Thames Water about to go bust…

sherlock

sherlock

Well-known member
…owing £15 billion.

Government making plans to take it into ‘temporary’ public ownership.

Which to you and me means that we get to pay off the debt through our taxes before the company is then given back to a private company on the cheap.

Nationalising the debt, privatising the profits. Again.

And apparently plenty of other water companies looking like they could go the same way.

(But we can’t afford to give public sector workers a pay rise of course)
 
Full of......
thames.jpg
Not to worry.
We will protect profits by paying off private debt.
Meanwhile, there`s "no money" to pay health staff a competitive wage.......only enough to bail out private shareholders! (n)
 
£14bn debts and how much paid out to shareholders since privatisation.......🤬🤬🤬

This should be the start of getting public utilities back into public ownership......but that's not going to happen is it? Not with the Tories, or with Labour.

What a f*cking greedy joke of a country we are.
 
I think it is bad for us either way, IIRC the Australian owners ran up the debts while paying themselves massive dividends.

It was then sold and some UK pension funds now have significant holdings.

So pensioners will lose out & the tax payer will fund running costs.
 
Utilities shows that the Tories have totally screwed this country with their economic policies. The likes of water, gas, electric, transmission and distribution should never have been sold. I have no issues with BT and others being private, but it's mad that critical infrastructure is owned privately. It should all be not-for-profit with any money made put straight back into the organisation.
 
h_m_boro said:
£14bn debts and how much paid out to shareholders since privatisation.......🤬🤬🤬

This should be the start of getting public utilities back into public ownership......but that's not going to happen is it? Not with the Tories, or with Labour.

What a f*cking greedy joke of a country we are.
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They should not be allowed to pay any dividends and bonuses with immediate effect.
 
All this and the news that the water companies have asked Ofwat to approve 40% roses in bills to pay for the required investment 😡
 
sherlock1969 said:
All this and the news that the water companies have asked Ofwat to approve 40% roses in bills to pay for the required investment 😡
Click to expand...
This is taken from a post on Reddit and it explains why they have to do that. It sounds like an incredibly dumb system and one which as usual protects shareholders and not customers:

The way water companies are set up in the UK, their profits are literally set by how much they invest in the infrastructure.

For instance, if they build a new reservoir, they're permitted to make more money. But they have to make that money from the bills they charge customers and those bills are regulated by Ofwat. Ofwat benchmarks the investment that a company wants to make against what they think the benefit is so they can't claim a £100mn reservoir cost when it was only £20mn to build.

The whole system is a bit peculiar, but think of the shareholder profits as an interest on a loan which has a very low chance of failure (because everyone needs to buy water.)

In other words, if they didn't make any profit, they'd also not have any investment. No business can be sustainable without making money.

You could make the argument they shouldn't be private at all and I think that's a fair argument (there's very little evidence water privatisation has helped investment), but in any case the additional investment in the required infrastructure will have to come from somewhere, which is going to be ordinary taxpayers, either through higher water rates or general taxation. The problem really is that the UK has some very old water infrastructure and it wasn't really until the 80's and 90's when we started building storm drains independently of foul drains, so as the built environment has expanded and the amount of water falling onto nonporous surfaces has increased (think roads, driveways etc), the problem has just got worse and worse. To fix this, we need to dig up a ton of roads and build more sewerage plants. It's going to take decades and it's not going to be cheap.

It's really ridiculous how many things we pay pay private companies for to be run so badly. These are services, essential services that we need and instead of the country doing things properly, running them with the priority of providing the service we've just given them away as a method of milking profits. There isn't even a possibility of them doing the right thing. It is a monopoly so there is no incentive to be more efficient. It's just extra cost to the people of the country for a worse service.
 
I see that the recently departed chief exec gave up her bonus this year, although received £496,000 last year in performance related bonuses. Should never be allowed to happen 🤬
 
Beyond a fkcn joke. It will get worse…more of this is on the way.
It’s time to get rid of this corrupt and venal collection of criminals. Some time in opposition should be the answer
At least 50 years would be a start.
 
It’s a criminal enterprise. Almost Mafia like, take over business then rinse it until it fails. Throw the keys on the ministry desk and walk away with huge amounts of money.
A massive failure of oversight. Where the hell is Ofwat in all this.
It’s a monopoly concern, there is no competition the business projection model is stable year in and out. Crony capitalism.
 
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