Government forces Kent homes to have water meters

**AtW** · 1 March 2006, 23:45

Originally posted by wendigo100

I wonder why?

Launder stolen money?

**NoddY** · 2 March 2006, 00:18

Originally posted by wendigo100

...I wonder why?...

Yeah, funny that.

What was also interesting was the report on the BBC 10 o'clock news broadening the issue to 'metering in general' i.e. road pricing etc..

The cause of this - overpopulation in the SE of England - was omitted in the report. So, not only is mass immigration about to be reflected in the landscape with the release of green belt land for housing, but begins to regress services we have taken for granted.

In fact since the end of the post-war boom (itself financed by the US) I believe the UK has been in 'regression' - a long term decline in which things the previous generation took for granted are denied to us and our futures e.g. 'cheap' energy, secure and sustainable pensions, affordable housing, work that pays and offers progression, households that could be sustained on a single income.

**Shimano105** · 2 March 2006, 08:31

Yep, we're fecked - let's all leg it to France. It's only 20 miles from Kent ffs!

**Mailman** · 2 March 2006, 09:30

Time to invest in water company shares eh?

Mailman

**expat** · 2 March 2006, 09:51

Originally posted by NoddY

In fact since the end of the post-war boom (itself financed by the US) I believe the UK has been in 'regression' - a long term decline in which things the previous generation took for granted are denied to us and our futures e.g. 'cheap' energy, secure and sustainable pensions, affordable housing, work that pays and offers progression, households that could be sustained on a single income.

I think you're right. And I think that overpopulation is a major cause.

Some other factors are in there, for example single-income multiple-occupant households are less viable simply because they're losing to the competition, which is multiple-income multiple-occupant households, i.e. if your wife goes out to work then your household income goes up, but if every wife goes out to work then everybody just gets paid less. And every wife will have to go out to work, because everybody is getting paid less.

I am not trying to be sexist here, it is self-evident to me that people's gender is not a public matter and not relevant to employment. But it was true that wives mostly didn't take paid employment and it isn't true now.

**threaded** · 2 March 2006, 10:09

But it was true that wives mostly didn't take paid employment and it isn't true now.

Bollox. Another fscking myth. You lot, did you ever question anything you were told at the excuse for a school you went to?

One of the reasons that women were stopped working down the pits was because the heat meant they had to work near naked, and the Victorians on high thought it was wrong that young boys saw such things.

Then they stopped young boys going down the pit.

It is true that women generally were not given technical work, which changed in WW1 and WW2.

Betty Harris, age 37: I was married at 23, and went into a colliery when I was married. I used to weave when about 12 years old; can neither read nor write. I work for Andrew Knowles, of Little Bolton (Lancs), and make sometimes 7s a week, sometimes not so much. I am a drawer, and work from 6 in the morning to 6 at night. Stop about an hour at noon to eat my dinner; have bread and butter for dinner; I get no drink. I have two children, but they are too young to work. I worked at drawing when I was in the family way. I know a woman who has gone home and washed herself, taken to her bed, delivered of a child, and gone to work again under the week.

I have a belt round my waist, and a chain passing between my legs, and I go on my hands and feet. The road is very steep, and we have to hold by a rope; and when there is no rope, by anything we can catch hold of. There are six women and about six boys and girls in the pit I work in; it is very hard work for a woman. The pit is very wet where I work, and the water comes over our clog-tops always, and I have seen it up to my thighs; it rains in at the roof terribly. My clothes are wet through almost all day long. I never was ill in my life, but when I was lying in.

My cousin looks after my children in the day time. I am very tired when I get home at night; I fall asleep sometimes before I get washed. I am not so strong as I was, and cannot stand my work so well as I used to. I have drawn till I have bathe skin off me; the belt and chain is worse when we are in the family way. My feller (husband) has beaten me many a times for not being ready. I were not used to it at first, and he had little patience.

I have known many a man beat his drawer. I have known men take liberties with the drawers, and some of the women have bastards.

From Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1842, Vol. XV, p. 84, and ibid., Vol. XVII, p. 108.

Government forces Kent homes to have water meters