Category: Stupidity

The Crap Sewage Systems mean the Reservoirs are Empty

Since the last few months have been pretty wet, you might have thought that we must be going into the summer with nice, well-filled reservoirs.

No, we aren’t. And, yes, it is because of the water companies, but not in the obvious way.

It goes like this. Reservoirs get a lot of their water from rivers. The rivers get lots of their water from the heavens and run off. But when there is a lot of rain, the combined sewer systems can’t cope. So then those same fresh water rivers actually become sewers, and get lots of raw sewage in them, as we have seen. And you really don’t want to feed those sewers into the reservoirs. So the water companies don’t.

Consequently, despite the rain, this year we will continue to do the “emergency” water abstraction that we have done every year for yonks.

If we had better sewage systems we would have more fresh water.

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Glastonbury Spreads Covid

Yes, I know that Glasto are trying to deal with touts/scalpers, but it is actually utterly irresponsible to encourage sick people to attend their event.

I’m about to go to a little festival (Endorse it in Dorset).
The Facebook group for the festival has quite a lot of messages from people saying they have Covid and so can’t go; they are trying to sell tickets, mostly at face value, even though it is long sold out.

It got me thinking about the Glastonbury situation, as quite a lot of my friends came back with Covid.
And yet my recent trip to the big Download festival seems to have had no such problems.

It seems to me that the difference is that you can transfer or resell tickets for most festivals, but not Glastonbury.

If you are waiting to go to an event, and test positive for Covid, you are meant to not go. That can be very disappointing, but hey, it’s just a gig or whatever, isn’t it, and you can go the next time the band is in town. Also you can give the ticket to a friend or sell it to someone to recoup the loss.

In the case of Glastonbury, however, this doesn’t work.
You are very unlikely to get a ticket next year, as you had waited several years to get this one.
Perhaps more significantly, the about £300 you paid for the ticket will simply be lost. Knowing that there is a ticket that could get you in, just sitting there, is a huge temptation to just rock up, Covid and all.
If you had been able to give it to a friend, for free even, the pain of not going would be much reduced, and the decision has been made.

It’s a bit like sick pay – if you don’t get decent sick pay, you are much more likely to go to work with Covid (or whatever), and infect your fellow workers.

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