Alison Bennett's Monday Mail: Everything, everywhere, all at once
Everything, everywhere, all at once - part one
Last night I was listening to Newscast, and Laura Kuenssberg likened the week’s foreign policy news to ‘Everything, everywhere, all at once.’
Venezuela, Greenland, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Iran. The world is running very hot right now, and within the constraints of this newsletter, I am not going to attempt to articulate my thoughts about everything that has happened in the first twelve days of this year.
But I am clear in my own mind:
- That ‘the international rules based order’ established after the Second World War has never been as undermined as it is right now.
- That when regime change happens, the question must always be - what comes next. If we have learnt anything from Iraq, it is that what follows is highly likely to be much more challenging than the toppling of the status quo.
- That given (1) and (2), the UK has no room for complacency. We absolutely must face up to these new realities, and this has to begin with increasing our spending on defence faster and further than is currently planned for.
Everything, everywhere, all at once - part two
My capacity to reflect on world affairs has been somwhat constrained in the last few days by the absolute chaos in our water supply that is impacting many areas across Sussex and Kent.
At the time of writing on Sunday evening, there are tens of thousands of homes across the South East without water, including 16,500 in and around East Grinstead just to the north of our constituency.
This weekend I have taken part in calls with DEFRA, neighbouring MPs, and executives from South East Water and Southern Water to be briefed on the latest situation. What is striking is the numerous points of failure that our water systems are experiencing right now, and the water companies’ inability to be on top their response, particularly with the contingency measures that they are obliged to put in place.
South East Water are citing the causes of these outages as a combination of freezing weather leading to burst pipes, power cuts, and Storm Goretti creating a surge in water flow and a change in the quality of the water going through water treatment works. This has made it harder for enough water to be treated and made safe to drink. With some treated water being lost through burst pipes, ‘demand’ is higher than normal, and ultimately people but also businesses, schools and care homes are left trying to cope.
Cold weather and heavy rain happen, but a week of sub zero temperatures in January is normal, and a night of heavy rain is also normal. Why do we have a water system that fails in multiple places across three counties because two normal things have happened?
We are not yet through this immediate crisis. You can see my updates so far on Facebook. As things stand, water outages in Cuckfield, Burgess Hill, Hassocks and Hurstpierpoint at the end of last week have been resolved. However, I am keeping a very close eye on the situation as we enter the new week.
Goodbye for now X
I have decided to stop posting on X. I will also stop sharing links to X in this newsletter. Whilst I decided to remain on X after Musk took control of it, Grok being used to create indecent imagery of women and children is for me the last straw.
I will not be deleting my account at this point: being an optimist, I remain hopeful that X will clean up its act.
Getting in touch
My parliamentary email address is: alison.bennett.mp@parliament.uk. If you need my help, please get in touch.
Best wishes,
Alison
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