Whilst your electric might be free, running a 100-200W PC instead of 6W router is a little overkill for most people. The best solution, of course, is to be allowed to put new firmware on your existing router
The reason it's in the current news (at least on the BBC) is that the BBC have recently published the salaries of many of their top earners for the first time. The discussion has arisen because many are earning in the millions and are effectively paid from the public purse (well, licence fee but all the same in the end...).
People subscribe to it because most internet in the UK is via ADSL or variants which is delivered through the POTS system. Most often now, there is fibre to a nearby street cabinet with copper only for the last couple of hundred metres.
Cable is available but is only used by 20% of the population or so as it's often more expensive or comes with unwanted TV services.
Yes there will. So many of the options for a post-Brexit agreement with the EU (the "Norway model" comes to mind) rely on us accepting free movement and EU legislation in order to retain access to the common market. The catch is that we will be subject to the same regulation without a hand in saying how it is made or implemented.
I appreciate some of your points. I had to look up how many days it rains here (not easy to guess) and it turns out to about 30% of days (reference).
I can't give stats for everyone in the country but in my house, with 2 people, we each cycle a lot and take a shower every day with at least one bath a week. We do a couple of loads of laundry and all the normal washing/cooking/toilet flushing you expect. We collect rain for usage in the garden but importantly we have plants adapted to the local climate. We use 60L/person/day i.e. less than one sixth of a Californian. If I had a moderate pool (say 5x3x2m i.e. 30,000L, 8000 US gallons or 24 milliacre feet), that means that I could drain it and re-fill it completely every 2 months and still come in under a Californian usage. Surely most pools don't need much maintenance water provided they are covered when not used?
It's great isn't it? Google says 1 acre foot is around 1.23 megalitres (reference) or 1230 m^3.
The more astounding bit once you do the conversion is that according to TFS the average individual Californian living in a 5 person household uses well over 300 litres per person per day (reference). I'm from the UK, a place with over twice the rainfall of California, and yet our typical usage per person in a five person household is only 100L/person/day (reference). Even our "high usage" households only use 135L/person/day, only just over 1/3 of the *typical* California usage. What are they doing with it all?
I know the Californians like to blame agriculture for using the majority of the water (true) but these stats are just examples of the monumental waste of water that occurs, both industrially and residentially. If these waste problems were solved, I'd imagine there wouldn't be a shortage of water at all.
A hearing aide you say?
"Sir" [taps you on shoulder]
"There's a conversation you may be interested in" [furiously working at semaphore/sign language/scribbling on paper]
It does sound like a badly done odd-one-out list, doesn't it?
"For 10 points, which of these are people who may actually be able to cure your cancer? Surgeons, homeopaths, oncologists, Chinese doctors, nutritionists and spiritual healers."
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
