England To Diverge From EU Water Monitoring Standards (theguardian.com) 55
The Guardian has revealed that the UK government will diverge from the European Union's standards for monitoring water quality in England. From the report: While in the EU, England was covered by the water framework directive (WFD), which meant a national chemical and ecological survey of rivers was conducted annually. After Brexit, the WFD was transposed into English law but the government removed the requirement to conduct annual tests. This is the latest example of the UK diverging from EU environmental standards. Recent analysis found that many toxic chemicals and pesticides banned in the bloc since Brexit are not outlawed for use in the UK. Ministers have also sought to rip up EU-derived sewage pollution rules for housebuilders.
In 2019, the last time the full water assessments took place, just 14% of rivers were in good ecological health and none met standards for good chemical health. The government has said it does not intend to deliver a complete update until 2025, the latest permissible date under the new WFD. The Guardian can reveal that the government will be using its own, as yet undisclosed methodology to assess river health. Activists say this may make it harder to compare the state of the country's rivers against those in the EU, and will leave the public in the dark over pollution from sewage and agriculture. Stuart Singleton-White, of the Angling Trust, said: "WFD has been the bedrock of us understanding the state of our rivers, lakes and groundwater. It does not give a full picture, but it does provide a useful starting point. Past assessments have shown things are getting worse, not better. To now not have a full assessment in 2022 and have to wait to 2025 ... simply sows confusion and leaves the public in the dark when it comes to properly understanding whether our rivers are getting better or worse."
In 2019, the last time the full water assessments took place, just 14% of rivers were in good ecological health and none met standards for good chemical health. The government has said it does not intend to deliver a complete update until 2025, the latest permissible date under the new WFD. The Guardian can reveal that the government will be using its own, as yet undisclosed methodology to assess river health. Activists say this may make it harder to compare the state of the country's rivers against those in the EU, and will leave the public in the dark over pollution from sewage and agriculture. Stuart Singleton-White, of the Angling Trust, said: "WFD has been the bedrock of us understanding the state of our rivers, lakes and groundwater. It does not give a full picture, but it does provide a useful starting point. Past assessments have shown things are getting worse, not better. To now not have a full assessment in 2022 and have to wait to 2025 ... simply sows confusion and leaves the public in the dark when it comes to properly understanding whether our rivers are getting better or worse."
Shittier? (Score:2, Informative)
So will the water literally become shittier?
I heard it's already quite crappy:
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
https://news.yahoo.com/surfers... [yahoo.com]
https://www.politico.eu/articl... [politico.eu]
Yeah, pretty much. (Score:2)
After resorting to dumping raw sewage into the Baltic sea this looks like a new low for the UK. ... I sure hope they somehow get this increasing post-Brexit decline under control. It's starting to look really bad.
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UK dumping raw sewage into Baltic sea? Sounds strange.
Well, would you rather dump it in the sea next to you or the one next to Russia (and some other minor nations of no import - I mean they are all "European" whatever that means)? This would be absolutely the kind of policy the current UK government would celebrate. The subcontractors, however, are probably not even getting out into the North Sea and are likely charging for the full distance whilst dumping it all in the Thames estuary, so don't worry about this my Polish and Scandinavian friends. There's no w
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After resorting to dumping raw sewage into the Baltic sea this looks like a new low for the UK. ... I sure hope they somehow get this increasing post-Brexit decline under control. It's starting to look really bad.
I can personally remember when the city of Blackpool dumped its raw sewage into the Irish Sea on every high tide, relying on the city's 20-foot tide to carry the stuff away.
So when is the next Big Stink scheduled for?
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So when is the next Big Stink scheduled for?
There have been lots of reports recently of swimming competitions in the sea where everybody got sick, so I suspect the only reason you don't realize it's happening now is that you are used to the smell.
Re: Shittier? (Score:1)
Re: Shittier? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Shittier? (Score:3)
"Biologically dead" doesn't automatically mean "polluted". The western suburbs of Broward County, Florida *exist* as dry land (where the houses are) because developers built neighborhood-scale limestone strip mines, crushed & dumped it nearby to add 5-15 feet of elevation to the surrounding future neighborhood, then allowed the lakes to fill up with rainwater & create brand new high-value waterfront property.
The most desirable lakes (for homeowners & property values) are 50+ feet deep, have stee
I always wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand conservatives around the world are always hell-bent on reducing public expenditure (when they're honest politicians and not trying to line their pockets that is).
But one thing puzzles me: when funding is cut to important things like air or water quality monitoring, oil companies are allowed to do fracking near water tables and make people sick, chemical companies are allowed to skimp on safety checks, NOAA's budget is reduced to uselessness and can't monitor life-threatening weather events or - longer term - research budgets on clean power are cut while muderous military spending are increased, it doesn't take a genius to understand that whoever allows these things to happen hurts their fellow man.
And what I don't understand is this: how does one in charge live with themselves when the hurt they cause is VERY clearly disproportionate with the savings they seek to achieve?
I have no great faith in anybody who choses politics as a career, because politicians have proven time and time again how unprincipled they can be. But I refuse to believe that a vast majority of those human beings can be psychopathic enough to think hurting a lot people is okay to save a little money. And yet they seem to be...
Re:I always wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, you have to understand three things about the UK to understand this:
1) They have a first past the post system and such mostly leads to more extreme opinions winning in candidate selection "as you are preaching to the choir". In the case of UK this is made worse by the fact that the selection process is done by party members that are a very small % of the total population.
2) The brainwashing power of the press is higher in UK than in many other places due to education and cultural factors. A lot of people actually still buy newspapers there as example. Combine that with the fact that almost all news papers and other media in UK is very partisan and you get populations that do not vote on issues or record, but instead based on the outrage stroked by the press.
3) The richer parts of the society are like a closed club, with donations going to parties and individual MPs and returned directly in public contracts, legislation to benefit the donor and such. This one is mostly the Tories, Labor has their problems due to unions having too high say and such, but overall not so bad and the other parties in general suffer a lot less of this as they have a lot less power to sell..
This basically leads to psychopaths raising to the top in Conservatives (and impractical ideologues in Labor). The other parties need to usually actually try to elect someone smart to lead and as candidates, just to survive in a first past the post.
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I agree for the most part, with the exception of the media. While newspapers in the UK are *highly* partisan, TV news is much less partisan than most places thanks to the BBC. While the BBC is far from perfectly unbiased (it's got somewhat of a right lean just now), the nature of its funding does mean that news tends to be much closer to centre than most places.
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While newspapers in the UK are *highly* partisan,
There is no pretense in the UK that the newspapers are "Fair and Balanced".
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BBC News leans right? How?
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Combine that with the fact that almost all news papers and other media in UK is very partisan
Specifically the right wing press. There is one explicitly partisan left wing newspaper (the Guardian) and that is objectively a lot less bad. By way of example, they recently had an opinion piece by a former Tory minister (Justine Greening), and that is not wildly unusual.
This basically leads to psychopaths raising to the top in Conservatives (and impractical ideologues in Labor)
I'd say Truss was an impractical id
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Smoke and mirrors, as soon as a left-wing politician (Corbyn) got to lead the Labour party The Guardian's knives came out. They're trying to lick Starmer's arse but he's really slippery.
Starmer is as sociopath as the rest of them, no concern for human rights, no concern for the environment, not interested in helping the poorest in society if it means spending any money at all.
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Well, you have to understand three things about the UK to understand this:
1) They have a first past the post system and such mostly leads to more extreme opinions winning in candidate selection "as you are preaching to the choir". In the case of UK this is made worse by the fact that the selection process is done by party members that are a very small % of the total population.
Not quite, the FPTP system often means a candidate wins with fewer votes as we don't have a strict 2 party system, people do vote for minor parties. I.E. Consider this result, CON 32%, LAB 29%, LD 14%, GRN, 10, RUK 8%, Other 7%, under the UK's system the CON candidate wins with 32% of the vote, in England it's rare for minor parties to win a seat. This annoys many people in the UK who'd prefer to move to Proportional Representation or Instant Run-off Voting but the major parties are reluctant to do this bec
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Conservatives are hell bent on maximising short term profits for their friends, not on running the country in the most efficient way possible. A "traditional" conservative would support things like water/air quality monitoring, since they maintain the traditional status quo - that is, they conserve life the same as it always has been (the root of the word conservative).
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Conservatives are hell bent on maximising short term profits for their friends,
Make hay while the sun shines. The Tories know they are going to be wiped out in the next election. The only question is whether they will still be the opposition party, or will be relegated to being the third largest.
Recent by-elections went very badly for the Tories.
They live very well with themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They live very well with themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
They also tend to believe they're being persecuted - I think this is because they're busy trying to exploit everyone around them and so believe everyone else is the same way.
As I get older, I'm starting to think they SHOULD be persecuted. They're simply not good for a highly interconnected and fragile civilization.
I'm not saying we need to round them up and kill them... just round them up and transport them somewhere they can only hurt each other.
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>Last time we tried that it caused Australia
Keep in mind, that was 'ship the criminals there' and not 'ship the assholes there'. A fine line in many cases, but an important one.
Also, we could re-use Australia, maybe choose the least desired quarter and relocate the current inhabitants with a payout.
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But I refuse to believe that a vast majority of those human beings can be psychopathic enough to think hurting a lot people is okay to save a little money. And yet they seem to be...
Have you read any Ayn Rand? You should at a minimum read the Fountain head courtroom scene. The intellectuals who are pushing the conservative agenda are basically fervent believers in that sort of thing. It is ideologically driven behaviour, and Ayn Rand is the ideology. These people genuinely believe this is how society works and that they are doing divine work to return things to the 'natural' order.
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House builders donated £50 million to the Tory Party, and this is their return on that investment.
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When greed is the goal, who your hurt doesn't really matter.
Your river got polluted because I cut EPA funding> Why do you live so close to the river> Do you see me living there?
You can't breathe the air in the city? Why don't you have a countryside manor?
Etc. etc. etc.
You have to remember the conservative side generally falls i
The UK Government is just broken (Score:2)
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Just because they cannot force the UK water industry to fix their consistent negligence
They can, they just don't want to. They could have going-bankrupt levels of fines, and/or criminal negligence for executives.
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It really is down to money. If those hundreds of billions given to shareholders had been spent on the water network, we wouldn't have these problems at all.
The basic issue is that we have a combined waste water system, so household waste water and rainwater end up in the same pipes. If they were separate then we could mostly dump the rainwater because it's not contaminated and would have ended up in rivers anyway. Also, the system was mostly built in the Victorian era, but even long after that we are still
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Yes the combined system isn't ideal. Even with that though it shouldn't be nearly as bad as it. The main problem is it's more profitable to take the fines than build and maintain infrastructure.
Combined systems should only overflow during exceptional peaks, at which point the pipes ought to have been flushed into the treatment plant by the heavy rain up to the point of the overflow. Trouble is the water companies have been keeping infrastructure at marginal levels, at which point they overflow worth pipes n
If you don't test... (Score:2)
Huh (Score:2)
Well, yes, different governments "diverge" - it's what they do. That doesn't automatically mean that one choice is better than the other.
If England were full of exotic (to the readers of /.) people, then the readers of /. would be falling all over themselves to explain why the EU shouldn't impose its evil euro-hegemony on them ...
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That doesn't automatically mean that one choice is better than the other.
It does when they've been consistently failing to hit the current standards.
If England were full of exotic (to the readers of /.) people, then the readers of /. would be falling all over themselves to explain why the EU shouldn't impose its evil euro-hegemony on them
Oh I see you're making shit up and attacking that to sound more right. Except you're wrong on all counts.
Re: (Score:2)
One party was pro Brexit (Score:2)
Whether the public sees any of these 'advantages' is not part of their line of thought, it saves money for The Industry and that's were they believe to have their main supporters.
Re: One party was pro Brexit (Score:2)
On the bright side the government can no longer blame the EU for its failings. The negative side the UK has been run by the same party too long and really needs a different set of clowns to have a go.
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On the bright side the government can no longer blame the EU for its failings. The negative side the UK has been run by the same party too long and really needs a different set of clowns to have a go.
I wish I was as optimistic about this as you are. The EU is still the UK's closest neighbour and trading partner, and will continue to be a target for blame as long as it exists.
Although I have to laugh at how things like the channel migrant crisis have gotten the Tory party tied up in knots. Even the most rabid right wing knob on the street can understand that the EU doesn't have an obligation to stop migrants who want to leave the EU and become the UK's problem (indeed, dumping migrants on other countries
Re: One party was pro Brexit (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish I was as optimistic about this as you are. The EU is still the UK's closest neighbour and trading partner, and will continue to be a target for blame as long as it exists.
The EU has always been an easy scapegoat for some political groups in the UK. After all it is far easier to blame foreigners for everything that admit that problems may have been caused by your own government. With Brexit a reality, it exposes how much denialism still exists. For example, before Brexit a large majority of agricultural work was done by foreign labor. The delusion was that if not for Freedom of movement all those jobs would magically be filled by Britons. The reality is that most people in general do not want to work long hours in all weather conditions for little pay. Thus farms had to cut back on production or see crops rot in the fields due to lack of workers. But somehow that is still the fault of the EU that EU workers no longer want to deal with the complications of work visas when they can work elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
Literally... (Score:1)
can't let any thing stand (Score:4, Insightful)
They do their best (Score:2)
Only pumping raw sewage into rivers, lakes and ocean, hardly 400.000 times per year.
Only +1000 times per day, so small wonder they want to stop monitoring.
It's over.
They gave up.
Experiment (Score:2)
This is what Brexit was about. (Score:2)
Wealthy people pushed Brexit so that this kind of thing could be done. Profit for a small number of people at the expense of the country at large. EU regulations tended to make this more difficult.
England, not the devolved administrations (Score:3)
Re: England, not the devolved administrations (Score:1)
> Northern Ireland) will no-doubt make their own decisions on the matter
ROFL. Really?
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> Northern Ireland) will no-doubt make their own decisions on the matter
ROFL. Really?
NI is a fuster cluck at the moment with the Unionists and Sinners (that's pronounced "Shinners", as in Sinn Fein, it's Irish) both wanting to fuck the NI over to blame the other for it.
Holyrood (Scotland) and the Senedd (Wales) are actually functioning and they'll take exception to this policy with the governments tending to have a much greater local focus and both countries trading heavily on their natural beauty. Then again, Wales is only 3 million and Scotland 5.5 million. The Welsh government is Labo
"sewage pollution" (Score:1)
This wasn't so much about true pollution, just some rules which made nitrogen load from new homes need to be compensated by builders. Cause somehow it's a problem when it's a new home, but it's okay when you live with your parents.
It's one of the death by a thousand cut ways to push up home prizes, which is extremely destabilising in a society with increasing levels of single occupant homes and continuing massive immigration.
Need A Hacker (Score:1)
TOP NOTCH AND HIGH RECOMMENDED (Score:1)