It's so wild to me that anyone thought this would be successful.
Perhaps this shows my ignorance of business and the stock market works, but water utilities are a service with a fixed set of customers, so there is neither a pressure to be good (because you can't gain customers from your competition so why bother) or a deterrent against being bad (because you have no competition so why bother).
So the only way to make line go up is to do your job worse (to save costs), overcharge customers (to bring more money in) and do random dodgy accounting (to bring even more money in). Was the argument that they would save costs by doing it more efficiently? Why, when they have a captive customer base with no ability to lose or gain customers, would they bother with that!?
I think you understand the situation perfectly. I'm similarly at a loss to explain why anyone thinks it was ever a good idea to privatise, unless you're one of the few directly profiting from the situation.
There are government resources available which give also give daily pollution forecasts and all bathing water quality testing data, overflow locations etc. The testing is pretty good, I've seen them don a wetsuit and swim or wade out a bit to get samples.
environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/
Storm overflow outputs are pretty predictable atm, for around 24hrs after ANY rainfall, it will advise against bathing. The situation is dire.
What personally annoys me is the very disrespectful behaviour of the seeming majority of english residents who are perfectly happy to pave, tarmac or concrete their entire front garden to fill with cars, then replace the rear lawn with 'artificial grass'. Add this to the general transport development culture of builing bigger and wider roads, and any development in general, it all creates greater and faster run off.
> What personally annoys me is the very disrespectful behaviour of the seeming majority of english residents who are perfectly happy to pave, tarmac or concrete their entire front garden to fill with cars
I disagree with your “disrespectful” label. Modern families might have 2-3 vehicles which can’t be parked on the streets as there’s no space. People have taken to parking two wheels on pavements so as not to block traffic.
Concreting front gardens is a _necessity_ in this modern world in many towns, not an act of malicious disrespect.
It is awful, though. Truly. I sometimes look at historic street photographs of the 50s/60s/70s. Well-manicured front gardens with very few cars on the road. Those days are all but gone… for now.
Acknowledge the use of disrespectful as not ideal language. And I've nothing against moving cars into front gardens, living in a car dependant society is not any individuals fault. I'm strugling to describe the behaviour well. It's perhaps a cultural attitude where this is just the thing to do, without having a heavy heart and without thought of any compromise even where people posess the means and nouse to acomplish something different. I guess this applies to so many things though...
According to a recent post, UK regulators (the EA and OfWat in this case) are far less likely to implement fines or criminal sanctions against these blatant abuses than their US equivalents. Feargal Sharkey, a big supporter of SAS, states that the existing regulations are sufficient, just that our politicians are cowed by the lobbyists and party contributions. Thames Water was asset stripped by McQuarie bank who have extracted £bns in profits and dividends under OfWat noses. Not least is the revolving door of recruitment in this back scratching world.
I’m not sure about that, but I can tell you that the UK has been regressing in: healthcare, policing, education, road infrastructure, rail infrastructure, immigration control and social care for the last 10-15 years amongst other things. The median disposable salary has also been decreasing.
It's kind of the opposite. The cesspits that predated the sewer system were relatively friendlier to waterways. See this article on how changing to pipes caused the great Dutch stink:
Bristow attributes blame to “massive underinvestment by private water companies who’ve failed to do their duty.” UK water services were privatized in 1989.
Welcome to the free market, where actions of rational agents produce the optimal result: cutting corners while getting paid the same and pocketing the difference.
What I have seen in UK on other and several other countries with some utilities (not sure if these sewers apply) is that privatisation happened, which was supposed to be good as we learned from the US (… right …), however, if that happens without competitors, it just means that there is one public now turned private company with money and shareholder pressure and 0 competitors will simply up the pricing, cut corners and do less and less over the years until things break enough to get into the news papers and questions to responsible gov agencies.
The privatisation of infrastructure with no possibility of competition existing is simply a way to loot the countries wealth like a dictator can. Except it is done under the cover of "free markets".
Exactly. Just need to build a few more sewer networks so we can have competition.
Many fundamental components of society aren’t amenable to market based competition. The public sector can be inefficient, but in many cases the alternative is a form of economic tyranny that is far far worse. In the UK, most of our key infrastructure has been privatised and it has been a disaster for our economy and for the population. One of the likely causes of the UK’s productivity crisis is the lack of investment in infrastructure caused by privatisation, for example.
This is all rather self-evident but I’m so surprised how very intelligent, highly educated people often are unable to see that government is sometimes superior to the private sector. It seems their judgements are clouded by dogmatic ideology, but because that ideology is capitalism they are unaware that their dogmatism is no different from the others that they regularly mock and criticise.
I think the free market is probably a better outcome as long as there is oversight and regulation. The problem is weak regulation.
I say that because I remember the nationalised services in the UK in the 70s and 80s and they were a complete mess. My mother spent 1/4 of her life arguing with the gas board, the council and British Rail after things went to crap. It definitely improved when privatised even if it’s not perfect.
The public services were not accountable and were completely untouchable to the end user and any legal recourse.
The issue is that the most likely way forward now is forced nationalization and the taxpayer will end up paying for fixing this mess anyway. So if the taxpayer is going to pay for fixing it, it might as well have been a public service in the first place, in the last 30 years it just served enriching foreign investment funds and now when the things are dire the taxpayer will foot the bill anyway.
The other option is forcing these private companies to fix those issues through legislation, but they will just take the easy route of going bankrupt or they will lobby the government to either give them money or allow them to increase the bills 2-3x so taxpayers will pay for it either way, and shareholders can keep their billions in payouts.
So energy retailers, yep for sure, you can change to another one if the one you're with is bad, and there are new rules on just how easy that has to be.
But how are the distributors being privatised a good thing? I don't get to choose if Cadent serves my gas, or whoever my DNO is re: electricity, or if Thames water serves my water, so they have no motivating reason to give a shit about me. Their goal is aimed directly at a) lobbying regulation down, b) working around regulation as much as they can, to make as much money as they can.
This has resulted in distributors for electricity and gas being the #1 and #2 highest profit businesses in the UK (~40% profit IIRC), with water being at #6.
I mean these private services are not really accountable either. Sure you can (maybe) sue them, but the damage they've caused is already done and the people responsible have long left and never held liable. The bandits have already stripped everything valuable and then the government (and by definition, you) are left to foot the bill.
This isn't to say a corrupt government can't do the same thing, but there's more incentives for officials at smaller leaner agencies to operate in the public benefit.
I'm not pretending I know the best policy. I'm just saying that privatisation is marketed without the regulation part.
If you start with a government that cannot run sewers and then expect the same government to be competent in regulating profit-motivated companies then maybe you solved the wrong problem.
Ireland tried to privatise water a while back. During the "Celtic Tiger" boom that preceeded the global economic crash of 2008, the governed of the time smiled on idea of privatised water, and were also being gently pressured by the EU to introduce it. Before they could do that, the crash happened. The government were pushed by the EU to bail out the banks and socialise the cost. Ireland was particularly screwed during the property crash for a bunch of reasons. First, we had no rent regulation and extremely low quality housing, so if you were renting your simply got screwed. Second, a large number of people had enough land to build a house on. Third, aside from these existing incentives, it's a peculiarity of Irish people that they need to own their own homes. (I say "peculiarity", even though I'm firmly in that camp - frankly I don't understand how other Europeans can sleep at night knowing that they'll rent forever and with no guarantee on the cost, and who knows what might happen to pensions in the future)
Anyway, after the then government agreed to bail out Irish banks, the EU put the Finance Minister under pressure to introduce austerity. Up to this point only businesses, farmers etc actually got billed for water but regular citizens were not. It's was paid for under progressive taxation. So when the government tried to introduce water charges and privatisation, the backlash was huge. Arguments raged.
Electorate: "Why introduce regressive charges that will disproportionately hurt the poorest?"
Politicians: "Other EU have water charges, get with the program".
Electorate: "So what? That's not an argument."
Politicians: "Actually it's because the infrastructure is crumbling and needs investment, but we have no money because 'austerity'!"
Electorate: "Why is it crumbling? Why didn't you invest in it during the Celtic Tiger boom?"
Politicians: "Uh... well... That's beside the point! People are wasting water! We need to charge people for overuse!"
Electorate: (Does some detective work) "Actually, due to our weather we don't water our lawns or own swimming pools. Our water usage is pretty flat across the social classes, unlike places like California and Florida. In fact our usage is comparable to that of England, who have similar weather and water charges."
Politicians: "Ok, by privatising water, the market will make the system more efficient!"
Electorate: "How will the introduction of a complex new billing system, meters, social welfare credits and a private company with its own organisational overhead, salaries, profits and bonuses ... make this cheaper or more efficient? Won't they just charge us more, pay themselves more and save costs by not investing in infrastructure?
Politicians: "That's just stupid"
Electorate: "Look at England"
That whole debacle basically destroyed Ireland's Labour Party, who were in a coalition government at the time and backed the water project. They never recovered from that.
This article flip flops confusing "England" and the "UK".
England is not the UK. This article discusses England and its privatisation of water services. The author should pay better attention to these specifics.
Readit News
Perhaps this shows my ignorance of business and the stock market works, but water utilities are a service with a fixed set of customers, so there is neither a pressure to be good (because you can't gain customers from your competition so why bother) or a deterrent against being bad (because you have no competition so why bother).
So the only way to make line go up is to do your job worse (to save costs), overcharge customers (to bring more money in) and do random dodgy accounting (to bring even more money in). Was the argument that they would save costs by doing it more efficiently? Why, when they have a captive customer base with no ability to lose or gain customers, would they bother with that!?
Just mad.
>When the UK joined the EU in the 70s, it was known for its dirty beaches. But by 2016, 96.5% of UK beaches met EU standards
But then something glorious happened in 2016 and here we are. (quote from https://www.aquaread.com/blog/post-brexit-water-industry/#:~....)
They didn’t realize what they were exiting from. They went straight into corporate greed fuckery.
(crazy, TIL)
environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/
Storm overflow outputs are pretty predictable atm, for around 24hrs after ANY rainfall, it will advise against bathing. The situation is dire.
What personally annoys me is the very disrespectful behaviour of the seeming majority of english residents who are perfectly happy to pave, tarmac or concrete their entire front garden to fill with cars, then replace the rear lawn with 'artificial grass'. Add this to the general transport development culture of builing bigger and wider roads, and any development in general, it all creates greater and faster run off.
Something needs to be done. Support SAS.
I disagree with your “disrespectful” label. Modern families might have 2-3 vehicles which can’t be parked on the streets as there’s no space. People have taken to parking two wheels on pavements so as not to block traffic.
Concreting front gardens is a _necessity_ in this modern world in many towns, not an act of malicious disrespect.
It is awful, though. Truly. I sometimes look at historic street photographs of the 50s/60s/70s. Well-manicured front gardens with very few cars on the road. Those days are all but gone… for now.
https://www.tideway.london/the-tunnel/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ3ipd9pDCA
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/327-1901/letter-from/7205...
Dead Comment
Welcome to the free market, where actions of rational agents produce the optimal result: cutting corners while getting paid the same and pocketing the difference.
It’s not even just that. They have borrowed £60billion(!) and given it to shareholders as dividends.
People should be in jail.
It does almost by definition. Sewers are a natural monopoly, it's physically infeasible to switch providers.
Many fundamental components of society aren’t amenable to market based competition. The public sector can be inefficient, but in many cases the alternative is a form of economic tyranny that is far far worse. In the UK, most of our key infrastructure has been privatised and it has been a disaster for our economy and for the population. One of the likely causes of the UK’s productivity crisis is the lack of investment in infrastructure caused by privatisation, for example.
This is all rather self-evident but I’m so surprised how very intelligent, highly educated people often are unable to see that government is sometimes superior to the private sector. It seems their judgements are clouded by dogmatic ideology, but because that ideology is capitalism they are unaware that their dogmatism is no different from the others that they regularly mock and criticise.
I say that because I remember the nationalised services in the UK in the 70s and 80s and they were a complete mess. My mother spent 1/4 of her life arguing with the gas board, the council and British Rail after things went to crap. It definitely improved when privatised even if it’s not perfect.
The public services were not accountable and were completely untouchable to the end user and any legal recourse.
The other option is forcing these private companies to fix those issues through legislation, but they will just take the easy route of going bankrupt or they will lobby the government to either give them money or allow them to increase the bills 2-3x so taxpayers will pay for it either way, and shareholders can keep their billions in payouts.
Public services can be regulated and have oversight, too. What properties do private services have that make them more amenable to being regulated?
But how are the distributors being privatised a good thing? I don't get to choose if Cadent serves my gas, or whoever my DNO is re: electricity, or if Thames water serves my water, so they have no motivating reason to give a shit about me. Their goal is aimed directly at a) lobbying regulation down, b) working around regulation as much as they can, to make as much money as they can.
This has resulted in distributors for electricity and gas being the #1 and #2 highest profit businesses in the UK (~40% profit IIRC), with water being at #6.
This isn't to say a corrupt government can't do the same thing, but there's more incentives for officials at smaller leaner agencies to operate in the public benefit.
If you start with a government that cannot run sewers and then expect the same government to be competent in regulating profit-motivated companies then maybe you solved the wrong problem.
Anyway, after the then government agreed to bail out Irish banks, the EU put the Finance Minister under pressure to introduce austerity. Up to this point only businesses, farmers etc actually got billed for water but regular citizens were not. It's was paid for under progressive taxation. So when the government tried to introduce water charges and privatisation, the backlash was huge. Arguments raged.
Electorate: "Why introduce regressive charges that will disproportionately hurt the poorest?"
Politicians: "Other EU have water charges, get with the program".
Electorate: "So what? That's not an argument."
Politicians: "Actually it's because the infrastructure is crumbling and needs investment, but we have no money because 'austerity'!"
Electorate: "Why is it crumbling? Why didn't you invest in it during the Celtic Tiger boom?"
Politicians: "Uh... well... That's beside the point! People are wasting water! We need to charge people for overuse!"
Electorate: (Does some detective work) "Actually, due to our weather we don't water our lawns or own swimming pools. Our water usage is pretty flat across the social classes, unlike places like California and Florida. In fact our usage is comparable to that of England, who have similar weather and water charges."
Politicians: "Ok, by privatising water, the market will make the system more efficient!"
Electorate: "How will the introduction of a complex new billing system, meters, social welfare credits and a private company with its own organisational overhead, salaries, profits and bonuses ... make this cheaper or more efficient? Won't they just charge us more, pay themselves more and save costs by not investing in infrastructure?
Politicians: "That's just stupid"
Electorate: "Look at England"
That whole debacle basically destroyed Ireland's Labour Party, who were in a coalition government at the time and backed the water project. They never recovered from that.
England is not the UK. This article discusses England and its privatisation of water services. The author should pay better attention to these specifics.