies increase their profits every year and yet allow almost as much water to soak away through broken pipes as they manage to store.
The Environment Agency kept the flood defences for Upton 20 miles away - then could not get them to the town before it was inundated because the roads were impassably flooded.
The recent floods in Yorkshire, the Midlands and - horror of horrors, a trickle of water in the sacred Home Counties - have shown up the total uselessness of the Environment Agency, but its Head honcho wants you and me to pay to keep her in a job and her fat cat cronies rolling in profits.
Please open you own floodgates of comment, because this apparatchik is trying to make us pay for her Agency's incompetence.

Answer 1

Ohhhhh I totally agree with you. The dividend payouts by water companies over years and their failure to maintain their stystems should come back to their door.

Love your comment about the Home Counties too - it seems that they only take note when it hits them! It's been truly dreadful near me - I'm not sure how some of these poor people will ever get their lives back to something that resembles normal.

Hit the water companies where it hurts.

Answer 2

The water charges are nearly introduced here in N. Ireland or they might already of started. I know I got a bill a few months ago and they where asking for direct debit details. I refuse to pay them. I know people in England etc having been paying these for a while, but I want to know did anyone's wages or benefits go up to cover this extra bill. People find it hard enough to cope on what they earn without this added expense that was free from year dot.

Answer 3

Government money to the water compan ies,but strictly monitored by some responsible people . Water rates should not be increased. Most water Co's are foreign owned . Let them make a loss for a change . Sod the shareholders.. Water should not be in private hands Should be nationalised.

Answer 4

I think we will probably have to pay in the end. I see no reason why the people who fail us so miserably should not be shoved in the stocks in each of the affected towns for a few days, and stripped of the bonus they haven't earned to boot.

The same with the darling young men who thought it was 'fun' to contaminate emergency water supplies by urinating into them.

Answer 5

Interesting, too, that we can mobilise our armed forces to the Middle East, equipped with missiles costing millions EACH, but we can't find a few squaddies, machines and sandbags to dig a few trenches and throw up a couple of makeshift dams on our own island!

Answer 6

The profits from the water companies hee hee!
Well done for thinking what I was thinking about renationalisation, Dels Replies.

Answer 7

the goverment should pay for all the disaster that just happened after all they had the flood defence systems but didnt put them in place until it was too late.
and as for the water board we shouldnt have to pay for their mistakes and downfalls. they should have a system in place to counteract all these things

Answer 8

We pay enough to the companies as it is now, the government should be giving more money for these things.
We also pay high enough taxes in the uk as well.

Answer 9

oh, I thought Michael Brown took care of that. Well, he's working on it anyway.

Answer 10

taxpayers pay for it all anyway, you are whipping a dead horse