| Not a single river healthy on 10:22 - Mar 27 with 2825 views | redrickstuhaart |
It is absolutely disgusting. These companies should not be making profits or giving dividends until it is sorted. Their position appears to be that the public should pay for it whilst they continue being profitable. |  | |  |
| Not a single river healthy on 10:24 - Mar 27 with 2820 views | tonybied |
"Sewage spills into England's rivers and seas by water companies more than doubled last year" almost as high as water companies' profits, but not quite! |  | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 10:45 - Mar 27 with 2771 views | Churchman |
Total disgrace.
There are no excuses whatsoever for this. None. It didn’t have to happen and there was plenty that could have been done to deal with it. But we all know why it did. It rains like hell in this country. It’s not a new thing. Yet in summer, hosepipe bans. All year round tides of sewage going into rivers and onto beaches. Decrepit infrastructure, zero investment relative to need.
Yet £57bn in payouts from the water industry over the last 30 years, if the politician is to be believed. I think we know where the priority lies. |  | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 10:55 - Mar 27 with 2703 views | ElephantintheRoom |
Those of you old enough not to believe everything you read in The Guardian might be interested to know that the main reason the water industry was privatised (other than appeal to the greed and self-interest of voters) was that the crumbling industry infrastructure couldn’t realistically be maintained or improved in public hands.
Nobody stopped to think that this might also apply to the myriad of companies once in private hands. Nobody cares one iota because the share issue was free money for anyone prepared to put in multiple applications. | |
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| Not a single river healthy on 10:58 - Mar 27 with 2715 views | Keno |
| Not a single river healthy on 10:55 - Mar 27 by ElephantintheRoom |
Those of you old enough not to believe everything you read in The Guardian might be interested to know that the main reason the water industry was privatised (other than appeal to the greed and self-interest of voters) was that the crumbling industry infrastructure couldn’t realistically be maintained or improved in public hands.
Nobody stopped to think that this might also apply to the myriad of companies once in private hands. Nobody cares one iota because the share issue was free money for anyone prepared to put in multiple applications. |
so basically what you are saying is that foreign investment to revitalise a crumbling badly run underfunded situation is a good thing? |  |
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| Not a single river healthy on 11:02 - Mar 27 with 2694 views | ElderGrizzly |
'Spill' also makes it sound like a mistake or something not as serious as it is. Which i'm sure isn't a coincidence
Agree with others, that no-one should be getting bonuses/dividends until it is under control |  | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:09 - Mar 27 with 2640 views | Steve_M |
It's grim, the result of decades of underinvestment and creaming off dividends whilst loading the privitised water companies with debt.
This made me laugh though:
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| Not a single river healthy on 11:15 - Mar 27 with 2592 views | SuperKieranMcKenna |
Though you have to conclude that regulation is the problem here as much as anything, since one of the worst performers for pollution and discharges is not-for-profit Welsh Water:
https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/pn-39-22-worst-performing-water-and-wastewater-companie
Renationalisation is not a silver bullet, without better regulation. Whether Ofwat need better powers of enforcement, or the laws regarding pollution aren’t stringent enough I’m not sure. I suspect it’s the latter given Brexit was clearly a play at slashing regulations. [Post edited 27 Mar 11:17]
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| Not a single river healthy on 11:19 - Mar 27 with 2558 views | redrickstuhaart |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:15 - Mar 27 by SuperKieranMcKenna |
Though you have to conclude that regulation is the problem here as much as anything, since one of the worst performers for pollution and discharges is not-for-profit Welsh Water:
https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/pn-39-22-worst-performing-water-and-wastewater-companie
Renationalisation is not a silver bullet, without better regulation. Whether Ofwat need better powers of enforcement, or the laws regarding pollution aren’t stringent enough I’m not sure. I suspect it’s the latter given Brexit was clearly a play at slashing regulations. [Post edited 27 Mar 11:17]
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Proper regulation, without giving in to lobbies, is the very straightforward answer.
If they want to make profit in the future, they need to dig in and invest for a few years. Its not for the rest of us to pay for it, anymore than we have to bail out Premier Inn when they get to a point of having to do refurbs, or Tesco when they want to build a new store. | | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:24 - Mar 27 with 2532 views | Basuco |
You forget that £72 billion has been paid out by water companies in dividend payments so far, these are much more important than water quality. |  | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:29 - Mar 27 with 2508 views | SuperKieranMcKenna |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:19 - Mar 27 by redrickstuhaart |
Proper regulation, without giving in to lobbies, is the very straightforward answer.
If they want to make profit in the future, they need to dig in and invest for a few years. Its not for the rest of us to pay for it, anymore than we have to bail out Premier Inn when they get to a point of having to do refurbs, or Tesco when they want to build a new store. |
My point was really that if we nationalised the lot overnight, we wouldn’t have better environmental standards. It’s naive to think that a state run operation wouldn’t be starved of funds and push standards as low as the law permits (as is the case with Welsh Water). It would be done in the name of cost cutting rather than dividends.
I actually have no issue with our utilities being re-nationalised, nobody should ‘own’ our water. I was just pointing out that it wouldn’t be a panacea for better environmental standards without stricter laws being imposed and enforced. | | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:34 - Mar 27 with 2486 views | redrickstuhaart |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:29 - Mar 27 by SuperKieranMcKenna |
My point was really that if we nationalised the lot overnight, we wouldn’t have better environmental standards. It’s naive to think that a state run operation wouldn’t be starved of funds and push standards as low as the law permits (as is the case with Welsh Water). It would be done in the name of cost cutting rather than dividends.
I actually have no issue with our utilities being re-nationalised, nobody should ‘own’ our water. I was just pointing out that it wouldn’t be a panacea for better environmental standards without stricter laws being imposed and enforced. |
Agreed. Which is why there should be strong regulation, and no truck given to the companies' arguments that they need to be funded to do work they should have been doing for years.
If it was publicly owned, the government would take the same shortcuts and starve it of funding, they way they have the rest of the public sector.
Why wont this government regulate robustly do you think? | | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:38 - Mar 27 with 2473 views | Churchman |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:02 - Mar 27 by ElderGrizzly |
'Spill' also makes it sound like a mistake or something not as serious as it is. Which i'm sure isn't a coincidence
Agree with others, that no-one should be getting bonuses/dividends until it is under control |
Depending on who you read 70%-90% of water companies are foreign owned. They exist to make a profit.
If I am on the Board of one of those foreign companies, I’m not interested in rivers, wildlife fish or anything else. I’d insist for the sake of my shareholders that maintenance and any investment was cut to the bone, made only to protect or increase profit. Where assets could be sold off, like reservoirs for development that’s what I’d want done.
Impact on the population? Totally irrelevant. I wouldn’t be living there. I’d also be ramping up the indigenous population’s water bills until diminishing returns set in if I could. People need water to live so you increase prices to reflect that demand until the pips squeak.
Profit, shareholders, Directors bonuses etc. That’s all that matters. That isn’t even immoral. Private companies exist to make money. It’s actually immoral if they don’t, which is why putting critical infrastructure in the hands of the private sector without realist controls, checks, balances is the stuff of madness.
You don’t have to have one or the other. You can have the best of both worlds. Partnerships. A classic example is the creation of the Castle Bromwich factory in WW2 which after teething troubles became one of the worlds most effective production plants.
Lastly, this idea that there was no money to fund upgrades on water provision is in my view just propaganda. There was. There was just no political desire to invest in people and plant.
Exactly the same argument was used to stop Bazagette’s great Thames sewers being built. Until the ‘Great Stink’, which was so bad the politicians of the day were forced to do something about it. And ta-daaa magically the money was found to create infrastructure that is still with us, including the Embankment that covers some of it.
The only thing that stops public works is a lack of will and imagination. | | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:45 - Mar 27 with 2452 views | SuperKieranMcKenna |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:34 - Mar 27 by redrickstuhaart |
Agreed. Which is why there should be strong regulation, and no truck given to the companies' arguments that they need to be funded to do work they should have been doing for years.
If it was publicly owned, the government would take the same shortcuts and starve it of funding, they way they have the rest of the public sector.
Why wont this government regulate robustly do you think? |
“Why wont this government regulate robustly do you think?”
As I already said, this is a government that brought us Brexit, the Singapore on Sea model was their supercharged, deregulated objective. They wanted to push us towards a US style small government, light touch regulation model - and we’ve seen some particularly egregious environmental damage in the US. in fact I’m some states there’s virtually no regulation over who can carry out shale drilling- if you can pay for a license that’s good enough… | | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:49 - Mar 27 with 2431 views | ElderGrizzly |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:38 - Mar 27 by Churchman |
Depending on who you read 70%-90% of water companies are foreign owned. They exist to make a profit.
If I am on the Board of one of those foreign companies, I’m not interested in rivers, wildlife fish or anything else. I’d insist for the sake of my shareholders that maintenance and any investment was cut to the bone, made only to protect or increase profit. Where assets could be sold off, like reservoirs for development that’s what I’d want done.
Impact on the population? Totally irrelevant. I wouldn’t be living there. I’d also be ramping up the indigenous population’s water bills until diminishing returns set in if I could. People need water to live so you increase prices to reflect that demand until the pips squeak.
Profit, shareholders, Directors bonuses etc. That’s all that matters. That isn’t even immoral. Private companies exist to make money. It’s actually immoral if they don’t, which is why putting critical infrastructure in the hands of the private sector without realist controls, checks, balances is the stuff of madness.
You don’t have to have one or the other. You can have the best of both worlds. Partnerships. A classic example is the creation of the Castle Bromwich factory in WW2 which after teething troubles became one of the worlds most effective production plants.
Lastly, this idea that there was no money to fund upgrades on water provision is in my view just propaganda. There was. There was just no political desire to invest in people and plant.
Exactly the same argument was used to stop Bazagette’s great Thames sewers being built. Until the ‘Great Stink’, which was so bad the politicians of the day were forced to do something about it. And ta-daaa magically the money was found to create infrastructure that is still with us, including the Embankment that covers some of it.
The only thing that stops public works is a lack of will and imagination. |
I agree with you entirely as to why it is happening and it's a symptom of private ownership in the way our Governments have adopted it and you are correct about ownership location.
It simply can't continue, unless they let some of these companies (Thames Water for example) fail as the Train Companies did and then bring under public ownership in an almost fire-sale. | | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:55 - Mar 27 with 2405 views | cbower |
Another rip-roaring success fot Thatcher's privatisation bun-sale of the "family silver". I remember my old fella almost in tears over water privatisation. "She's selling off life itself", he said. He was right. Billions has been made and these water companies have got us by the short and curlies. We can hardly go somewhere else for their "product" (which they get for free as it simply falls from the sky) because their service is cr@p now can we! [Post edited 27 Mar 12:05]
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| Not a single river healthy on 12:07 - Mar 27 with 2349 views | redrickstuhaart |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:49 - Mar 27 by ElderGrizzly |
I agree with you entirely as to why it is happening and it's a symptom of private ownership in the way our Governments have adopted it and you are correct about ownership location.
It simply can't continue, unless they let some of these companies (Thames Water for example) fail as the Train Companies did and then bring under public ownership in an almost fire-sale. |
Public ownership will be worse.
They just need to be regulated firmly, with enforcement. But they wont do that because of pressure form the companies and investors, and presumably because their own investments might suffer. Its just crooked. | | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 12:10 - Mar 27 with 2331 views | Churchman |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:49 - Mar 27 by ElderGrizzly |
I agree with you entirely as to why it is happening and it's a symptom of private ownership in the way our Governments have adopted it and you are correct about ownership location.
It simply can't continue, unless they let some of these companies (Thames Water for example) fail as the Train Companies did and then bring under public ownership in an almost fire-sale. |
Agreed.
It’s simple really. Set standards to these companies for water provision quality and quantity and standards for sewage dumping and pollution. If they don’t meet those strict targets, impose fines so large they are put out of business. Buy them back for £1. ‘You can’t do it’. Why?
However you do it, put a plan in place for managing, developing and running these services. That includes manufacture of equipment. One of the threats of no deal Brexit was no water. How you might ask? Simple. All the filters for reservoirs are/were made in Germany. No filters, no water within no time at all. The equivalent of laying your private parts over a bacon slicer. Nuts.
I did a cruise down the Douro river last autumn. It was explained how they kept the river clean and its economic importance. At one point, a hydro plant had been built. It had cost a lot of money and there had been massive objection on the grounds of cost to the public. The money was found. It paid for itself in 18 months and is so productive, they’ve enough money to build another further up the river.
It’s all about investment in people, stuff and a will to do things for the right reasons. It’s that or ‘sweat’ the assets, the latter of which is why industries like shipbuilding in this country died. And why our football club nearly died. | | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 12:32 - Mar 27 with 2239 views | NthQldITFC |
It's one tip of a particularly sh!tty sh!tberg which is a consequence of our entire system's skewing of everything in the favour of $profit$ over social and environmental stability.
And most of us back it up by not actually being prepared to give up anything at all for the sake of the planet and society when it comes down to it. We enable the system, and the system is poison, pure fkn poison. Let's all have a drink.
As Churchman says above, "You can't do it" - WHY? [Post edited 27 Mar 12:34]
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| # WE ARE STEALING THE FUTURE FROM OUR CHILDREN --- WE MUST CHANGE COURSE # | | Poll: | It's driving me nuts |
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| Not a single river healthy on 12:34 - Mar 27 with 2225 views | Plums |
| Not a single river healthy on 11:24 - Mar 27 by Basuco |
You forget that £72 billion has been paid out by water companies in dividend payments so far, these are much more important than water quality. |
They are no longer water companies. They are investment vehicles with small, water related operational divisions.
Once again, a 51% public ownership model and regulation are the answer. Now, where have us football fans heard that before? |  |
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| Not a single river healthy on 12:43 - Mar 27 with 2183 views | DarkBrandon |
A surprising amount of this follows from the “how much mouse poo do you want in your cornflakes” question |  | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 12:55 - Mar 27 with 2126 views | redrickstuhaart |
| Not a single river healthy on 12:34 - Mar 27 by Plums |
They are no longer water companies. They are investment vehicles with small, water related operational divisions.
Once again, a 51% public ownership model and regulation are the answer. Now, where have us football fans heard that before? |
I dont get the public ownership argument. Has anyone noticed the state of public services? | | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 13:13 - Mar 27 with 2071 views | NthQldITFC |
| Not a single river healthy on 12:55 - Mar 27 by redrickstuhaart |
I dont get the public ownership argument. Has anyone noticed the state of public services? |
But isn't that a separate issue and a legacy of 'how things are/were done'?
What would you do if you were building a life-critical, basic infrastructure system like 'water, clean and dirty' from scratch? For me, unequivocally, you'd say:
1. no element of this can in any way be for profit.
2. absolute transparency is obligatory at all levels.
3. no internal, departmental competition will be fostered or tolerated.
4. all management and staff have clear, measurable and measured responsibilities.
5. no element of this can in any way be for profit.
Therefore it must be under public ownership and funded from taxation (of one form or another) and staff representation must be reasonable and free of obstructive practices. Slackers can and will be sacked if demonstrably slacking. Openness.
We need new ways of doing things from the ground up, without being limited by perceptions of what can and can't be done because of similar entities in a different technological era, or we're going down the sh!tty river as a society. [Post edited 27 Mar 13:20]
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| # WE ARE STEALING THE FUTURE FROM OUR CHILDREN --- WE MUST CHANGE COURSE # | | Poll: | It's driving me nuts |
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| Not a single river healthy on 13:14 - Mar 27 with 2070 views | ElderGrizzly |
| Not a single river healthy on 12:55 - Mar 27 by redrickstuhaart |
I dont get the public ownership argument. Has anyone noticed the state of public services? |
They are clearly not perfect, but you don't then have £72bn that could have been reinvested into the national infrastructure given away in dividends. | | | |
| Not a single river healthy on 13:17 - Mar 27 with 2041 views | DJR |
| Not a single river healthy on 10:55 - Mar 27 by ElephantintheRoom |
Those of you old enough not to believe everything you read in The Guardian might be interested to know that the main reason the water industry was privatised (other than appeal to the greed and self-interest of voters) was that the crumbling industry infrastructure couldn’t realistically be maintained or improved in public hands.
Nobody stopped to think that this might also apply to the myriad of companies once in private hands. Nobody cares one iota because the share issue was free money for anyone prepared to put in multiple applications. |
I remember it well but it wasn't that it couldn't be maintained or improved in public hands, it was that the Tory government didn't want to do it. Indeed, there was criticism throughout the 1980s of crumbling sewers because of the lack of investment, and the Tories used this as an excuse to privatise. But as you suggest, it was a con. [Post edited 27 Mar 13:36]
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