Latest news with #rationing
France 24
4 days ago
- Climate
- France 24
Leaking pipes as climate warms: Bulgaria faces water crisis
When water finally comes, it lasts only a few hours, and the retired agricultural expert has to choose between filling cans, running the washing machine or taking a shower. "The problems date back 15 years, but every year the situation gets worse," the energetic 69-year-old told AFP. "This year, we switched to rationing as early as June," she added. Bulgaria, the EU's poorest country, has decades-old pipes -- some laid before World War II -- while water theft and poor resource management amplify the consequences of climate change. "Every other drop is lost before reaching the tap," said Emil Gachev, a researcher at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In mid-July, water interruptions affected more than 156,000 people in the country of 6.4 million, which ranks worst in the EU for losses in supply networks. Systemic issue Gachev warns that Bulgaria is dangerously close to a lasting water crisis, with rationing periods stretching out longer and more localities affected as dry seasons extend. Over the past four years, spring rainfall has been well below the average of the last 25 years, and some reservoirs are only filled to a fifth of capacity. "The villages with disrupted water supplies are scattered throughout Bulgaria, indicating that this is a systemic rather than an isolated issue," Gachev said. This week a commission set up last year to address the worsening situation recommended establishing a national fund to modernise the infrastructure, among other measures. The water disruptions could increase political stability in the Balkan nation, which has seen seven elections in three years -- the most recent in October 2024. Last summer, residents of Gorna Studena blocked the main road connecting two neighbouring regions in protest. This year, the village, located about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Danube in a fertile plain, has been in a state of emergency since late June. The water is rationed according to zones and hours, but some houses can go without water for more than two days. The situation is similar in the two neighbouring villages in the region, where a saying goes: "We have water under our feet, but we are dying of thirst". 'Not asking for swimming pool' "We're not asking for a swimming pool, just a normal life," said Tsoneva, a former agronomist at the local agricultural cooperative, and now keeps a dozen chickens and grows corn. Gorna Studena's population has dwindled from more than 2,000 in the 1960s to some 200, the vast majority of them retirees. A clinic, a pharmacy, a school and a nursery all have closed. These days, mayor Plamen Ivanov, 52, roams the village posting the water distribution schedules, while his phone keeps ringing. "This rationing system needs to change; it no longer works," Ivanov told AFP in his air-conditioned office. Ivanov explains that the situation is causing tensions, with different parts of the village receiving different amounts of water. Not far from the mayor's office, a resident, who only gave her name as Nivyana, slowly steps out of her house with a bucket in her hand. She's lucky: one of the blue tanks installed by the authorities is right in front of her door. "I wanted to wash my clothes," the 83-year-old said, lowering her eyes. "But the water ran out before I could finish." © 2025 AFP
Telegraph
12-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
A warmer climate requires adaptation
Britain, as Aneurin Bevan once complained, is an island 'made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish'; 'only an organising genius' could somehow manage to produce a shortage of both at once. Things have moved on from Mr Bevan's day, but it remains the case that our Government is wonderfully adept at contriving to produce shortages of those things that ought to be abundant, and then attempting to manage the consequences through rationing rather than any attempt to expand supply. The latest examples of this technocratic desire to apportion what currently exists can be found in the reaction to our sweltering summer. Water supplies are low; the priority for the Government, accordingly, is to seek to use smart meters to introduce 'surge pricing ' for those households that have installed them. Houses are hot, but the heat pumps installed under government grant schemes are unable to run as air conditioning units, and in London Sadiq Khan's planning rules prioritise 'passive ventilation' over air conditioning in part owing to fears over energy use. As shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho correctly notes, this is a 'poverty mindset'; Britain's energy and water policies 'should fit what people want to do, not the other way around'. In a country that last finished building a reservoir in 1992, and where the focus of energy policy on decarbonisation appears to be threatening further deindustrialisation – Britain's industrial electricity users pay the highest prices in the world – the overwhelming effort of the Government should be on loosening the straitjacket on Britain's economic growth and consumer comforts, not attempting to tighten the straps. As the pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade has noted, too, our current trajectory is one more suited to 'a world where summer was 25C and our electricity was coal-powered'. A warmer climate requires adaptation; a cleaner grid removes an old objection to higher energy use. With heatwaves marked by spikes in excess deaths, it is surely time to change course and embrace an approach rooted in meeting the needs of the population, expanding water storage capacity, removing constraints on air conditioning, and providing the energy generation necessary to do so.
RNZ News
11-07-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Life on rations: What it was like to eat a wartime meal
Ann Hunt sharing her recipes from Summerset retirement village in Flatbush Auckland. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi During the Second World War and the years that followed, New Zealand, like much of the world, faced a time of austerity - especially when it came to food. Rationing, coupons and making do became part of everyday life with things like tripe, makeshift butter and fidget pie on the menu. Cookbooks from this period are all about making food go further and letting nothing go to waste. With the cost of food a struggle for many families today, RNZ's Checkpoint had a chat with some of those who can remember this time to get some tips. Ann Hunt and Patricia McFarland live at Summerset retirement village in Flatbush Auckland. They have some thoughts about the current cost of groceries. "I would not like to be in a family at the moment trying to provide good, healthy, fresh food for my family because I look at the prices in the supermarkets and I think how on earth can a family afford those prices? "The dairy and the butter and the cheese is just beyond a joke," Ann said. Patricia agreed it is very hard for families. "We have so many takeaways now that a lot of children now would grow up not knowing any different comparing to some of the food that you'd buy in the supermarket, there probably isn't much difference in price." Each of them have memories of food rationing which began in 1942 and lasted until 1950. Ration books were registered with local shops and contained a page of "emergency counterfoils" to be used if you were away from home and unable to get butter or sugar from the local grocer. Hunt grew up in Auckland and was five years old when the Second World War came to an end. For the next several years life on rations continued. "My job as a probably more like five to seven [year old], was to walk the 1.5km to the shop once a week to get whatever for food was on ration, the milk or the butter, particularly flour." To keep their food fresh, her family used an ice chest and preserved eggs in a jar of jelly. "I'm not quite sure what kind of gel it was, but it was my worst thing I had to do was put my hand in and get the egg out for my mother." She said food was basic, but it was all they knew, they had sandwiches for school, and a banana if you were lucky. Her recipes are collected in a little red cookbook which is now hard to read and in pieces, passed down through the generations with handwritten recipes. Everything was homemade growing up - but due to rationing they often had to make do without butter or eggs. Her wartime recipe is Myrtle's pudding which came from her mother-in-law. "It used a tin of unsweetened condensed milk and condensed milk and evaporated milk were on everybody's shelves because half the time you couldn't get fresh milk." Other ingredients mixed in are sugar, gelatine, lemon juice and vanilla. "Very like some of the puddings that are now fashionable to buy the blancmanges and things like that, beat until thick and pour it into a tin and set it." Patricia McFarland was just six months old when the war broke out, living in the UK in Shropshire. "I had to go to school with a gas mask on my back and when I got to school, the infant mistress, there were three of us who started school that day, she said, 'please put your gas masks on stand up in that corner there and sing Baa, Baa Black Sheep'." Their school lunches were mostly meat, vegetables and steamed pudding. At home it was a different story. "All we could have for tea, was bread and jam that was all there was, except my brother liked condensed milk sandwiches or HP sauce sandwiches but there was no such thing as meat." McFarland recalled three ration books growing up for babies, children and adults. Things like cheese were scarce. "My father as a treat on a Sunday night, he used to have his portion of cheese he'd have bread and cheese and we would have toast and dripping, which is out of the roast we'd had during the day." Her recipe is an emergency "Fidget pie" with carrots, potatoes, swedes and onion, covered in gravy or cheese and pastry. Patricia McFarland's Fidget pie recipe. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi "So it would all go in that and cover it with pastry that would be an issue in itself because we didn't have much in the way of butter. "If it said six ounces of butter or six ounces of shortening, they'd use two ounces of butter, two ounces of margarine which is pretty awful and two ounces of lard, so you mix that all up to make the pastry." Ann Hunt and Patricia McFarland are hopeful food prices will come down for future generations but said their war time recipes might help those looking to make do with less.
RNZ News
02-07-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Pensioners resorting to extreme power rationing to tackle costs
Some pensioners are resorting to extreme power rationing to keep up with rising costs. Turning off hot water cylinders for days at a time and heading to bed as soon as it's dark to save on electricity. Stats NZ figures show electricity costs have gone up almost 9% in the twelve months from June last year. Gas has gone up almost 15.5% over the same period. The government's winter energy payment for those on super and a number of other benefits is up to $700 over five months. But Age Concern Canterbury says it's not enough with an increasing number of people relying on super alone; there's only so many expenses they can trim. Chief Executive of Age Concern Canterbury, Greta Bond spoke to Lisa Owen. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
Times
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
From chicken to potatoes, Britain's never grown less of its own food
Last month, a campaign group called Save British Farming organised a small protest in Westminster featuring vintage tractors and banners that declared: 'Ration books are coming.' The idea that Britain could run out of food and need rationing seems alarmist, and more appropriate, perhaps, for VE Day. But some experts say Britain's food system is starting to look precarious and the days when you could walk into a supermarket and expect to find pretty much any fruit, vegetable, meat or dairy item on any day of the year will soon be at an end. 'The party's over — that's gone. We're in a new era now,' said Tim Lang, professor emeritus of food policy at City, University of London and the man who coined
