It is all very well for legislators to block the occasional government initiative in order to protect the poor, but when this involves retaining big inefficiencies for a small benefit to the poor you have to ask whether there are not other ways to serve the purpose.
The water charges we pay now account for less than half the true cost of our water. The rest is a government subsidy from general revenues.
It has been going on for some time and the Government now wants to adopt a user pays system by raising water charges.
Legco is apparently united in saying no, the reasons being that economic recovery is not yet general, that water authorities are wasteful of water they import from China and that growing income disparity will place a heavy burden on the poor.
Unfortunately the best argument for user pays has not yet been introduced - the general principle that when you subsidise anything you encourage waste.
The best example in water has always been in the United States where for many years scarce water from the Colorado River was pumped across hundreds of miles of mountains to California plantations that paid very little for it and sprayed it with great evaporation losses on thirsty cash crops grown in a desert.
We have never topped that scale of waste (it is always difficult to outdo the US on waste) but there were times when our garment industries pumped in vast quantities for stone-washed clothes so that foreigners (mostly Americans again) could have fashionable pre-faded jeans.
