Sewers don’t work from original design
When our Victorian ancestors started building sewers they decided to combine both sewage and surface water in the same system. Indeed, storms were almost considered a good thing because they flushed the system through.
In more recent times we have begun to place more importance on the quality of the water around our shores and in our rivers.
However, we are still largely stuck with that original decision to combine sewage and surface water.
Nowadays there are far more paved surfaces, especially in our towns and cities which means far more surface water than in times past.
Building a parallel system to take away surface water is impractical so the solution now is large holding tanks where combined sewage and surface water can be stored before treatment after heavy rain. With the desperate need for more houses the situation is likely to get worse.
Those who would like an immediate ban on spillages into rivers might have to contemplate sewage backing up and emerging into peoples homes.
There is a call for water companies to be re-nationalised, but in Northern Ireland where the water company is still state owned the situation is even worse than England with proportionately more spillages.
So be careful what you wish for.
Let us hope that the holding tanks can be funded and built as soon as possible.
Chris AustinStroud Green
UK’s privatised water industry doesn’t work
Thames Water is in deep trouble. It has 14 thousand million pounds of debt.
Nevertheless, over the years it has paid out billions to shareholders, eg Macquarie, whose CEO got £30m last year.
Since the 1989 privatisation, water bills have increased by 360 per cent which should have led to huge investment and a modern system able to cope with the current flooding.
Instead Thames Water dumped sewage on 17,000 occasions last year.
The UK is the only country in the world to have a privatised water industry. Sheer Tory folly.
N TaylorBagnols WayNewbury
Why didn’t they put bollards on the road?
I was amazed at the stupidity of the council/contractors who couldn’t paint the lines in last week’s copy.
What ever happened to plastic bollards? All they had to do was put some on the road the day before.
Howard BairstowGlendale Avenue, Newbury
How am I not deemed local for social housing?
The Lib Dem councillor for housing was recently in your paper celebrating the building of some flats in Newbury.
They were so chuffed to have built 20- odd social units... but most of the units were so-called ‘affordable’ rent.
Affordable to who? Affordable rent is a con, it is just social housing at an increased cost.
The tenants still go through Homechoice, they just pay more rent.
West Berkshire Council, hand in hand with the likes of Sovereign, have been building these so-called affordable rents at three times the pace they bother with social housing, despite this housing being unaffordable.
This, combined with the number of actual social housing units that have been sold off, especially in villages (where no social housing is built), means that they are basically abusing the system by building less social housing, selling low rent social housing and then building three times more so-called affordable, which if you look at the numbers simply means a huge price increase for what are still social tenants.
The whole so-called affordable thing simply is a con to do away with lower rents and charge more.
They claim it’s to help people who might afford a mortgage save for one, but that is total anti logic, as obviously these people would save more in social rent and buy quicker.
They are selling off social units in villages and only building sellable houses in villages as housing association.
Councils won’t build in villages as planning is too tight and ‘gentrifying the villages’, no poor people wanted here...
This all leads on to my second point, the meaning of local, which West Berkshire very sneakily changed a while ago.
Let me ask you this NWN, my great grandad was from Hungerford, as were all his relatives.
He fought in the First World War and worked on roads for Hungerford council until he suffered a huge head injury at work and spent the rest of his life in the Hungerford hospital due to that injury.
My grandad etc fought in the Second World War. He then worked his whole life in Hungerford and lived there till he died, as did my gran, my mother and father the same...
The question is, would you call me a local person?
Because under the new rules from West Berkshire I’m not, unless I have a job in West Berkshire, are living there, or am a full-time carer for a sick relative.
I too have lived in Hungerford or Kintbury for most of my life, except when working.
I’m a disabled veteran, I too served my country.
But despite only living three miles outside Berkshire in Ramsbury, I am now not considered a local person.
It seems my whole family fought for, worked for and died for this country, but our country does not do for us and West Berks will not respond to me despite me trying to raise all of these issues.
I know people don’t like poor people, those who end up spending their whole life in social housing, but who do you think makes your coffee, serves at your bar etc etc, never being able to afford to buy.
But yet, and here’s an example, I pay £560 a month for my social house, but I at today’s rates have paid that my whole working life.
So do some maths huh...
560 x12 = 6,720, 6,720 x 50 (the amount of years I will pay rent if I die at 70) = £336,000.
That’s right £336,000 I will have paid in what is extra tax because I will never own a house and yet now the system doesn’t even allow me to be called local in the place where my family live, lived, fought for the country, and died.
Any of that sound good or progressive?
I have tried time and again just to go home, but apparently my home I’m not allowed in any more.
And I don’t hate refugees but meanwhile West Berks Council spends its money on buying refugees housing and considers anyone local as long as they have a job.
So disabled old useless veterans like me, can’t even come home.
Thanks for my service, huh Britain?
Local politicians won’t, it seems, respond to my problem with this, but hey, all disabled veterans are useless compared to fit young asylum seekers, huh?
Anthony R HillRamsbury
Ridiculous delay to WBC council tax email
WBC efficiency! I replied to an email confirming council tax payment details.
An automated reply stated that there is a 30-day delay for a reply.
By that time the arrangement will be overdue and liable for court action.
You couldn’t make it up.
I was caught last year.
Doris ColloffKintbury
