How you can tap into water saving methods

However, it comes as some surprise to find that although there is a record low in rainfall at present, every water company is managing to pay its bosses bonuses but no one has “leaked” yet the exact scale.

Using information available from various accredited sources (that have not dried up), I calculate that the UK population consume/use 3,406,477,164,750 litres or 3.4 trillion litres a year (why does that word make me think of bankers who also managed to lose trillions while drinking champagne?).

From the same sources, the water companies actually lose 1.2 trillion litres of water per year – that is 35 per cent lost!

Now, admittedly, they can say that they have recycled this or that amount, but the fact remains that they have lost, misplaced, overlooked, lost in the audit, filed wrongly or had stolen, 35 per cent of the water out there or rather not out there but under there somewhere.

So when they bleat on about low rainfall it is a bit of a cover up and an attempt to “cloud” the issue of their incompetence to manage that which we give them to look after.

If we had given money to a bank and each year the total had diminished by 35 per cent what would the reaction be?

Now, the water companies “drip” feed us various anecdotal solutions or ways to help.

These range from a hosepipe ban, dropping a brick in your cistern (not a clever solution for the less well informed), using your washing up water to flush the toilet (do not forget to remove that last teaspoon before doing so), and weeing on our garden.

Excuse me, but this may help with nitrogen levels but the prospect of seeing pale naked bods of differing genders and sizes, balancing on compost heaps at various times of the day does not inspire many!

Other ways include sharing a toilet, hopefully not at the same time. Not wishing to be a wet blanket but this could have disastrous consequences for whoever gets there first if sharing is envisaged. The suggestions go on, involving a bizarre range of solutions, covering huge areas in sheets of plastic at night and collecting the condensation in the morning (presumably not over the bit you wee’d on the previous night) as they do in deserts, to drilling enormous wells, converting sea water as the levels are rising and so on but the last item is going to be recycled, like the water from your tap at least six times. Think about that. And you know that crystal clear bottled water? It must have come from somewhere originally at some stage and therefore in itself is recycled, possibly from the 1.2 trillion litres lost each year by the water companies. Now there is a comforting thought.

Got to go, as I have left the hose running and all this typing has made me thirsty.

Greg Dunningham Marlborough Road, Swindon

Drivers a disgrace

Nearly every week, as I am the standard bearer for the Royal Signals Association, I and several other lads go to Brize Norton airfield for the repatriations.

Two weeks ago it was for six lads who came home and last week it was for three of them.

This sacrifice goes on week after week without fail, with these lads and ladies giving their lives in the line of duty.

The question of should they actually be there is another matter.

I don’t think they should, but that being the case, we go and pay our respects to these service personnel, who have done their duty for the country and the people they protect.

They are on a basic wage of about £20,000 a year for this task, with no chance of “overtime” for them, no great pay-off at the end, just a wooden box and the thoughts of their families. To read the comments of Mr McDougall makes my skin crawl.

His members are on a wage of approximately £45,000 a year for a reported 37-hour week, and one transport firm has said the drivers are paid approximately £24 an hour overtime. If the Army drivers are called in to do the job of the striking drivers, they will be doing it under orders from their commanding officers, not some joblot sat in his office calling them out to strike so the union boss can uphold his threat to cause maximum disruption to this Government.

If the union members have any choice, they should throw this man out of his job for such comments. Utter disgrace.

T Reynolds Wheeler Avenue Swindon

Grammar point

I know that the criticism that I am about to make may seem a little pedantic but someone has to try to keep up the standards.

I refer to a headline in your Saturday edition of 31st March on page 7, “Teen forced man to open up club so he could steal.”

With the absence of the word “that” between “so and “he” the sentence becomes meaningless, in fact it becomes a non sequitur.

But fear not, your paper is not the only transgressor, this trend of leaving out the necessary conjunction is very common, but it doesn’t half wind me up.

C J Meek Cloche Way, Swindon

Taxing times

It’s interesting to note that if the top rate of income tax raised so little money, then why did George Osbourne and his Tory pals reduce the 50p tax to 45p and cut spending and increase taxes on the poor, old and infirm?

When Magaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, the higher rate of tax was 52 per cent, so surely if the 50p tax wasn’t raising enough, then they should have increased this tax instead of piling on the agony for those people living a hand to mouth existence and can ill-afford to pay more or receive less money.

This is not just a world financial crisis, it is a revolution instigated by the rich to beat the poor, infirm and old into financing their greed while inflicting more pain, poverty and suffering on the less well off.

In short, what George Osbourne and Tories, with the support of the Liberals have done, is lined their own pockets and the pockets of millionaires and big business, without caring a damn for the economy of Britain or the people who live here.

This Tory Government, with the aid of their toadying Liberal surfs, are taxing honest working people to the hilt, to bailout the banks and their cronies, so as they can continue to pay themselves ever more increasing bonuses, while they drag the already depressed British economy down furthermore into the abyss of the depression of their making.

A King Park Lane, Swindon

Act over litter

I have recently started cycling to the train station from Peatmoor along Cycle Route 45. This takes me from Peatmoor Lagoon through Sparcells, past Shaw Forest to Westmead, to Barnfield Road, past B&Q, Iffley Road and behind the Oasis.

I have been amazed at the amount of litter. Much of it has clearly been there for months or even years.

It is especially bad on Barnfield Road near the bus stop and at the entrance to Galston Way.

This is of course just the tip of the iceberg.

I often see SBC litter pickers along main routes in Swindon, but they only ever collect the “easy litter” if any of it is inside a bush, or beyond the mown verge, it is left untouched, despite it being very visible (Great Western Way is a prime example of this).

They very rarely (if ever) go down footpaths to collect litter.

I also cannot comprehend why the council allows certain families in West Swindon (and probably elsewhere) to throw their rubbish over their garden fences on to the public land that borders some of the main routes (e.g. Roughmoor Way, Tewkesbury Way), yet the council does nothing about it. Emails to the council are ignored.

Of course, a lot of the responsibility for litter lies with the brainless morons who deposit it.

I’m sure most people have seen someone drop litter, even next to a bin. It also now seems to have become acceptable to throw fast food packaging out of car windows. What is wrong with people these days?

I would ask anyone who is as fed up with litter, graffiti and dog mess as much as I am, to email the council and cc in your local councillor or even MP. Let’s all keep doing it until they do something about it.

Paul Davies Peatmoor, Swindon

Bradford warning

The result in the Bradford West by-election should surprise no one.

The politicians of all three main parties have nothing in common with the wishes of the electorate.

From the financial disaster called the European Union, immigration, lack of law and order, youth unemployment, abuse of our benefits system, overseas aid to corrupt regimes, the run down of military forces in these dangerous times – the list is endless.

How could a Government with all its so called highly paid (by us) advisers, come up with something as ludicrous as the VAT on hot pasties, or upset the powerful vote of our beleaguered pensioners?

The petrol fiasco has exposed them as out of touch. High petrol prices and VAT at 20 percent has flatlined the economy.

It is time for the chickens to come home to roost for all of our democratic representatives at local and national level.

Bill Williams Merlin Way, Swindon