David Levy – In a Week’s Time and Beyond – Nov 20
With 650+ MPs contacted and to date only 4 signed up to support Amendment 200 to the Environment Bill, it is clear that the political will is absent to change the legal responsibility on water companies, a bridge too far.
Marinet has committed huge reserves of our resources to mobilise Middle England, by writing to the Women’s Institutes, The Rotary Clubs and Lions Clubs of England. The sum total response of this mass mailing, zero engagement, even zero acknowledgement. This was even when we accompanied these mailing with information and a webinar podcast to explain the issue.
I have to ask anyone reading this blog, what are we supposed to do?
We have tried to work with Surfers Against Sewage and we have even found a flaw in the Environment Bill with a remedy. Amendment 200 is that remedy, yet all we have got from this organisation has been a cold shoulder.
Amendment 200 would provide a specific legal requirement upon the water companies to provide management plans for discharges of sewage to the marine environment. This would lead to a clean-up of water going directly into the sea, surely a major goal of SAS. To date, we have had no support from SAS in support of this Amendment. It is as if they do not want to solve the issue of swimming with turds.
When I first considered this issue I believed that it was one of education followed by personal decision-making on where our pension fund money is invested. I have already made it clear to my portfolio manager that I no longer wish for my money to be invested in blue chip utility stocks and shares where the said utility breaches health and hygiene standards and is doing too little to change their performance.
I feel that there is a requirement on each and every one of us to consider the evidence and to make the same type of decisions that humankind faced when considering slavery and tobacco investments in the past.
At this moment in time it may be too late, but beyond this moment in time I foresee massive increases in water-borne diseases due to inactivity by the water companies, and an escalation in such diseases as sepsis carried by increases in the rat population.
Things will only change when Middle England pick up and carry the baton for change.
David Levy
