Nice to be back with y'all again. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Doss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Even with the recent price hikes, my monthly > electricity bill in Moscow (pretty large Stalin-era > apartment, with two big rooms, kitchen, bathroom, > water closet) is a whopping $8.
Come to Zimbabwe: for 280 kWh of consumption in July, my bill was US$1. In Johannesburg, where I normally live, it's about 15 times as expensive per unit. (At ZNet, my commentary last month explains Mugabe's 'power to the people' gimmick.) > BTW even if an apartment dweller simply refuses to pay > the bill, there is no effective way to disconnect him > or her, since Soviet apartment blocks are constructed > in such a way that you either shut power off to the > whole block or not at all. Ditto for water. In SA, they've finally stopped the practice of shutting off whole sections of (black) townships when a large proportion of residents don't pay bills, but they still do for apartment houses. And that's in a country with a centre-left regime and a constitutional right to water. Last year, 1.3 million people were disconnected from water because of non-payment, even the state's chief water bureaucrat recently admitted.
