Why water charges terrify NI ratepayers... and our politicians

Nothing scares us more than the threat of those bills dropping

DON’T mention the water. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it... or maybe not. Basil Fawlty (coiner of that legendary phrase I’ve only slightly altered), memorably failed to avoid references to “the war” when a group of Germans descended on Fawlty Towers.

Here, we’ll happily discuss any conflict, including our own lethal sectarian one — but woe betide anyone who brings up w***r ch***es.

You think I’m exaggerating?

If so, think back to this time 17 years ago, when it looked as if nothing could get the DUP and Sinn Fein over the line and into a power-sharing Executive.

The Assembly chamber had lain empty since the ‘Stormontgate’ IRA spy-ring scandal of 2002, during which time there’d been countless meetings and even the St Andrews Agreement, followed by an election.

Yet progress towards the apogee was glacier-like — until Secretary of State Peter Hain melted the ice by revealing that w***r ch***es were just days away.

Then — and before you could say Peter Robinson — Ian Paisley was chuckling away alongside new bestie Martin Mcguinness at OFMDFM; concomitant political suicide averted.

I remember my late dad describing the widespread public panic prompted by Hain’s threat as “Northern Ireland’s Cuban Missile Crisis”.

That may sound a tad hyperbolic, but I was born in late 1962 when a terrified world teetered on the brink of mutually assured destruction after the Yanks’ deployment of nukes in Europe was matched by Soviets in the Caribbean.

My parents were convinced I’d never make it out of nappies, so references to the ‘CMC’ were nothing new.

The ultimatum faced by Northern Ireland in 2007 was missive rather than missile-based, yet both stand-offs ended in a similar way, with pragmatism and common sense prevailing.

It wouldn’t be this place, however, without brinkmanship, which continued until water bills were about to wing their way into our letterboxes.

A financial package from Westminster was accepted, and the 93% of our citizens who’d sworn they wouldn’t pay were spared having that resolve tested.

A subsequent review into the future funding of water services ended up, to no one’s surprise, gathering dust at Stormont as soon as it was published.

Its death knell was the recommendation that w***r ch***es should appear as a separate item on domestic rates bills — good luck with that.

‘Mutualisation’? Boy, THAT sounds painful.

And therein lies the problem; unless you’re planning to build a new house on virgin land, you won’t ‘see’ the benefits of the massive public-money investment that’s patently needed here.

What the rest of us DO see is clear, clean H2O every time we turn the taps on; to paraphrase the old Titanic line, it’s alright when it reaches us.

Meanwhile, a fresh consultation into revenue-raising, ordered by Chris Heaton-harris, recently concluded, and yesterday we revealed that our Department for Infrastructure (DFI) had been devising the implementation of water bills by 2027.

Local newspapers have been particularly sensitive with headline writing over this tense issue: both the Belfast Telegraph and News Letter, for instance, recently reported CHH as merely “mentioning” the charges.

No “demanding” or “proposing” here; let’s not scare the horses.

The current SOS knows that any move towards such an abomination would receive Anglo-irish Agreement-style resistance, only this time with full cross-community support.

It’s ironic, considering the man’s main job is to get folk here to agree...

He won’t need reminding of the widespread civil disorder that occurred when the Republic tried its luck with water bills a few years back.

But another reason he’s on a beaten docket is timing; look at the absolute horlicks privatised water companies have made of things elsewhere.

That hall of shame includes Anglian Water (“Love Every Drop” is their catchphrase) — which serves Mr Heaton-harris’s Daventry constituents — and who, just last week, recorded the biggest increase in raw sewage discharges of all UK water companies.

Their waste pumps across Norfolk ran for a staggering total of 4,300 hours — or 179 days — last year alone.

Perhaps CHH should look a little closer to home when fretting about inadequacies in aquatic deliveries.

His green and pleasant land now boasts over £60bn in water firms’ collective debt, three billion litres of daily leakage — but a tidy £80bn paid out so far in dividends, so that’s alright then.

The fat cat recipients go misty-eyed when recalling Thatcher making Britain one of only few places on earth charging its citizens for water.

They do, however, fear someone who hails from the only part of the UK which doesn’t do that

Step forward Fearghal Sharkey, whose Teenage Kick years are long behind him but who’s singing a different tune now — as the loud, incessant bane of water firm CEOS, their supposed regulators and that ever-revolving door of supposedly responsible ministers.

A powerful yet still lone voice is our Fearghal, but that’s about to change; the Derryman is also a member of the Labour Party and is sure to become a major advisor to the next government.

Can you see Mr Sharkey pushing for w***r ch***es in his native land?

No, I suspect we’ll be treading both water and asterisks for a long time yet.