Lived experience: Utilities
Some of yesterday's luxuries are today's basic necessities and should never revert to being luxuries
Most of my posts center around me, mostly because I don’t like writing about people who aren’t public and didn’t ask to be written about. I’d rather be misperceived as a navel-gazer than tell stories that aren’t mine to tell.
But for this piece, I have to tell you about my father. He died several years ago, and the last couple of decades of his life had been blighted by aphasia to the extent that he was unable to speak (beyond a few rehearsed lines and yes and no—and even mixing those up) and his sense of pride likely masked how much spoken and written language he truly understood. So those latter decades of his life, we had conversations of sorts, but not like the ones we had before aphasia took away my father’s wonderful story-telling ability.
One of our last long conversations when he regaled me with his stories was in the 1990s, if I remember correctly, when I moved into a neighbourhood not far from where he had grown up, which triggered a whole host of childhood memories for him. One such memory was about sewage. When he grew up, not every house in his street was connected to the city’s sewage system, and a nearby street where some of his friends lived didn’t have sewers at all. A horse and carriage would come by weekly to collect the waste from the outhouses of households not (yet) connected to the municipal sewage system.
Dad reminisced about the childhood excitement of playing in the aforementioned nearby street where some of his friends lived when that street was dug up deep and wide for the municipality to lay down huge pipes that would connect the street to the city’s sewers. It was a humungous digging operation that made for an exciting temporary playground for little boys growing up in the neighbourhood. Dad spoke of how some gardens were dug up, too, so the houses could be linked up to the newly laid sewage pipes in the street.
Some, not all
Whether a house on the street would have its garden dug up and pipes laid to connect it to the sewers depended on each household’s ability to afford it. Some householders could afford to have pipes laid all the way into their houses, some only as far as their outhouses, while others couldn’t afford either and would continue to rely on the weekly collections until years later the municipality ended those and hooked up the last houses to the city’s sewers anyway.
Dad and I talked about how this illustrated the changing times: Once upon a time, closed sewers were considered a luxury, and indoor plumbing even more so. They weren’t always deemed basic necessities, until decades later they were.1
Reconnected
A few years after dad became disabled, I moved to another country, and for years I didn’t really speak to him, because in between visits all we had was our telephones; besides international calls being costly, the audio-only nature of them wasn’t exactly great for someone like him who had lost much of his language and practically all of his speech. I could send him letters and emails, but he couldn’t send any back.
As technology and internet connectivity improved, so did our communication: we could have video calls now: he could gesture to express what he meant and show me things on camera.
Some people dad’s age or younger would proudly boast about how they didn’t have or need “all this new-fangled technology” and I would hope they’d never face the kind of disability that had effectively put dad and me out of touch until technology was able to facilitate us in a way that was accessible to dad. Was that a luxury or a necessity?
What wasn’t a luxury was the chronic condition that would take over my life for years to come, and how that would impair my ability to work as much and as well as I needed to. It effectively ruined my career – and more – but thanks to modern technology and connectivity I could at least do some work and earn a living; sometimes I made a good living, other times I didn’t, but overall I managed. What used to be a luxury was now a necessity—and not just in my life.
Connected
Fast forward to a few years ago and the road I was living on at the time was being dug up. Not quite in the way of my dad’s childhood memory, but his story did come to mind when contractors started digging up a small edge of the pavement to lay fibre-optic cables all along the road, to bring fast(er) broadband internet to every home… well, to every home that could afford it.
Every house had part of a sidewalk paving slab replaced with a small plastic cover through which the main fibre-optic cable can be accessed. To this day, householders who can afford to, can pay for one of the service providers to turn up, access that connection point, lay a cable from it into their property. You can see which ones have done so, because they have an additonal box affixed to their wall through which a cable goes into the property.2
It made me think of my conversation with dad decades ago and I thought: We’re still treating connectivity – be it through (fibre-optic or other) cables or mobile telephony/data – as a luxury, when really, for most of us, it’s already become a basic necessity.
I cannot remember the last time I received a paper bank statement by post or written a cheque, because I’ve been doing my banking entirely electronically for decades. My taxes? Online3. Wage slips? Electronic. My freelance invoices? Digital only. Any state (welfare) benefits? Online4. I could go on. The only institutions that I still receive(d) letters from were the NHS and certain insurance companies and workplace/private pension providers, and (thankfully) even they are increasingly moving to electronic communications only.
Electronic devices and internet connectivity are no longer optional; they are necessities. So when are we going to move to connecting everyone by default, like we do houses to sewers?
Disconnected
In England at least, domestic properties cannot be disconnected from the water supply, even if the householder fails to pay their water bills. Disconnecting any property from the sewage system could constitute a public health risk, so I doubt that ever happens.
It’s bad enough that people can be left entirely without heating or electricity when utilities are cut off for non-payment, especially considering the fact that even limited or no use incurs charges that are prohibitively high for some and landing people in debt.
Personally I am firmly on board with those who propose a universal basic income (UBI), though I do think it would have to be introduced alongside firm but fair rent controls and regulation of energy, electricity, telephony, internet and other service providers, so as to maximise the (cost) efficiency of any UBI scheme5.
Because in this day and age, everyone should have a safe roof over their head and every household should be connected by default. Connected to sewers, to water, and to utilities—and those utilities include phone/internet connectivity and the devices required to use them. Everyone should have the right to not be disconnected—in any way.
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For pedants reading this: Yes, I know, there are still homes, especially in rural areas, that rely on oil tanks for their heating and septic tanks to dispose of their waste. But if you were to build a new house in a city today, unless for some particular ideological reasons, there is no way it wouldn’t have indoor plumbing and wouldn’t be hooked up to the local infrastructure of utilities from day one.
Sort of, anyway, not entirely: Once a box has been installed, it remains there. Any homes that are disconnected at any point will still have the small box on the property wall; no different to other utilities.
HMRC does allow for paper tax returns but you have to specifically request this.
…And not just for the application, but applicants/recipients are expected to get in touch regularly using an online portal. The next time you see anyone complain about benefits recipients having internet, smartphones and/or tablets/computers: they’re a necessity. You cannot access any kind of support without them.
Translation: To prevent UBI from mostly flowing straight out of individuals’ hands into corporate pockets…