Northern Ireland Water Crisis

After a period of very cold temperatures for the region the big thaw started in Northern Ireland around December 20th bringing with it burst pipes and drained reservoirs. This is a problem that's actually been affecting other parts of the UK including Wales, Northwest England and even London but is at its worst in Northern Ireland where tens of thousands of homes have been without running, mains water for up to eleven days. Being Northern Ireland this is fast becoming a sectarian issue with Loyalists blaming the crisis on the Republicans in the Northern Irish Assembly and using it as an example of how much better everything was when the province was ruled directly from London. To further this end there are no doubt some civil servants who are perhaps not working as hard as they could to solve the problem. However the main reason for the crisis is twofold;

Global Warming. After 10-15 years of unseasonably warm winters all across the UK we now have an entire generation of people who have no idea how to cope with snow in December. Up and down the country people are only now realising that if the temperature drops below freezing then you need to drain your outside pipes otherwise they will freeze and burst. Likewise if your pipes do freeze you need to thaw them out as soon as possible because any pipes on your side of the pavement are your problem, not the water companies.

Water Pricing. An exciting topic if there ever was one(!) Unlike most of the rest of the developed world households in Northern Ireland don't pay a service charge to the water company for their mains water supply. Instead the state run company is funded through indirect taxation and the block grant from London. As a result it is pretty much paralysed by sectarian infighting and doesn't really have the resources to carry out proper maintenance and educate their customers how to maintain their own properties. Although for most of the last 40 years Northern Ireland has been ruled directly from London where water service charges are normal the province has avoided introducing the policy as a nod to the Republicans because in the Republic of Ireland they don't pay service charges either. Well I say don't, one of the conditions of the EU/IMF bailout is that the Irish Republic will have to introduce some form of water pricing which does rather prove that the IMF do think these things through occasionally.



Oh and there's been a shocking development in the Joanna Yeates saga. It turns out that Avon & Somerset police are so immature that they've renamed their Scenes of Crime Officer's (SOCO's) Crime Scene Investigators (CSI's) and given them black utility vests like the ones they wear on that there US TV show.