Rates and water charges - just curious.....

leftieM

As I see it it's not an argument about paying per se - the system needs money and the users have to pay - it's, for me, about privatisation. Maybe I'm over simplifying but if you stick a middle man in who needs a profit then either the users pay more or the workers employed to treat and supply the water get paid less. Neither option is acceptable to me and I see no other way to make myself heard than to not pay.
I also believe that,as a privatised monopoly has no market forces acting upon it to drive it to produce goods/supply services competitively, it will not choose to deliver a good service at a fair price.
I would hand the money over without a whimper is I had assurances that the water service wouldn't be privatised.
There are other issues too - lying by ministers, underhand tactics such as not having a proper public consultation etc - but, for me, these are side issues.

IvanOpinion

giwebb wrote:

a. why the water service has been underfunded

Because we wasted hundreds of millions of money on security and, despite the lies told by various political parties (who actually know better .. behind closed doors .. out of the glare of the media), generally the rates we paid were not enough to cover local government and water/sewage and all the other services we demanded.

b. what exactly the £3 billion over the next 20 years is for

They say to fix a failing infrastructure and to clean up the amount of raw sewage we pump out (such as the ongoing schemes in Donaghadee and Belfast). We are already in jeopardy of having to pay significant fines for the amount of sewage we are sending out to sea (levied by the EC) ... and the current target is the easy one (its just our politicians were too busy blaming lack of government on each other and accepting too many back handers from builders thereby allowing properties to built in areas were the sewage system could not cope) .. the next target (2015?) is the difficult one and (based on one set of figures I have seen) could amount to fines of £180 per annum per household.

c. what were/are we investing each year

That is one of those questions were the answer does not matter .. outside of looking at numbers ... such numbers are totally meaningless unless specifics and context are looked at.

d. will every penny go to the water & sewerage infrastructure or is it going to be redirected to health/education etc

Government will do whatever they like with money ... they will tell you what you want to hear and will manufacture some arbitrary figures to back it up. What does it matter if it goes on water or other core services .. just as long as it is to the benefit of the entire community.

e. why is it based on the rateable value of my house

Because our massively bloated civil service could not organise a pi$$ up in a brewery (irrespective of the amount of time or money on offer). Meters will be coming along, but that takes time (and are not necessarily advantageous to everybody) .. so the main reason it is based on rateable value is quite simply due to the crass incompetence and inactivity of our civil service.

Ivan

dmxdave

Quote:
b. what exactly the £3 billion over the next 20 years is for

The small company I work for in Bangor has just received 8 seperate identical letters addressed to "The Occupier" from DRD Water Service Customer Relation Centre !

Shouldn't take them too long to spend it :rotfl:

martymcauley

Dont care the in's and out's or what if's dont care if the bailiffs come a knocking or Hain Paisley and adams all come around with a bowl and sing a wee song. I aint paying. the reason is this. The Labour government ( which of course we cant vote on since has barred itself from standing in Norn Iron) never asked me . sounds petty sounds childish i know but i dont give a stuff.

but since i am almost certian sure that it is just a tactic by the smiling buffon and the tanned !!!!!! to get the parties to actually sit in stormount dont think any of us will have to pay it anyhow.

shaz77_2

It looks like water charges are not coming after all, the four main parties claim to have got this issue sorted out.

darwin-rover

shaz77 wrote: »

It looks like water charges are not coming after all, the four main parties claim to have got this issue sorted out.

I'll believe it when I see it . Seeing as our MPs/MLAs have no real power at the mo.
In fact , at least a year ago , I heard that our MPs/MLAs where deliberately going to wait until AFTER water charges were introduced , before going back into Stormont , so as they can then claim "Its nothing to do with us" , as no-one wanted the blame for introducing it .

IvanOpinion

I also wonder where our MLAs expect to magic the money from to pay for several projects currently under development and how they are going to meet EC requirements that they are legally obligated to meet. When they last sat at Stormont the MLAs buried their heads in the sand and did nothing (which is why central government had to take it on board) ... for how much longer can they ignore their obligations .. how much longer can they outstretch the begging bowl.

Ivan

samsyerman

I have been a contributor to this forum for a couple of years and have received many useful answers to questions I have asked other users of the forum.

One of the many good things about this site is the "please be nice to all MoneySavers" attitude, where common courtesy is shown.

I must declare that I am one of the civil servants whom Ivanopinion is constantly going on about. I along with everyone else in Northern Ireland want to do my best for my wife and family by providing them with what they need, and I would ask Ivan to realise that 99% of all civil servants have no say or control over what the 1% of civil service top management decide. We only carry out the functions asked of us by our political masters.

I am really annoyed by the constant bashing directed towards all public servants in Northern Ireland as we are certainly not in it for the financial rewards on offer. I also do not agree with the way this new water charge is being forced upon us and I will not be paying it, and to that end I have returned my water estimate and unsigned direct debit mandate.

I am not posting looking for sympathy but only to declare that we are not some pariahs on the Northern Ireland economy but only trying to do our best for our families.

samsyerman

IvanOpinion

samsyerman wrote: »

I must declare that I am one of the civil servants whom Ivanopinion is constantly going on about. I along with everyone else in Northern Ireland want to do my best for my wife and family by providing them with what they need, and I would ask Ivan to realise that 99% of all civil servants have no say or control over what the 1% of civil service top management decide. We only carry out the functions asked of us by our political masters.

Don't take it personally ... my experiences of the civil service have often fallen short of acceptable (especially considering the number of people that it employs). This government (and previous) have used the civil service as a dumping ground to try to reduce unemployment figures which is a massive problem ... it is vastly over bloated (some would say the bloat is as much as 40%). Many internal jobs are nothing more thanmoving paper from one civil servant to another causing the private sector mases of red tape for no other reason than job protection.

I agree with what you are saying about just being the monkey to the organ grinder but when the organ grinder has 10 monkeys and they still do not collect the money for him something is very wrong. Currently 57% of the working population in NI works for the civil service and a further 18% work for it indirectly ... that is 3 in 4 of the working population are actually administering the province and not (exceptions accepted) generating revenue ... that is not sustainable in any shape or form and provides a false an unsustainable economy.

I assume that you can see the flaw in this picture ... something has to give .. and to move forward I would like to see a fit-for-purpose, value for money, efficient public sector .. however currently we have none of those attributes and I fear all that will happen is that it will coninue to grow and become even more of a burden on the economy than it is now.

Ivan

PS: I should also say that many members of my family have been and still are the monkeys and a couple have even been the organ grinders.

leftieM

Surely part of the problem here has been the lack of government - the civil service is a captainless ship.