Hosepipe bans..

[highlandsflyer]

I'm not sure I agree. People seem to get fed OK without state-run food production

Food production is massively subsidised.

I am not saying privately run farms could not feed the nation, but they are being strangled by the conglomerates who rely on subsidies from you and me to underwrite their price demands.

 

[dyna-ti]

Don't get me started on supermarkets :shock:

Bloody meat improver's :evil: :evil: Killed my trade the bastrds :evil: :evil:
Hows the song go again?
One in ten were time served men the rest were fukcing chancers :evil:

Ever wondered why a bottle of coke is usually £2.05 in a supermarket when in the corner shop its £1.99.
Massive buying power with the supermarket and the corner shop only really buys a couple of cases :?
Those offers thay keep harking on about-Only really apply between the markets themselves and dont really apply if you take the small shop into account.If you do you will see the corner shop is in many cases cheaper than the likes of tesco.
So those offers are really just an insult and a pretty crass one at that.
Now we have 'metro' stores.But they are priced higher than their big brothers,again a pretty strange way to save the customer money.Maybe they mean over your lifetime or some such thing:? [ ]

Back to their evil disgusting poor quality stuff they laughingly call meat :x
Their stuff is matured in a bag hot boned too[and it is what it sounds like]
Oh but now you can buy Properly matured beef, dry aged they are calling it.I suppose thats the poshest way they could think of describing it in order to charge a premium[Which they do of course]
Guess what.Yup ,your local butchers has been selling 'dry aged' beef for about a 1000 yrs and cheaper than the cost of the crappiest the supermarkets have to offer.
support your local shop


Blame highlandsflyer he started me off

 

[rollin]

Don't get me started on supermarkets :shock:

[...]
Guess what.Yup ,your local butchers has been selling 'dry aged' beef for about a 1000 yrs and cheaper than the cost of the crappiest the supermarkets have to offer.
support your local shop


Blame highlandsflyer he started me off

I'd always figured the butcher would be better than Tesco's, but cheaper? :shock: Well, I'm off to search out the nearest butcher shop now... if I can still find any. Good quality at low prices: You don't find that too often at the supermarket.

 

[yagamuffin]

The water supply should never have been privatised in the first place.
The private companies had no interest in maintaining the infrastructure as it would cost more than the value of the water leaking out.
Only when the Government forced them in to action did we see companies like Thames Water patting themselves on the back for repairing the Victorian water main.
Maggie has a lot to answer for and I for one will be throwing a big party the day she pops her clogs. Evil witch.

 

[Neil]

The water supply should never have been privatised in the first place.
The private companies had no interest in maintaining the infrastructure as it would cost more than the value of the water leaking out.
Only when the Government forced them in to action did we see companies like Thames Water patting themselves on the back for repairing the Victorian water main.
Maggie has a lot to answer for and I for one will be throwing a big party the day she pops her clogs. Evil witch.

I've said for the longest time, that there were plenty of services that shouldn't have been wholesale privatised.

I think it stems from the hubris of some that capitalism and the market economy solves all ills - and it doesn't nor should it.

I know the trite and clichéd arguments about competition and value for the customer - and whilst I think that public infrastructure like this can learn lessons from private business, I honestly don't think society needs the overhead of having to concern itself about profit where things like this are concerned.

People can say what they like about small state and government not being best placed to run things like this - but it's something I keep returning to - several services like this, really don't need the same focus on market economy, or the overhead and / or drive for profit - they just need to focus on their service, and not lose sight of that (ie not like a lot that happened in the public sector, in decades gone by, where big chunks were there as an end in their own right).

 

[rosstheboss]

I think everyone should do what my dad does when there is a hosepipe ban - walk around the garden with the hose in the watering can! A genius idea...

 

[yagamuffin]

The water supply should never have been privatised in the first place.
The private companies had no interest in maintaining the infrastructure as it would cost more than the value of the water leaking out.
Only when the Government forced them in to action did we see companies like Thames Water patting themselves on the back for repairing the Victorian water main.
Maggie has a lot to answer for and I for one will be throwing a big party the day she pops her clogs. Evil witch.

I've said for the longest time, that there were plenty of services that shouldn't have been wholesale privatised.

I think it stems from the hubris of some that capitalism and the market economy solves all ills - and it doesn't nor should it.

I know the trite and clichéd arguments about competition and value for the customer - and whilst I think that public infrastructure like this can learn lessons from private business, I honestly don't think society needs the overhead of having to concern itself about profit where things like this are concerned.

People can say what they like about small state and government not being best placed to run things like this - but it's something I keep returning to - several services like this, really don't need the same focus on market economy, or the overhead and / or drive for profit - they just need to focus on their service, and not lose sight of that (ie not like a lot that happened in the public sector, in decades gone by, where big chunks were there as an end in their own right).

Too true.
I have no problem with capitalism but it only works when there is competition. We don't have companies competing to sell us water. It's the same reason the railways have failed, they have no competition, each line only has one company running trains on it.

 

[technodup]

Transporting water or any other resource is difficult and expensive. Transporting people is easy and cheap as chips.

Why not encourage (by which I mean bribe) people away from London to less densely populated areas of the country?

By encouraging business to relocate they'd benefit from reduced costs and workers would too. Not to mention relieving the pressure on the SE/London's water, transport, house prices etc etc. In this day and age I can't see any real NEED for so much of UK business and people to be so physically close together.

 

[suburbanreuben]

Don't get me started on supermarkets :shock:

[...]
Guess what.Yup ,your local butchers has been selling 'dry aged' beef for about a 1000 yrs and cheaper than the cost of the crappiest the supermarkets have to offer.
support your local shop


Blame highlandsflyer he started me off

I'd always figured the butcher would be better than Tesco's, but cheaper? :shock: Well, I'm off to search out the nearest butcher shop now... if I can still find any.

Yup,, cheaper, much cheaper! About 2/3 the price at my butcher, and the taste....

 

[technodup]

Aye, I pay £3/kg for chicken pieces in my local halal butcher. The equivalent in Morrisons is £8-9/kg.

Plus I can haggle with Mohammed the butcher if it's a bit over.