We’ve received our latest water bill for our Adelaide house which has been vacant since June 2017. At that time we had the water turned off at the meter rather than paying the huge sum to to physically disconnect the water pipe. Today’s water bill for the previous quarter was $239.23. How much water had we used…. zero! The bill consists entirely of the supply charge. One might wonder why the electricity company only imposes a supply charge when the home actually consumes electricity, yet the water company has a supply charge irrespective of usage. The only difference I see is the customer has a choice of electricity retailers whilst the water company has a monopoly!
And while I’m having a whinge…… Our mail filter is working overtime removing all the spam heading for our In Box. the vast majority of it is from India and I assume some company we have corresponded with has sold on our address (along with thousands of other addresses). Fortunately the filter is 99.99% accurate.
Meanwhile, Jan is receiving regular unsolicited calls from India (well they speak English with an Indian accent). They obviously have her name (how?) and promptly launch into their sales script. Jan just places her mobile face down on the glass table top beside her chair. Apparently this creates a high pitches feedback squeal.
A small amount of progress has been made on my 4x4 LED project. We visited Jaycars yesterday where I bought a small blue LED and some resistors. The resistor was connected to the positive terminal of the LED and then covered with red heat shrink.
I now need to find a suitable location on the dash to drill the 5mm hole and mount the LED. Too hot today!
4 comments :
Wow! that water charge is huge. I just checked and in West Tamar, Tasmania it is $67 a quarter and Redland City, Brisbane $65 a quarter. Really shocked. I guess it is the cost of getting water to Adelaide and the amount of treatment needed, as it is well known as the worst city water in Australia. But they are getting that amount of money from every single property, I hope it is not wasted by the council.
Catherine the money goes to the water utility company and not the local council The State government sold the water system to a French company some years ago (privatization was supposed to make it cheaper). Of course prices go up when there is no competition!
South East Queensland experimented with a large semi-govt independent group utility, the SEQ water grid for water a number of years ago when there was the big drought - before the big flood in 2011!. About 6 or 7 of the councils around Brisbane were forced to join, and after a few years, and the charges went up so much, and rate payers complained, a number of them were able to leave. This included Redland City who were self sufficient in water, but had to give some of theirs to the group. Redland City ratepayers, although are still paying for some of the costs of that experiment.
Catherine I don't particularly object to the principle of a government corporation owning utilities. There is at least some accountability with that structure because the user can always vote out the politicians. But a privately owned monopoly of an essential service is accountable only to their shareholders.
Post a Comment