Stop privatising infrastructure you maniacs.
Stop? Do you think it’s continuing? They already are private ☺️.
What you should be saying is: Ask the government to raise billions to buy out private companies that own and operate the vital infrastructure of our country you maniacs!
Not being funny, but this is what you’re calling for (nothing wrong with that) but what are you going to not fund whilst you spend money on this. Even Labour has pretty much said this isn’t going to happen for this very reason.
Fine them a billion pounds per kilo of sewage dumped, then seize all their assets when they refuse to pay their debt.
Our genius is not familiar with CPO’s. Or thinks CPO’s are communism. Let’s find out.
And Northern Ireland, but let’s be honest, Scotland has it’s own issues with nationalised bodies cough ferries cough so we Scots can’t sit here with too smug a grin on our faces. I’m sure Northern Ireland has it’s own issues in this field as well, but I don’t live there so I pay less attention to that.
I broadly agree with nationalising critical infrastructure like water, electricity and gas, some other key infrastructure like railways, the post office and probably a few others I can’t think of at this moment in time but it’s far from perfect and isn’t going to make everything perfect overnight.
You don’t need to buy them out. Fuck them. They can raise bills by inflation and not a penny more, and increase the water and sewage processing to match the extra people they need to over the years. No dumping sewage in rivers or the sea.
If they can’t do it, then they go bust and you get them for nothing.
All this shit was working when they took the services over, and if it’s not now, then it’s because they stole all the money that should have been used for upgrades.
Nationalise the lot of them. They had their chance.
would love to but where does the money come from to buy out all the shareholders? you would need to raise tens of billions - remember we just spent £10bn to give people a 1% tax cut
and before you say “fuck the shareholders,” remember that lots of them are your pension fund
You pass legislation to make the company unprofitable by making it fulfill it’s obligation to invest in infrastructure to the point where the funds run for the hills.
so the shareholders pull their funds, the water companies struggle and the taxpayer has to step in to bail them out.
It shouldn’t be “lump it on the tax payers” or “we can’t do anything, because innocent pension holders may lose out”.
It’s like the bad guy in the movie holding a hostage so they don’t get shot.
The haircuts should be extracted from the people responsible: The funds that felt it was appropriate to include asset stripping of public utilities in general pension funds, and the executives they put in place/votes they cast at AGMs to make it happen.
If that means that general pension funds fall, the holders should be going after the ones who mismanaged their pension, not the poor bastards having their water bills doubled, or having the cost of bailing out heaped on their government.
Ofwat should only allow this on the provision that executives bonuses are removed, shareholders don’t receive any dividends for the next decade and the current heads of the water companies have to be dragged through a river every week.
I’ve previously advocated for the the first 1000L of any sewage runoff to be directed through executive’s houses.
Now that is a nice idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that just forces them into their holiday homes abroad.
Isn’t there a church somewhere that still has a ducking stool? I’ve had an idea. Wonder if they’ll rent it out.
If they leave the country, we can assign a man with a portable bucket of sewage.
We will have no issues finding such a man: Most of Thames Water’s customers would pay for the privilege.
problem is then that shareholders will pull their money and invest elsewhere leaving the taxpayer to pick up the pieces. clever privatisations always leave the public purse to bail out any losses 😒
the solution: don’t privatise in the first place. it’s like selling all your shit at a pawn shop
Water companies have been heavily criticised for widespread leaks and the amount of sewage being discharged, which critics have blamed on under-investment in the country’s infrastructure.
…
Southern Water is owned by Australian firm Macquarie which has faced fierce criticism for the period when it was Thames Water’s biggest shareholder.
In five of the 10 years it owned Thames, the company paid out more in dividends than it made in profits, while debt rose from £2.5bn to over £10bn in the same period.
“Mum, I need money to repair my bike.”
“We gave you money to repair your bike.”
“Oh I spent it on sweets for me and my mates.”
If it was a real private market they’d let the firm fail and the investors would take a haircut. Then either someone who could turn a profit while running a decent/affordable service would take over; or the govt would.
We’re stuck in the worst of both worlds where it’s a privatised monopoly which is unable to fail.
Then goodbye every UK resident’s pension that are invested in the water companies.
That’s why they’re “too big to fail”. You let them fail, you’ll throw people who are about 40 to 50 years old into further reliance on the state pension.
Better to prosecute the C-level executives and take the company back into public ownership.
I’ve pondered on this a bit.
Maybe the funds that thought it was appropriate to put for-profit public utilities in a pension fund should be the responsible parties, along with the water company executives they put in position to facilitate the asset stripping.
A proper pension is diversified. They don’t invest entirely in one sector of business.
Unless you’ll managing your own pension in which case that’s your fault.