Environment Agency figures reveal that the 10 privatised water companies in England have literally doubled raw sewage spills into our rivers and coastal waters.
Last year these polluting profiteers spent 3.6 million hours spilling sewage, compared to 1.75 million hours in 2022.
Since water privatisation in 1989 these private companies have extracted £72 billion in profits out of the system, maximising profits by minimising investment in maintenance and upgrades.
The ultimate owners of these polluting profiteers include a whole load of overseas companies and multiple foreign governments.
The Tories are the ones who handed control of our water infrastructure over to private profiteers and the governments of multiple overseas states, and they obviously want to keep it that way despite the disgusting track record of pollution and financial mismanagement.
Keir Starmer has backtracked on his leadership election "pledge" to renationalise England’s water infrastructure because just like the Tories, he’s also on the side of the greedy capitalists and overseas governments, not the English people, or the environment.
The water companies have an awful lot of money to spend on lobbying politicians to get their way. One of the most compromised politicians is Angela Smith, who is probably most famous for her "funny tinge" comments about people of colour while she was a CUK squatter MP. The fact this racist private water lobbyist and saboteur has been allowed back into the Labour Party is indicative of the direction Keir Starmer is taking it.
Water renationalisation is overwhelmingly popular with the public, but Starmer is determined to defy public opinion by letting the greedy capitalist profiteers and overseas governments keep control of our water supply.
I mean who in their right mind honestly believes that the UK state is incapable of running England’s water infrastructure, but that the governments of Australia, Canada, Kuwait, Norway, Malaysia, Qatar, Singapore, and the UAE are?
Promising to renationalise the filthy and ideologically incoherent water privatisation disaster and clean up their mess would be a huge vote winner, but Starmer’s just as loyal to the interests of polluting water profiteers as Rishi Sunak and the Tories are.
Starmer’s lamentable excuse is that "we can’t afford it" but the reverse is true. We can’t afford to keep allowing these greedy polluters to continue siphoning unearned £billions out of our economy, while racking up unpayable debts and pumping untreated shit into our environment.
If the UK government really wanted to take water back under public control they could introduce new anti-pollution laws, and legislation to outlaw foreign governments owning crucial UK infrastructure and services.
A million pounds in fines per hour of sewage dumping (barring the most exceptional circumstances like extreme rainfall); jail sentences for polluting water company bosses; a complete ban on water bill increases and public subsidies for polluting water companies that won’t fix the problems; and forcing them to pay back the £54 billion in debt they’ve accumulated over the years.
Outlawing such extreme debt accumulation and making such disgusting pollution prohibitively expensive would bankrupt their business model of racking up massive debts to bankroll shareholder dividends and dumping raw sewage into our water rather than treating it, which would allow a state water company to take over operations as they go under.
The Thatcher government flogged off the regional water authorities for just £7.6 billion in 1989, which was an infinitesimally tiny percentage of what the infrastructure would have cost to build from scratch, but they also wrote off £5 billion in debts and immediately handed the new private water companies £1.5 billion in public funds too!
The government could offer to buy back it all back at the same price of just £1.1 billion for the lot (assuming the water companies pay off their own debts first) which would be more than the profiteers deserve after soaking £72 billion in profits out of the system in the last 35 years.
The problem of course is that both Labour and the Tories are absolutely committed to serving the interests of these polluting profiteers, because they’ve got £millions in excess profits to pour into political lobbying and kickbacks to compromised politicians.
The public want to see the back of this disgusting water privatisation farce, but unfortunately the compromised Westminster establishment parties are intent on keeping it going.The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
Re: The Westminster love affair with polluting water profiteers
A well deserved rant against corporate malfeasance and political cynicism. As a metaphor for the whole rotten edifice of globalised capitalism and its toxic relationship to society and our planet, a turd in your local river swimming hole will do as well as any other.
Re: The Westminster love affair with polluting water profiteers
It's Thatcher's neocon 'revolution' that brought this about. Silly girl, although educated in STEM subject/s . I expect she didn't think this will take us on to fascist path, but you never know : ).
I don't have the quote handy, but in essence she was a *very* confused human being, not taking care of UK citizens ... end of. And the rest of the ruling class now, are an echo of that brief blip in UK's history . It could be worse.
on March 27, 2024, 7:15 pm
. I expect she didn't think this will take us on to fascist path, but you never know : ).