Liam Drew

Freelance journalist and writer. Author of I, Mammal: The Story of What Makes Us Mammals (Bloomsbury) and The Brain Book (DK). Dad, former neurobiologist.

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

Neurotechnology is booming -- but making a business success of medical devices is perilous. This story looks at what can happen when companies fail and asks why so little is done to protect people with neural implants. https://t.co/lx2Rh3FOhE

[nature @Nature]

This wearable robot provides resistance training for children who are unable to walk because of spinal muscular atrophy

https://t.co/s1kWXTH3OX

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

https://t.co/cMGqa5rwSw Are non-antibiotic drugs contributing to antimicrobial resistance? My latest asks: Is it time to investigate whether commonly used drugs for conditions such as diabetes, depression, and indigestion contribute to the antimicrobial resistance crisis?

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@ThreshedThought Does this mean schools will all be closed tomorrow? If this wasn’t foreseeable one wonders what SEW is capable of foreseeing…

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@horton_official Also, the sheet scale of unnecessary plastic waste from this debacle is grotesque.

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@horton_official It’s truly remarkable that we went through all this in December and a few key criticisms dominated - MIA CEO, overly optimistic estimates of a resolution, no-little transparency about core issues - and they’re making all the same mistakes again.

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@sewateruk Why did your comms team not put any notifications that the TW RFC bottle station was shut from 7.30pm to 8.45pm last night? Please do better, I imagine we were one of 100s of people to waste our time going there.

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@mickfitz99 @sewateruk @Ofcom @TWellsCouncil Checked here - checked Facebook -- everything said TW RFC station was open. Turned up at 20.20 to discover it was closed, was told to return in 30 minutes. HOW can you not communicate this basic information? That must've been 100s of drivers completely inconvenienced.

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@ThreshedThought The rugby club is shut again and apparently has been for an hour. In this digitally connected world how @sewater cannot broadcast this information I do not understand.

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@ThreshedThought SEW's overly-optimistic estimates of when the situation would be resolved were one of the most frustrating and problematic aspects of the last outage. And here we are AGAIN. So utterly enraging.

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@Feargal_Sharkey This is why the compensation they give feels pointless. I can’t change suppliers and every fine and infrastructure repair cost SEW face will just result in higher bills…

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@el_drapo @Feargal_Sharkey @Ant_RTW @SouthEastWater3 Which one, please?

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@sewateruk My water’s at very low pressure already today. Is the issue still likely to be resolved by tomorrow? And will compensation be provided to those of us who’ve gone over 12 hours without water each of the last few days? Ooh, water has run out over the time it’s taken to type this…

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@ThreshedThought Thanks for your hard work, Mike. The idea of potentially having a pathogenic bacteria pouring from my taps for at least ten days troubles me. Any comment on why the issue will persist this long? (And given recent events, I fear SEW timing estimates are optimistic already…)

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@tw_people @sewateruk Whatever the truth of Saturday’s initial cock up, this feels like a creaking barely functional system abjectly failing a stress test.

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@sewateruk I appreciate you in the comms dept have a tough job on the sharp end of things. I agree with others that your CEO should speak. But my request all along here has not been for you to repeat the vague line about what happened but to explain why the estimates have been so wrong?

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@sewateruk I'm basically inviting you to engage in some transparency and honesty. Explain in detail what happened and is happening. You have 10s of thousands of angry customers getting angrier not just because they have no water but because they have been grossly misled by you.

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@sewateruk Thanks, Hannah. Unpredictable complications definitely make estimates rather than promises wise. But on Sat night, SEW predicted H2O would likely return at 6am Sun. What unforeseen complications led this estimate of a 10hr disruption being so wrong, please? Thanks, Liam

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

@Matt1Driscoll @sewateruk Agreed. The Guardian's coverage is entirely scrimped from this website (without attribution), which is unsurprising and sadly representative of journalism. Of course, the idea that this site can replace that professional reporting is also exposed.

[Liam Drew @liamjdrew]

THIS

[Matt Driscoll @Matt1Driscoll]

I once reported for the robust but now closed local paper in Tunbridge Wells. We would have spent the weekend investigating the true cause and appalling reaction to the @sewateruk outage that is now incredibly into its fourth day. We would even have pics of the work/lack or work being carried out at the Pembury treatment works which is supposed to be the cause. We would have certainly called people out individually and interviewed the worst affected and sought a whistle blower to hand over the true story.
This is why local newspapers were so important for communities and why their demise has allowed systemic poor behaviour to seep into towns without the correct criticism and scrutiny.
Sadly, we only have @ThreshedThought to hold this dire excuse of water company to account - and he's done a fine job of questioning their haphazard, perhaps dishonest, messaging and continual failures.

[Mike Martin MP 🔸 @ThreshedThought]

I am calling on David Hinton, the CEO of South East Water, to resign.

24,000 properties have endured three days of South East Water’s chaotic emergency response and woeful communication. It’s an utter disgrace and a total failure of leadership by David Hinton.

Every announcement by the company over the last few days telling customers when water supplies would be restored has been wrong. We’ve had endless announcements each giving a different time for water supplies returning.

Initially residents in Tunbridge Wells were told to collect bottled water from another town. Then bottled water stations were only set up in central Tunbridge Wells on my instigation.

This incident has caused chaos, anger and anxiety for people. Primary and secondary schools are closed. GP surgeries and civil buildings are closed. Businesses have been unable to trade on one of the busiest trading days of the year.

Restaurants and hotels have lost thousands of pounds. Care homes and vulnerable people have been left without water for hours, with many contacting me personally to get bottled water delivered to them because South East Water’s phone lines were too busy. Roads have been gridlocked for hours as people queued to access water distribution sites.

When I was elected last year, David Hinton gave personal and public assurances that the lessons of previous water outages in Tunbridge Wells had been learnt. In 2022, water was cut off for 6 days over Christmas; we’ve been here before and he vowed to fix things so it couldn’t happen again. We now know that is not true. From the failure to provide sufficient resilience in the local network, to the terrible communications with the community, to putting in place any emergency response plan – the CEO hasn’t kept his promises to the people of Tunbridge Wells.

David Hinton must resign, and if he had any integrity he would do so immediately.