The water companies have run out of money, having given billions away to private investors, and the private investors are about to pull out now that there is no money left for them.
Thames Water is about to go bust and so will the others. The only way they will be bailed out is with yet more public money, either through government funding or our bills going up again - this time by 40 percent.
The £60 billion that they should have invested in part to the infrastructure has been given to what Margaret Thatcher called 'the wealth creators'. How can you not be angry about this?
It is WATER for fucks sake. If our taps run dry we will not even be able to run river water through the system because of all the sewage the private companies have chucked in to them.
I am stunned and yet I understand it completely. In Texas the power grid is a cobbled together mish mash that has not failed yet again because so much government subsidized solar has been installed. And wind. And water systems in Michigan are still not improved, and people still are drinking bottled water although it has been some time since the overburdened systems on Flint and other cities were exposed.
ReplyDeleteIn this country, the government cannot allow such a vitally important resource to fail, so after they have sold it off to a private company who then strip it bare and squeeze it dry until there is no money left to borrow, they are obliged to keep it together using public money when it should never have been privatised in the first place. They have sold off absolutely anything of value, including everything a society needs to simply survive - not thrive, just survive.
DeleteI am surprised that Thames Water is a large "private" company. Are they going out of business because of bankruptcy? Hopefully, somebody will buy them out and make a go of it.
ReplyDeleteThey have not maintained the infrastructure, not built new reservoirs to supply the millions more people who have moved into London, preferring to pay dividends to shareholders.
Delete£70 billion to shareholders. Now they say they need more investment to rebuild the infrastructure, but nobody will lend it to them because all the profits have been extracted and it is a useless investment for shareholders. Privatisation of water to ruthless asset-strippers was a criminal act by a corrupt and irresponsible government, beginning in the 1980s. We are just about to pay the price for selling everything off at cost.
DeleteI live in Kent and the problems we are all getting (Kent and Sussex) with South East Water makes me think they will be the next to go to the wall (i.e "Nationalised")
ReplyDeleteThey cannot afford to truly nationalise it any more. It will be a case of bailing out the very companies who have all but destroyed it from sheer greed. The country will not be out of debt for 50 years, even though when they sold off the water companies they owed no money at all. They would be in profit with a modern infrastructure if Thatcher had not given them away to her beloved businessmen.
DeleteWelsh Water is 'not for profit'. According to their website they "don’t have shareholders, which means we put every penny back into looking after your water....".And we probably get more water from the skies than the rest of the country as well! We still have plenty of leaks in the system though.
ReplyDeleteSame as Scottish Water
DeleteI do not see why a company or organisation should not have a healthy profit so long as it maintains the service and infrastructure and not give every penny to the investors. Not only that, but Thames Water has even borrowed money to pay the investors even more, and cannot service the loans, let alone make any improvements to the system.
DeleteAs a country we are in one almighty mess, s*** is just one of these problems. Money not spent, people not employed and fat bonuses combined have left us here and now fouling our rivers and the seas around the coast it just adds to the misery. Seems we need metered water?
ReplyDeleteIt all began in the 1980s. Everything stems form the privatisation plan which we were hoodwinked with back then. You can't even afford to buy your own house now unless you or your parents were in on it from the beginning. Everything which we cannot live without is under the control of the markets.
DeleteMoral - don't vote Tory at the next election.
ReplyDeleteThe damage is already done, Weave, but I will follow your advice anyway.
DeleteA business representative was saying yesterday that we must decide what sort of country we want to live in and what sort of services we want. If we want a decent sewage and water system, he said, then we should expect to have to pay an extra 40% on our water bills or expect the government to carry the burden. Either way, it is still your money. He delivered this message in the sort of manner that the old bank managers used to talk to humble customers asking for a small loan. I despise these people.
ReplyDeletePrivatisation was sold to the public as a being more efficient therefore saving the taxpayer money. None of the privatised utilities now provide a good service. The core utilities are too precious and too essential to basic quality of life to be trusted to profiteers. Transport, energy and water companies have let the public down badly whilst paying shareholders huge amounts in dividends. It stinks, much like our rivers and beaches.
DeleteEither Rachel and John Gray have blocked me, or my comments are going into their spam box. I dare not ask which.
ReplyDeleteI'll see what you said first before answering this.
Deletespam
Deletespam as mine are going to here lol
Deletes p a m
DeleteNow mine seem to be going that way
DeleteI’m got s pammed
DeleteWhat were you going to say?
DeleteI’ll be buggered if I remember
DeleteWhilst I can't particularly disagree with what you are saying it is worth noting that Margaret Thatcher had the right idea about privatisations improving the economy, which it could have done if it had been along the lines of the back of the envelope calculations of a grocery shop without shareholders, but she did not take into account that little shareholders in their thousands would cash in their shares and sell them at a quick profit only to be snapped up immediately by these investment companies who rip off the public time and time again, asset stripping and bad management. At the time the water companies were privatised £5billion debt in then money was written off by the Thatcher govt to make the privatisation more attractive to investors. If water companies had remained as public companies they would now be competing with all the other debt ridden, badly run public companies such as the NHS and we have no crystal ball to know how they would be doing. Whichever way you look at it, it is mess.
ReplyDeleteYes, many of my friends bought houses at the time and boasted about how much they had saved and what a good investment they had made before selling up and putting the cash in the bank or another property. Housing became monetised and the simple notion of them being a place for you and your family to live went out the window, and the lack of council housing forced everyone into the same mindset. A lot of people were left behind. Builders are now given carte blanche to put up what they like so long as it includes a percentage of 'affordable housing'. They don't, of course.
DeleteThe privatisation of larger industries was just throwing meat to the wolves. Once eaten, they move on to something else.
The big problem is terrible management being allowed to destroy good businesses whilst the so called regulators do nothing to prevent them. Rishi Sunak just sits back and watches the carnage until he is forced to mumble a few words about putting things right. The statisticians are so out of touch that they produce quite favourable forecasts about growth and rate rises to try to calm the markets, and then they are proved wildly wrong. You're right - it is a mess.
This surely proves how none of the core utilities should be in private hands. They can't be trusted.
ReplyDeleteToo late now. They have milked it for billions.
DeleteI agree with Jean above. There is more to good Government than making big profits for those who already have plenty.
ReplyDeleteThese days they don't even try to cover it up. They have no shame.
DeleteA link to add to this conversation. Thames Water.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/ByDonkeys/status/1675812225896914946
And only now - now that the money has been borrowed and stolen - are we being told about it in detail. I despise this incompetent and corrupt government, but we have to suffer them for another year.
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