RECENT headlines in the media highlight the shortage of water throughout the United Kingdom with restrictions and rationing a distinct possibility. There is however, little evidence to suggest that Scottish Water, the only provider in Scotland, has the foresight or forward planning in place to address this current and future situation.

This is perhaps evident in the conservation of water, a natural resource, by failing to encourage and drive the urgent need to meter water to domestic properties since the current archaic method of payment by rateable value provides any ratepayer access to an unlimited supply of water.

Scottish Water is the only utility company in the United Kingdom to charge domestic households for the installation of a water meter, which at present is £162.48 for an initial survey and £230-£1,020 for the installation in all council tax bands.

These charges discourage any ratepayer from installing a meter and indeed an FoI request to Scottish Water revealed that five meters have been installed in domestic properties throughout Scotland since August 1, 2017 to the current date, an average of one per year. This is a disgraceful statistic when it is my understanding that a domestic household has a right to have a meter installed free of charge, unless it's not practical or is unreasonably expensive to do so.

Research has shown that Scottish Water and Northern Ireland Water, both being statutory corporations, are anachronisms and veritable dinosaurs among the other progressive water companies throughout the United Kingdom who prioritise the conservation of a natural resource by encouraging and promoting the installation of water meters to domestic premises without charge. Scottish Water also has the highest and grossly inflated charges of the 10 companies surveyed.

It seems to me that Scottish Water has no real interest or intent in conserving a valuable resource and is content to make grossly indecent charges and thereby a healthy income while paying lip service to conservation.
Alexander Adamson, Kelso

No need to panic on climate

COLIN Gunn’s near-hysteria over a climate-borne global catastrophe (Letters, September 26) is misplaced.

It would have been helpful if Mr Gunn had quoted even one data source but he failed to do so. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continues to report that hurricane incidence and severity is showing no worsening trend and that flooding across the globe is not increasing. The severe flooding seen in Pakistan this year occurred despite the Government of India’s statistics showing that rainfall for the All India region is only five per cent above average in 2022. Reported by the World Meteorological Organization in 2021, casualties from severe weather have decreased steadily from the 1970s which contradicts the media-propelled perception of escalating annual weather disasters.

The European acreage damaged by wildfires, according to the European Environment Agency, is showing a very obvious downtrend. There are good years and bad years but the trend is clearly down. In the United States, wildfire damage has decreased by 80% compared to that seen in the 1930s.

The UN has been forecasting for 40 years that tens of millions of people would be displaced by rising sea levels and that islands in the Caribbean and in the Maldives would disappear under water. It has never happened. For Mr Gunn now to predict billions of refugees fleeing north to safety – for whatever reason – is alarmist nonsense. The planet is not in distress – it is greening year by year as shown by Nasa satellite pictures. Global agricultural output went up by 50% from 2000 to 2020. Polar bears are five times as numerous as they were 50 years ago. The Great Barrier Reef is in rude health. A slightly warming planet is a good thing.
Andy Cartwright, Glasgow

Family gripes

JOHN Birkett (Letters, September 27) in following up comment on the “Oxford comma” relates interesting examples of grammatical and other errors. I wonder if he, like me, is puzzled at the appearance in recent months in the obituary notices of your Family Announcements of the indiscriminate use of “of” and “to”.

I am the husband of my wife and father of my children – not to them. So many notices seem to contain both words and to me indicate a distinction between blood relationships and substitute spouses and parentage.
William W Park, Strathaven

Different strokes

While agreeing with all the literary punctuation references re the Oxford Comma and the age-old apostrophe argument (Letters, September 27), may I make a plea on behalf of the mathematical equivalent of the greengrocer's (or greengrocers' if it's a chain) apostrophe? There is only one stroke on a pound sign, not two.

In 1971 decimalisation changed the currency nominations. What was previously L S D became L and p and the £ was given only one stroke. Will it take another 50 years to get the message across?
Susan Grant, Colinsburgh, Fife

Dumbing up

I HAVE one reservation on John Birkett's inspired comment on the misuse of our language.

Mr Birkett presumes that MPs and MSPs are well educated. Plato wrote: "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber".
David Miller, Milngavie

La la land

THELMA Edwards' comments about the redundant "the" when hoi polloi is used in a sentence (Letters, September 26) made me smile.

Memory lane in Glasgow brings back to my mind the times when people used to say: "We saw a great film in the La Scala."
Denis Bruce, Bishopbriggs

Heave 2

FOR many years I have been a reader of nautical novels, and would like to bring to the attention of R Russell Smith (Letters, September 27) an oddity in the declension of "to heave". Aboard a sailing vessel, the order to stop the ship at sea was "heave to". Once this was accomplished the ship was described as "hove to".
Margery Dobson, Edinburgh

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