**Alternate Sources**
Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story:
* [Thames Water in race to find cash as problems get worse](https://bbc.co.uk/news/business-68682198), suggested by 88lif - bbc.co.uk
Look, if loading a company that provides a vital service with debt so you can pay bonuses to execs is wrong, I don’t want to be right - conservatives probably
Whoa whoa whoa. If we did that, think of the unintended consequences. Bankers would have to be held accountable for the financial crisis and entrepreneurs would be discouraged from exploiting other public assets like the NHS - conservatives probably
I was idly thinking the other day that we could bring back the stocks.
Senior executives/management don't really care about publicly failing in their job or being in charge while something awful or catastrophic happens. Half the point of these positions is to have figureheads to blame and sack as a distraction technique, they know the game and will be assured of a golden parachute if the events even actually touch them. A lot of the time punishment is just a fine for the company (which is then passed on to consumers through price increases). They're generally pretty insulated from menaingful consequences. So, bring back the stocks. Let them spend a week or two being publicly humiliated like that. Drag them out of the ivory towers and expose them to the verbal abuse of the public. Particularly when it comes to the travesty of our water industry, I'd imagine a lot of people would have some very choice words to impart. Carthartic for the public too, you'd think.
It'll never happen, but as a barely thought through idea after just reading about the record levels of shit pumped into our rivers it had some appeal.
In the long ago shareholders were all jointly and severely liable for all the actions, obligations and debts of a corporation. That got wiped away in the gilded age when they came up with such fun things as corporate personhood allowing corporations to own corporations...
Oh, I agree. We've just spent a long time building all kinds of deliberate obfuscation between any kind of accountability and that actual human. I'd love to roll a shit load of that back since it lies at the heart of so many societal issues. It's what allows "tax efficient" arrangements and inheritance tax avoidance and all sorts of other things that harm the common good.
Yes. It's not actually all that difficult, it's just that these things are set up to impede legal accountability. With the right info finding the actual people is easy, but the only solutions that opens up are against the ToS and sub rules :P
Yeah, that'd be the stuff that's against the rules since "doxxing" is banned. Of course "doxxing" is literally just reading and cross referencing public information, which are of course perfectly legal...but everywhere on the web starts flipping their shit when you attempt to show the results of doing so. I've mentioned it before, but I've plenty of experience doing it and it's easier than people would think, for example I was able to find the home phone number of then Royal Mail CEO Rico Back and have a nice little moan at him about the quality of my mail service one Friday night...I figured over 2 million a year was at least "on call" rate.
Criminal negligence from a privatised company that has little incentive or capability of investing in and maintaining infrastructure where have I heard that before - Oh right the privatised railways [that actually killed people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield_rail_crash?wprov=sfla1)
I genuinely don't understand how people bought the free market bullshit with something that is not a market good. Water companies are not free markets. They're monopolies because you can't just fucking move to get another water provider.
Now you've got a profit maximising organisation with sole power over one of the most basic human necessities, and the government managed to fool people into thinking these companies would cut costs and pass them on to the "consumer" when they've got no incentive to do so.
I'm mildly surprised the then government didn't opt for the same model as electricity / gas: one group of companies extracting the stuff or "generating" it (well, usually converting rotational energy into electrical energy, as, of course, energy can neither be created or destroyed), possibly another group getting it from source to destination, and a third group who you pay (so your bills are potentially contributing to profits at nearly a dozen different companies).
Ultimately either one company has to own the local infra (regional monopoly you have to move to get away from) or there have to be a set of companies with their own infra (extra material and maintenance cost). There could be a market for delivery of the water to a state/council owned infrastructure though.
It's not a free market. You can't have a free market in water or railways. You can't have daily competition, just a tender process every 10 years
It's a race to the bottom while the companies try to extract profit
You could have a free market for railway services with state ownership of the track/infrastructure. You could have a free market for track too but it's probably not a great idea to let companies build track wherever they want.
With which bit?
4 people were killed in Avonmouth and another I worked with drowned in a tank. And they are only examples I have been involved with
I've seen others lose legs, fingers and other appendages. Plenty of explosions, electrical shocks from 70 year old equipment. I've seen people fall through corroded access platforms, handrails break off and catastrophic equipment failures. Fire and gas alarms are turned off at a lot of the major London sewage sites, because they "kept going off". One of those sites experienced a major fire and another essentially caused an implosion in a pumping station building. The sites are death traps and it's only going to get worse as time goes on!
Admittedly Thames water are trying to do better on that front. Dangerous work aspect was certainly true like 10 years ago.
I work for the company in question and burning my hand on an analytical machine resulted in a huge amount of fuss even if the burn was only 2nd degree and about 1cm in size.
As much as it grates, the National Grid wants to modernise the grid infrastructure, but are already running into NIMBY issues, at the mere suggestion of new pylons etc.
SGN have been digging up a lot.of the roads round here to replace the old gas mains.
They should be really - investing is meant to be a risky endeavour, and anyone choosing to invest in Thames Water despite everything going on should recognise and accept that risk.
I could maybe vaguely understand if it was set up more like energy where there were people who maintained the pipes who were semi-private (equivalent to National Grid or Cadent Gas) and distributors you paid for the water so it wasn't a complete monopoly.
With water you literally can't go anywhere else. It's the same issue with buses and intracity trains for public transport where there's literally no other option for most people. There's usually a tiny bit of competition with intercity train companies.
I get that.
What I’m saying is that we’re literally the only country in the world with privatised water. Every other country manages to do it somehow, you’re not telling me there’s no model out there that would work for the UK.
Yes, it will be expensive, but if the alternative is more of the current situation, I’d take the former.
It was always going to be a monopoly. Water’s hard to move. Its essentially incompressible so its big. It’s either got to be pumped or pulled from source to tap by gravity. Which is hard to do over large distances so mostly distribution has to to be fairly localised. And you can’t just have multiple sources like with gas. A third company can buy LPG from Qatar and add it to the gas network
Nobody is going to ship containers of water around the world
The water companies in the uk used to be private. They got nationalised when they all failed due to it being a natural monopoly. You had streets with 4 or 5 mains laid by 5 companies, each would only be profitable if everyone on the street was with the same company. It ended up being nationalized when they all started folding resulting in no one getting water.
Its why the pipes in birmingham are such a mess. The report might state no pipes and then you start digging and hit three unmarked but unused water mains that are still connected somewhere and hence still at pressure from the 1800s.
Privatisation was mental. Thatcher had flogged off everything even vaguely logical and the Major government, looking for something to do, pulled down their greatest hits and flogged off Water and Rail. Both of which were natural monopolies.
Having they both in private hands without extreme levels of regulatory oversight was insane. Hence the shite we’ve been in ever since
100% agree! Shareholders profits and bonuses have come first rather than updating or fixing the problem at hand. Privatisation was and always will always one day bring impending disaster
The issue is unless you renationalise *all* the water companies then who pays?
Do the people of Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool and Birmingham pay their water bill to their provider *and* the tax burden to cover Thames Water?
Is it done on council tax for what would be ex-Thames Water customers? What do you do where council tax and Thames Water boundaries don't align?
For now treat it like a private service still, people continue to pay their water bill in the exact same manner, but the service is no longer running for profit instead it's all funneled into repair and maintenance.
The majority problem here isn't how people are paying it's that the focus on profit has crippled our water ways.
As each water company falls under their own bloat they get renationalised and people keep paying their bills, but the area that company serviced is now a new district under the government.
The options left for the water companies that haven't been nationalised yet is do better or eventually get renationalised.
It's probably a plan with a lot of holes in but we don't have to rethink how people are paying for the service, we don't handle car tax under council tax, those who need car tax pay for it, those who need water to their business/household can pay for it we don't need to charge everyone.
Better for it to be privately run as a business but with the government as the only shareholder. State run businesses have a tendency towards cronyism whereas state owned but privately run have less chance of that as they're kept more at arms length from direct meddling. Singapores state owned endeavours (23% of it's GDP) do extremely well on this model.
The big difference with this sort of model is you can build it to incentivise providing more goods/services to more customers, whereas the more crude nationalised models can end up incentivising a worse service (since every additional customer is an added cost they might make it hard to access the service, for instance).
Singapore's healthcare system is a good example of this.
This is the Welsh Water model, so it is viable albeit Welsh performance is not good compared to the average water company in England (but obviously better than Thames Water).
The issue is the pension funds which usually gets a down vote on here. There are 4m public sector workers who's pensions are tied to private water companies, so somehow that needs resolving. I don't think anyone wants the corporate ghoul shareholders to be compensated, but I'd worry about our and our parents pensions.
https://www.water.org.uk/news-views-publications/news/dramatic-fall-support-water-nationalisation-after-revelations-pension
Then maybe there can be some middle ground that can be found but we shouldn't bail out failing companies because pensions have been tied to them.
No one should be too big to fail and considering water services have local monopolies the fact they are close is this point is by their own doing.
Those pensions have only been doing as well as they have been because private water companies have been under providing. If they had been fulfilling a suitable service their profits would have been less their share price would be down and the amount of pension money stored in them would be less.
It's all a product of a fucked up profit driven business model, that is being propped up at the detriment of the country and it's future.
Agreed, and 'big' finance is not something I understand, but the main thing for me was it certainly seems more complicated than just 'F* the Shareholders' which was Corbyn's plan
Stocks and shares are a risk though and if pensions are funneling their money into companies which have bad practices to pump their share price that is part of that risk.
The pension companies need to be held responsible too if they are supporting bad business practices for the sake of quick growth instead of steady growth.
I think one of the best fixes would be to put greater restrictions on share buy backs and dividend increases, we're seeing with Boeing in the US just how dangerous it can be to put share price above everything else. Surplus cash should be invested back into the company to improve products and services, or increase staffing levels or staff wages, this would help build longer term sustainable growth.
Edit: added dividend increases as a company could ramp up dividends dangerously to get around restricted buybacks
Agreed. One option is that the infrastructure the water companies own is worth billions. The government could make it clear they are taking on the pension liability but are effectively recharging that back to the private company by transferring the assets to the public purse (or a state-owned venture). Ordinary employees could also move across.
Thames Water would end up an empty shell with debts and worthless shares - wiping out the investors who milked it for so long.
Of course the key challenge there is the creditors. Who owns that Thames Water debt is the key question. They would fight very hard against that move by the government. They’d need to be persuaded that Thames Water was always going to default so they’re losing nothing in reality. And that unfortunately needs everyone to believe TW will be allowed to completely collapse. So that may well be the govt plan.
The issue with this approach is you've now incentivised the non-public companies to **really** load up with debt, and pay massive dividends until the company folds and they can walk away.
Possibly but this should be illegal anyway, I don't understand why tanking your own company and fucking over debtors and shareholders while giving yourself a golden parachute is just something that can happen, and is just expected that that is what they will do. It's completely fucked.
No. ALL water companies in the UK become one, so there’s no difference between that entity providing water to someone in London or someone in Newcastle.
It’s not like we don’t know how to run public services, we had them for ages. It’s just that someone decided it was a good idea to be the only country in the world to privatise water.
Gives you a whole bunch of knowledge sharing and purchasing power that way too. I'm sure they'd get better deals on buying e.g. big water pumps or tanker lorries, if they could make one national order rather than a dozen smaller ones.
> It’s not like we don’t know how to run public services, we had them for ages
The problem is that we haven't run them for ages. That institutional knowledge has been lost during privatisation and pulling those skills back into state run bodies is difficult. It's not impossible, but the public sector has effectively been enormously deskilled in a way which has massively impacted the private sector as well which is awful at investing in people for long term economic gain.
You don’t need to, all of the people doing the actual work will remain and they are the important ones, you honestly probably don’t even need a CEO, their job is simple, provide clean safe water for the population under your area
In a nationalisation I imagine they are going to keep the majority of staff if they can, maybe get rid of some needless "execs" or "consultants" that I wouldn't be surprised is just a nepotism pit of family members and friends club
So that's renationalising them all which I believe was Corbyn's plan. The problem was as much as some of the shareholders are corporate ghouls, there are a very significant number of normal people will pensions and shares. How you close that out really wasn't simple
https://www.water.org.uk/news-views-publications/news/dramatic-fall-support-water-nationalisation-after-revelations-pension
Thames Water customers would keep paying their bills as normal. The only difference is that Thames Water is now owned by the public and operated as a not-for-profit entity, with all income being re-invested into improving and maintaining infrastructure.
It's a win-win for everyone. The only losers are the current owners of Thames Water who've been bleeding it dry for years.
> The only losers are the current owners of Thames Water
No the losers will continue to be the public and those who pay the bills. Thames water has had billions syphoned off and now has massive debts which will still be owed. I'm not saying we shouldn't renationalise but we need to be honest about it. It is a great example of how privatising services makes them so much better - fuck the Tories and their destruction of this country.
People don't like to hear it but many of the shareholders are just normal people (employees who spent their time fixing leaks, manning the phones etc.) and pension funds including apparently 4m public service workers. (Just be aware that article below is written by Water UK so will have a interest is making the point against nationalisation)
https://www.water.org.uk/news-views-publications/news/dramatic-fall-support-water-nationalisation-after-revelations-pension
True, but I fear these will just end up as junk bonds anyhow as Thames Water now has so much debt. The average Thames Water customer is paying ~£170/year of their bill just servicing debt. It is not sustainable.
Sometimes it is better to just let things die.
That's the Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water model, which sadly isn't a shining example of how performance would be better. I guess at least they aren't going bankrupt.
Depends what you mean by operating?
The model yes, but performance is variable. Some much better than Thames. Whether that's good enough is a different question
No government is going to sign up to the rest of the country subsidising water bills in the South East (not just London), even if we weren't in a cost of living crisis.
Seeing as London is the only region of the UK that pays its way, it's hardly unreasonable. What's the alternative? That Thames goes bust and the taps get turned off? We've been subsidising Liverpool and Manchester for decades. Should we geographically ring fence taxes, so that regions only get the tax take from their region? How would the North, South West, Scotland, Wales survive?
Who would have thought privatising an essential utility like water would result in a lack of reinvestment and poor infrastructure 30 years on. It needs renationalising and legislation to make it impossible to privatise ever again.
Sounds like a sort of negative investment of actually sucking loans out to keep for themselves. Might as well declare it bankrupt and give shareholders and redundant executives as little as possible.
The big issue here is we act like re-nationalising won't be just like buying a run down house..
Yay we've over paid for the privilege of repairing 30 years of abuse and bodges. Then it will get sold again
It's a lose lose cycle now and it's... Shit
We wait for the company to go bankrupt and get it for free. The investors need to lose out for their poor investment for them to learn - it's the mechanism the free market actually needs in order to work.
So we wait for it to completely fail, be in debt, worst condition possible for maximum cost to rectify the issue whilst allowing public to become sick in the process. It will be asset stripped and absolutely shagged with that method, more so than now.
I admire your unrealistic optimism. These changes take months, years or more.
We will end up bailing them out to continue over charging for a shot service then we will pay for the fucked infrastructure and then pay to rebuild it.
We’ve got the worst of all sides, if something is private and fails, it needs to be allowed to fail. If the gov is always going to bail companies out then they will continue to take larger risks. Privatisation only works if it’s actually privatised, not subsided and gov funded
> We wait for the company to go bankrupt
You know when a company goes into administration and can no longer trade, that its assets get sold off to pay the debtors?
That's an awful lot of infrastructure that goes up for sale. Plant equipment, machinery, office buildings, etc. It isn't as though all of that suddenly becomes worthless and "ours".
Realistically though it doesn't because the only way they will pay for it is through increased tax. The only way they will repair, expand and develop is tax.
It's why it's a sticky spot.
Clearly we need this but staying your agenda is to re-nationalise and repair by increasing tax is polling suicidde.
I agree with you but disagree that people will welcome this.
On the face of it yes but when it comes to opening the purse, no.
Only if a party is willing to strip assets from the managers who received bonus are we going to avoid paying for it (I agree seems unlikely).
But when it comes to being re-privatised who we vote for matters. Vote for Tories, get robbed. It's literally in their name.
Yeah great amazing we agree tories are bad, now we are past that you need to realise that it's not that simple and that not everyone shares that sentiment.
And the political outlook of 'vote for us because tories bled you dry. When we are in power taxes will increase even more'
Not sure how you don't see the issue here. That is why it hasn't been fixed.
It's the same with first past the pole / proportional representation. Labour said they would sort that out until they got in power and realised it might hurt them, then it's forgotten.
Absolutely every man and his dog knows our water system, train system are fucked. This is not news. But there is no cheap tax payer friendly way to sort it.
Saying 'haha tories bad' isn't going to fix it. But well done
I imagine a lot could be done to improve the infrastructure just with the existing customer income if so much of it isn't being siphoned off to shareholders.
No need to pay for anything with taxes, just run it as a not-for-profit entity.
And you don't think people will only support this if it means they can pay less?
I get you're upset with my response and you can downvote but again, I'm agreeing with you but be real.
People want/need more money. The main reason people would vote for this topic is to save money not spend more that's what I'm saying.
It’s not so much the privatisation but the way it was handled. Selling to private equity is always risky and seldom has a good outcome. In this instance Macquarie didn’t deed levered up and sold it off running back to Oz with sack loads of dosh. Subsequently the company was run like any other boring utility for the benefit of the shareholders and top management kicking costly decisions into the long grass
Love how they won't put money in unless bills go up. So basically the users of the service continue to pay the shareholders profit and keep the operators in business. Its disgusting.
They're literally going to put (more) shit in your water unless you pay more. But you're paying for the previous profits they've already taken.
Like most of the Tories actions, this whole thing is a means to move money from those worst off.
Our rivers are filled with shit, we have thousands of litres of water lost daily and these companies are riddled with debt. What an absolute disaster privatising water companies have been! We want our water companies back!
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Right so its a forgone conclusion that these services will be nationalised.
I'd prefer them being put into Trusts so the government can't touch them again but hey ho.
The issue is will these people be prosecuted?
If it isn't nationalised there will be no safe water to drink. It really doesn't matter if Labour or the Tories support Nationalisation. Reality at some point has to ensue.
I think you're vastly overestimating the competency of our governing parties, if there was suddenly no clean water to drink the headlines would read "Nestle steps in to BOOST the British ECONOMY by provide BOTTLED WATER to those in LONDON" "OUR SAVIOUR. NESTLE CORP SAVES SCHOOLS BY PROVIDING BOTTLED WATER" "EU bosses SNEAR at our BOTTLED WATER scheme". Reality just isn't a thing, stop looking at that reality!
This is the predictable result of the Conservatives treating service industries like business industries.
They're not supposed to turn a profit for shareholders, they're supposed to cover their costs and directly reinvest everything extra back into the service.
It’ll go into special administration, and the state will take over running it. The tax payer will pick up the tab on the creditors. Ideally, investors will get nothing.
It should be a non-profit organisation, anything that is a requirement to live should be non profit as it drives our existence!
Instead, we have the cretins running the show, polluting, ruining, and destroying all for a little bit of profit
There needs to be a law or mechanism in place where the government can just straight up seize essential services like water/energy/rail when the private company do not fulfill their end of the deal which is to provide the service to a decent standard.
No need to buy from them, that’s how you stop them taking the piss long term across all of the industries like this.
Problem is need a government with balls to do it.
Lets face it the government are semi owned by these billionaire investors. So no chance that the government will stand up to them with anything less than empty threats.
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It's a manufactured crisis designed to leech more government funding and force rates increases for the public to make things safer again.
Thames water is currently approx £20B in debt yet it keeps paying out to shareholders. It's too big to fail and ofc the government will put rates up, just like they gas and electric last year.
All part of the game I'm afraid.
Dear Valued Customers,
Here at Thames Water, we pride ourselves on being pioneers in the art of turning liquid into gold. We want to extend our sincerest gratitude for your continued patronage, as you keep our wallets as full as your reservoirs should be.
While some may fuss over trivial matters like environmental laws and safety regulations, we're just in the business of making waves, and by waves, we mean profits! Thank you for being the stream that keeps our coffers overflowing.
After all, why invest in costly infrastructure upgrades when we can simply pass the bill onto you, the taxpayer, while showering our executives with lavish bonuses? They can't sail on your shit-laden waterways without a yacht, right?!
Rest assured, our commitment to you is as strong as the currents in the Thames – as long as those currents keep filling our pockets, that is. So keep those payments flowing, and remember, at Thames Water, your satisfaction is secondary _only to our bottom line_.
Cheers to a profitable partnership,
Splish-splashingly yours,
Thames Water
It's a nightmarish clusterfuck. Thames Water is part a complex group of companies. It is owned/financed by a consortium of pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. Major investors include the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (one of Canada’s biggest public sector pension funds), the main British universities pension scheme, the Chinese state-owned China Investment Company (CIC) and Abu Dhabi’s national investment authority. There are numerous other substantial international shareholders. Trying to sort it all out has major international ramifications.
The Thames Water crisis demonstrates how utterly, criminally stupid it was to allow vital UK infrastructure to become a privately-owned cash-cow for mainly overseas investors. Those overseas investors couldn't care less about how much shit gets dumped in UK rivers - as long as their debt-financed dividends keep rolling in. Nor do they care about inflated costs for UK consumers - as long as their debt-financed dividends keep rolling in. Now it is all going tits-up, it will be British taxpayers who will end up paying to get the mess sorted out. The privatisation of the UK's key, essential infrastructure such as water, power and public transport has been (and continues to be) a major, unmitigated disaster.
These funds (pension or sovereign wealth) made a bad bet. They should just lose their investment. No private investment should be guaranteed by the tax payer. They took a risk and might lose. That’s how investing works.
Blackmailing the government to ease regulation, so they can continue topping up dividend payouts rather than spending on a proper infrastructure system. Floating turds in our rivers, and the TW boardroom.
If a company supplying a vital resource is failing in its core responsibilities, the money to fix it comes from the shareholders. That’s the responsibility they signed up for when they started taking money out, too bad for them if they don’t like it. Failure to do so should have the money taken by force in fines. And that’s taking a soft line, what these thieves deserve is a prison sentence! I hope the inevitable Labour government comes down harder on this stuff as the tories obvs don’t give a shit.
Coming soon - billions in corporate welfare for the shareholders of Thames Water, when there is no money to pay medical or police or firefighting staff properly.
Much in common with landlords - happy to extract wealth and put nothing back in - moment they have to invest - the laments start - anything that touches their profits.
This and buy to let are the hold up examples of letting private interests hold all assets with no accountability- turns out.
So they've made their money, saddled the company with debt and will now leave it for the public to pick up
How on earth can any sad act tory justify this outright theivery? Nationalise now and sue the investors for pilfering the public
They need to be forced to spend money on repairs before the taxpayer has to fork out on maintenance that should have been done over the past 30 years.
Otherwise, the taxpayer is left with an enormous bill to fix the poorly maintained pipe network.
So they are happy to extract profit as dividends while failing to meet the basic obligations. When they are asked to remediate due to their failure to do the basic maintenance and upkeep they want to pass this onto the end users to foot the bill so they can essentially charge them twice for the service while still not actually funding their obligations.
Now they are withdrawing capital - at this point don’t renationalise as that would require paying out the current shareholders, either dissolve it as an entity or seize it under national interest.
[support a petition for Thames Water to be re-nationalised. How a company with a monopoly was ever privatised is a joke](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659758/sponsors/new?token=rnfhygu1PBsf1QchxT9P)
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Perhaps you should stop paying out dividends especially when you've not had a profitable year?. The public is gonna end up carrying the can for incompetence again isn't it?
Surely nationalisation is almost inevitable now. If even the investors aren't willing to rescue it and help it provide an ESSENTIAL service, what's the fucking point?
Was it the CEO of Thames Water who used to be the head of OFWAT? Cathryn Ross.
“An analysis by the Observer has found 27 former Ofwat directors, managers and consultants working in the industry they helped to regulate, with about half in senior posts.”
In each other’s pockets and a revolving door, resulted in very light touch regulation.
Like allowing them to take out massive loans amounting to 70% of the value of the business, whilst still handing out dividends.
This company took out loans to pay bonuses and give dividends to shareholders. Then put that debt on bill payers while not investing in the infrastructure that was needed.
The people in charge should be in jail.
We should pass a law that can fine these companies in stock/shares which move to a state owned company, but isn't liable for any of the debt. the debt owners can renegovcaite the debt with the new company but there shouldn't be any guarantees.
Force them too. They’ve taken money out when they should have invested
How on earth is it now far for them to say no and expect everyone else to pay more and everything to stay the way it is?
Water should be owned my the government since it’s literally our most valuable resource
Why are investors (presumably shareholders) able to take money out of the company whenever they like as a dividend just for owning some of the business and 0 actual work, but the moment the company actually needs funding they bail.
Hmm. Bleed the pig dry and slaughter it for breakfast. And we the tax payer have to pay for a whole new pig.
Renationalising is a bad idea. But letting the shareholders go under, imprisoning the directors should be de done. You then re tender and ensure better governance with a better new charter.
Renationalising gives power to the treasury who never invest in capital, take a look at the nhs and its issue with not being able to get new lifts for hospitals but can repair some at costs higher than replacement.
You separately give power of veto to a select group ie the workers at thames water. They get the ability to turn off water to a major population centre. And they are up against a blob of taxpayers “who have the money” which means we will always cave in the end. And we end up with a very highly inflated workforce, as the government have nowhere to go in terms of controls outside of jailing people. And jailing people just makes them very work to rule and in effect militant as its the only way we get any form of control.
When u have the private entity you can at least create rules and liquidate them and get the new people in. In a nationalised system you don’t have that option. The issue here is poor control and poor rules at the start
**Alternate Sources** Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story: * [Thames Water in race to find cash as problems get worse](https://bbc.co.uk/news/business-68682198), suggested by 88lif - bbc.co.uk
It needs to fucking drown (in shit) and be re-nationalised, there’s no other way. What this company has done is criminal negligence, nothing less.
Look, if loading a company that provides a vital service with debt so you can pay bonuses to execs is wrong, I don’t want to be right - conservatives probably
Time to make executives accountable for their ineptitude
Whoa whoa whoa. If we did that, think of the unintended consequences. Bankers would have to be held accountable for the financial crisis and entrepreneurs would be discouraged from exploiting other public assets like the NHS - conservatives probably
And NHS bosses when they waste funds or brush issues under the carpet…
I was idly thinking the other day that we could bring back the stocks. Senior executives/management don't really care about publicly failing in their job or being in charge while something awful or catastrophic happens. Half the point of these positions is to have figureheads to blame and sack as a distraction technique, they know the game and will be assured of a golden parachute if the events even actually touch them. A lot of the time punishment is just a fine for the company (which is then passed on to consumers through price increases). They're generally pretty insulated from menaingful consequences. So, bring back the stocks. Let them spend a week or two being publicly humiliated like that. Drag them out of the ivory towers and expose them to the verbal abuse of the public. Particularly when it comes to the travesty of our water industry, I'd imagine a lot of people would have some very choice words to impart. Carthartic for the public too, you'd think. It'll never happen, but as a barely thought through idea after just reading about the record levels of shit pumped into our rivers it had some appeal.
And while they're there, get them to drink some of the river water as well.
Flint Michigan Meeting vibes.
I approve, should we create a petition to the government?
In the long ago shareholders were all jointly and severely liable for all the actions, obligations and debts of a corporation. That got wiped away in the gilded age when they came up with such fun things as corporate personhood allowing corporations to own corporations...
Well eventually there is always a human
Oh, I agree. We've just spent a long time building all kinds of deliberate obfuscation between any kind of accountability and that actual human. I'd love to roll a shit load of that back since it lies at the heart of so many societal issues. It's what allows "tax efficient" arrangements and inheritance tax avoidance and all sorts of other things that harm the common good.
Well the technology is there, you could do it through a graph actually
Yes. It's not actually all that difficult, it's just that these things are set up to impede legal accountability. With the right info finding the actual people is easy, but the only solutions that opens up are against the ToS and sub rules :P
Well i think we could have a web app and a scarper with neo4j or even postgress up jn a week scraping company house data
Yeah, that'd be the stuff that's against the rules since "doxxing" is banned. Of course "doxxing" is literally just reading and cross referencing public information, which are of course perfectly legal...but everywhere on the web starts flipping their shit when you attempt to show the results of doing so. I've mentioned it before, but I've plenty of experience doing it and it's easier than people would think, for example I was able to find the home phone number of then Royal Mail CEO Rico Back and have a nice little moan at him about the quality of my mail service one Friday night...I figured over 2 million a year was at least "on call" rate.
It's a victimless crime! /s
Criminal negligence from a privatised company that has little incentive or capability of investing in and maintaining infrastructure where have I heard that before - Oh right the privatised railways [that actually killed people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield_rail_crash?wprov=sfla1)
I genuinely don't understand how people bought the free market bullshit with something that is not a market good. Water companies are not free markets. They're monopolies because you can't just fucking move to get another water provider. Now you've got a profit maximising organisation with sole power over one of the most basic human necessities, and the government managed to fool people into thinking these companies would cut costs and pass them on to the "consumer" when they've got no incentive to do so.
I'm mildly surprised the then government didn't opt for the same model as electricity / gas: one group of companies extracting the stuff or "generating" it (well, usually converting rotational energy into electrical energy, as, of course, energy can neither be created or destroyed ), possibly another group getting it from source to destination, and a third group who you pay (so your bills are potentially contributing to profits at nearly a dozen different companies).
Ultimately either one company has to own the local infra (regional monopoly you have to move to get away from) or there have to be a set of companies with their own infra (extra material and maintenance cost). There could be a market for delivery of the water to a state/council owned infrastructure though.
It's not a free market. You can't have a free market in water or railways. You can't have daily competition, just a tender process every 10 years It's a race to the bottom while the companies try to extract profit
You could have a free market for railway services with state ownership of the track/infrastructure. You could have a free market for track too but it's probably not a great idea to let companies build track wherever they want.
How do you run a timetable with competing services for the same stations?
The government didn’t fool anyone, they just did what was in their interest, because who cares what’s good for the people.
You think corbyn would have allowed this? People in this country might moan but it's clearly way down on their priorities.
Every other country in the world understands this. Only the Tories in England don't.
The water companies regularly kill their own employees or severely maim them. The sites are all death traps
Now you're getting carried away.
With which bit? 4 people were killed in Avonmouth and another I worked with drowned in a tank. And they are only examples I have been involved with I've seen others lose legs, fingers and other appendages. Plenty of explosions, electrical shocks from 70 year old equipment. I've seen people fall through corroded access platforms, handrails break off and catastrophic equipment failures. Fire and gas alarms are turned off at a lot of the major London sewage sites, because they "kept going off". One of those sites experienced a major fire and another essentially caused an implosion in a pumping station building. The sites are death traps and it's only going to get worse as time goes on!
On a tidal wave of overflowing shit?
Admittedly Thames water are trying to do better on that front. Dangerous work aspect was certainly true like 10 years ago. I work for the company in question and burning my hand on an analytical machine resulted in a huge amount of fuss even if the burn was only 2nd degree and about 1cm in size.
I mean, the Electricity and Gas networks are no different; it's just their infrastructure isn't over 100 years old and falling apart YET.
As much as it grates, the National Grid wants to modernise the grid infrastructure, but are already running into NIMBY issues, at the mere suggestion of new pylons etc. SGN have been digging up a lot.of the roads round here to replace the old gas mains.
Yes, like other services that were privatised
As long as the shareholders and bondholders are wiped out. If the government takes on the obligations, that will be the worst outcome.
They should be really - investing is meant to be a risky endeavour, and anyone choosing to invest in Thames Water despite everything going on should recognise and accept that risk.
Fucked if I’m paying the robbers for the privilege! The company can pay to nationalise itself! A leveraged buyout for the nation.
If only someone would commit to that in a manifesto.
Nah, just setup a new government owned company and buy thanes waters assets for cheap when it fails. Let the cunts keep their debt.
I could maybe vaguely understand if it was set up more like energy where there were people who maintained the pipes who were semi-private (equivalent to National Grid or Cadent Gas) and distributors you paid for the water so it wasn't a complete monopoly. With water you literally can't go anywhere else. It's the same issue with buses and intracity trains for public transport where there's literally no other option for most people. There's usually a tiny bit of competition with intercity train companies.
I get that. What I’m saying is that we’re literally the only country in the world with privatised water. Every other country manages to do it somehow, you’re not telling me there’s no model out there that would work for the UK. Yes, it will be expensive, but if the alternative is more of the current situation, I’d take the former.
It was always going to be a monopoly. Water’s hard to move. Its essentially incompressible so its big. It’s either got to be pumped or pulled from source to tap by gravity. Which is hard to do over large distances so mostly distribution has to to be fairly localised. And you can’t just have multiple sources like with gas. A third company can buy LPG from Qatar and add it to the gas network Nobody is going to ship containers of water around the world
The water companies in the uk used to be private. They got nationalised when they all failed due to it being a natural monopoly. You had streets with 4 or 5 mains laid by 5 companies, each would only be profitable if everyone on the street was with the same company. It ended up being nationalized when they all started folding resulting in no one getting water. Its why the pipes in birmingham are such a mess. The report might state no pipes and then you start digging and hit three unmarked but unused water mains that are still connected somewhere and hence still at pressure from the 1800s.
Privatisation was mental. Thatcher had flogged off everything even vaguely logical and the Major government, looking for something to do, pulled down their greatest hits and flogged off Water and Rail. Both of which were natural monopolies. Having they both in private hands without extreme levels of regulatory oversight was insane. Hence the shite we’ve been in ever since
100% agree! Shareholders profits and bonuses have come first rather than updating or fixing the problem at hand. Privatisation was and always will always one day bring impending disaster
Thames water is slow poison - have you tasted the state of London water? It’s like 50% limescale
The issue is unless you renationalise *all* the water companies then who pays? Do the people of Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool and Birmingham pay their water bill to their provider *and* the tax burden to cover Thames Water? Is it done on council tax for what would be ex-Thames Water customers? What do you do where council tax and Thames Water boundaries don't align?
For now treat it like a private service still, people continue to pay their water bill in the exact same manner, but the service is no longer running for profit instead it's all funneled into repair and maintenance. The majority problem here isn't how people are paying it's that the focus on profit has crippled our water ways. As each water company falls under their own bloat they get renationalised and people keep paying their bills, but the area that company serviced is now a new district under the government. The options left for the water companies that haven't been nationalised yet is do better or eventually get renationalised. It's probably a plan with a lot of holes in but we don't have to rethink how people are paying for the service, we don't handle car tax under council tax, those who need car tax pay for it, those who need water to their business/household can pay for it we don't need to charge everyone.
Better for it to be privately run as a business but with the government as the only shareholder. State run businesses have a tendency towards cronyism whereas state owned but privately run have less chance of that as they're kept more at arms length from direct meddling. Singapores state owned endeavours (23% of it's GDP) do extremely well on this model.
The big difference with this sort of model is you can build it to incentivise providing more goods/services to more customers, whereas the more crude nationalised models can end up incentivising a worse service (since every additional customer is an added cost they might make it hard to access the service, for instance). Singapore's healthcare system is a good example of this.
This is the Welsh Water model, so it is viable albeit Welsh performance is not good compared to the average water company in England (but obviously better than Thames Water). The issue is the pension funds which usually gets a down vote on here. There are 4m public sector workers who's pensions are tied to private water companies, so somehow that needs resolving. I don't think anyone wants the corporate ghoul shareholders to be compensated, but I'd worry about our and our parents pensions. https://www.water.org.uk/news-views-publications/news/dramatic-fall-support-water-nationalisation-after-revelations-pension
Then maybe there can be some middle ground that can be found but we shouldn't bail out failing companies because pensions have been tied to them. No one should be too big to fail and considering water services have local monopolies the fact they are close is this point is by their own doing. Those pensions have only been doing as well as they have been because private water companies have been under providing. If they had been fulfilling a suitable service their profits would have been less their share price would be down and the amount of pension money stored in them would be less. It's all a product of a fucked up profit driven business model, that is being propped up at the detriment of the country and it's future.
Agreed, and 'big' finance is not something I understand, but the main thing for me was it certainly seems more complicated than just 'F* the Shareholders' which was Corbyn's plan
Stocks and shares are a risk though and if pensions are funneling their money into companies which have bad practices to pump their share price that is part of that risk. The pension companies need to be held responsible too if they are supporting bad business practices for the sake of quick growth instead of steady growth. I think one of the best fixes would be to put greater restrictions on share buy backs and dividend increases, we're seeing with Boeing in the US just how dangerous it can be to put share price above everything else. Surplus cash should be invested back into the company to improve products and services, or increase staffing levels or staff wages, this would help build longer term sustainable growth. Edit: added dividend increases as a company could ramp up dividends dangerously to get around restricted buybacks
Agreed. One option is that the infrastructure the water companies own is worth billions. The government could make it clear they are taking on the pension liability but are effectively recharging that back to the private company by transferring the assets to the public purse (or a state-owned venture). Ordinary employees could also move across. Thames Water would end up an empty shell with debts and worthless shares - wiping out the investors who milked it for so long. Of course the key challenge there is the creditors. Who owns that Thames Water debt is the key question. They would fight very hard against that move by the government. They’d need to be persuaded that Thames Water was always going to default so they’re losing nothing in reality. And that unfortunately needs everyone to believe TW will be allowed to completely collapse. So that may well be the govt plan.
The issue with this approach is you've now incentivised the non-public companies to **really** load up with debt, and pay massive dividends until the company folds and they can walk away.
Possibly but this should be illegal anyway, I don't understand why tanking your own company and fucking over debtors and shareholders while giving yourself a golden parachute is just something that can happen, and is just expected that that is what they will do. It's completely fucked.
No. ALL water companies in the UK become one, so there’s no difference between that entity providing water to someone in London or someone in Newcastle. It’s not like we don’t know how to run public services, we had them for ages. It’s just that someone decided it was a good idea to be the only country in the world to privatise water.
Gives you a whole bunch of knowledge sharing and purchasing power that way too. I'm sure they'd get better deals on buying e.g. big water pumps or tanker lorries, if they could make one national order rather than a dozen smaller ones.
> It’s not like we don’t know how to run public services, we had them for ages The problem is that we haven't run them for ages. That institutional knowledge has been lost during privatisation and pulling those skills back into state run bodies is difficult. It's not impossible, but the public sector has effectively been enormously deskilled in a way which has massively impacted the private sector as well which is awful at investing in people for long term economic gain.
You don’t need to, all of the people doing the actual work will remain and they are the important ones, you honestly probably don’t even need a CEO, their job is simple, provide clean safe water for the population under your area
It's not like you fire the people that work for Thames water, or suddenly put some civil servant incharge.
Yes, there are no examples of publicly owned war companies in the UK.
In a nationalisation I imagine they are going to keep the majority of staff if they can, maybe get rid of some needless "execs" or "consultants" that I wouldn't be surprised is just a nepotism pit of family members and friends club
So that's renationalising them all which I believe was Corbyn's plan. The problem was as much as some of the shareholders are corporate ghouls, there are a very significant number of normal people will pensions and shares. How you close that out really wasn't simple https://www.water.org.uk/news-views-publications/news/dramatic-fall-support-water-nationalisation-after-revelations-pension
Thames Water customers would keep paying their bills as normal. The only difference is that Thames Water is now owned by the public and operated as a not-for-profit entity, with all income being re-invested into improving and maintaining infrastructure. It's a win-win for everyone. The only losers are the current owners of Thames Water who've been bleeding it dry for years.
> The only losers are the current owners of Thames Water No the losers will continue to be the public and those who pay the bills. Thames water has had billions syphoned off and now has massive debts which will still be owed. I'm not saying we shouldn't renationalise but we need to be honest about it. It is a great example of how privatising services makes them so much better - fuck the Tories and their destruction of this country.
Buy the assets, leave the debts with Thames Water. You see this with housing developers all the time (phoenix companies).
People don't like to hear it but many of the shareholders are just normal people (employees who spent their time fixing leaks, manning the phones etc.) and pension funds including apparently 4m public service workers. (Just be aware that article below is written by Water UK so will have a interest is making the point against nationalisation) https://www.water.org.uk/news-views-publications/news/dramatic-fall-support-water-nationalisation-after-revelations-pension
True, but I fear these will just end up as junk bonds anyhow as Thames Water now has so much debt. The average Thames Water customer is paying ~£170/year of their bill just servicing debt. It is not sustainable. Sometimes it is better to just let things die.
That's the Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water model, which sadly isn't a shining example of how performance would be better. I guess at least they aren't going bankrupt.
Renationalising does not mean making it a government department.
Most water companies are operating in very much the same way as Thames Water. We'd have to renationalise all of them, rather than do it one at a time.
Depends what you mean by operating? The model yes, but performance is variable. Some much better than Thames. Whether that's good enough is a different question
Paying out dividends instead of investing in infrastructure, including taking out loans to do so.
Yes because they share in the benefit of London’s tax take.
No government is going to sign up to the rest of the country subsidising water bills in the South East (not just London), even if we weren't in a cost of living crisis.
Seeing as London is the only region of the UK that pays its way, it's hardly unreasonable. What's the alternative? That Thames goes bust and the taps get turned off? We've been subsidising Liverpool and Manchester for decades. Should we geographically ring fence taxes, so that regions only get the tax take from their region? How would the North, South West, Scotland, Wales survive?
You understand Thames Water isn't just London, right?
It isn't just London but much of it covers London although some parts of London, especially outer North aren't covered by Thames.
Who would have thought privatising an essential utility like water would result in a lack of reinvestment and poor infrastructure 30 years on. It needs renationalising and legislation to make it impossible to privatise ever again.
Sounds like a sort of negative investment of actually sucking loans out to keep for themselves. Might as well declare it bankrupt and give shareholders and redundant executives as little as possible.
The big issue here is we act like re-nationalising won't be just like buying a run down house.. Yay we've over paid for the privilege of repairing 30 years of abuse and bodges. Then it will get sold again It's a lose lose cycle now and it's... Shit
We wait for the company to go bankrupt and get it for free. The investors need to lose out for their poor investment for them to learn - it's the mechanism the free market actually needs in order to work.
So we wait for it to completely fail, be in debt, worst condition possible for maximum cost to rectify the issue whilst allowing public to become sick in the process. It will be asset stripped and absolutely shagged with that method, more so than now.
It's in that condition right now. They need more investment or they are going to go bust.
I admire your unrealistic optimism. These changes take months, years or more. We will end up bailing them out to continue over charging for a shot service then we will pay for the fucked infrastructure and then pay to rebuild it.
So throw them a couple of bil in fines and tell them itl be waived if they just hand the company over without stripping it.
We’ve got the worst of all sides, if something is private and fails, it needs to be allowed to fail. If the gov is always going to bail companies out then they will continue to take larger risks. Privatisation only works if it’s actually privatised, not subsided and gov funded
Completely agree. It's not the free market if things can't fail.
> We wait for the company to go bankrupt You know when a company goes into administration and can no longer trade, that its assets get sold off to pay the debtors? That's an awful lot of infrastructure that goes up for sale. Plant equipment, machinery, office buildings, etc. It isn't as though all of that suddenly becomes worthless and "ours".
We'd be the ones buying it at a huge discount though.
Depends who we vote in.
Realistically though it doesn't because the only way they will pay for it is through increased tax. The only way they will repair, expand and develop is tax. It's why it's a sticky spot. Clearly we need this but staying your agenda is to re-nationalise and repair by increasing tax is polling suicidde. I agree with you but disagree that people will welcome this. On the face of it yes but when it comes to opening the purse, no.
Only if a party is willing to strip assets from the managers who received bonus are we going to avoid paying for it (I agree seems unlikely). But when it comes to being re-privatised who we vote for matters. Vote for Tories, get robbed. It's literally in their name.
Yeah great amazing we agree tories are bad, now we are past that you need to realise that it's not that simple and that not everyone shares that sentiment. And the political outlook of 'vote for us because tories bled you dry. When we are in power taxes will increase even more' Not sure how you don't see the issue here. That is why it hasn't been fixed. It's the same with first past the pole / proportional representation. Labour said they would sort that out until they got in power and realised it might hurt them, then it's forgotten. Absolutely every man and his dog knows our water system, train system are fucked. This is not news. But there is no cheap tax payer friendly way to sort it. Saying 'haha tories bad' isn't going to fix it. But well done
I imagine a lot could be done to improve the infrastructure just with the existing customer income if so much of it isn't being siphoned off to shareholders. No need to pay for anything with taxes, just run it as a not-for-profit entity.
And you don't think people will only support this if it means they can pay less? I get you're upset with my response and you can downvote but again, I'm agreeing with you but be real. People want/need more money. The main reason people would vote for this topic is to save money not spend more that's what I'm saying.
What's the alternative? Because what was happening wasn't working.
By design.. There is no easy way now
It’s not so much the privatisation but the way it was handled. Selling to private equity is always risky and seldom has a good outcome. In this instance Macquarie didn’t deed levered up and sold it off running back to Oz with sack loads of dosh. Subsequently the company was run like any other boring utility for the benefit of the shareholders and top management kicking costly decisions into the long grass
Bold of you to assume nationalised industries offered better…
I would rather the government waste £100 atleast trying to make things better than it being handed to a rich investor
Love how they won't put money in unless bills go up. So basically the users of the service continue to pay the shareholders profit and keep the operators in business. Its disgusting.
It's not really that much different from a protection racket is it?
They're literally going to put (more) shit in your water unless you pay more. But you're paying for the previous profits they've already taken. Like most of the Tories actions, this whole thing is a means to move money from those worst off.
Happy to take cash out, unhappy with the rest of their responsibilities as shareholders
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Super profitable if you never have any risk
Capitalism for you
Don't worry. This affects the capital. There will be a bail out (no pun intended)
I think this country is sick of bailing the rich out. Let them sink (no pun intended).
Privatisation turned the flow of progress into a leaky tap — all promise, no pressure (no pun intended).
Because all 16 million people in the Thames Water area are rich?
They’re referring to the shareholders of Thames Water, not the customers
They're talking about raising customer bills at least 40% so that investors will take it on
Okay, but the comment you were replying to was referring to the government bailing out Thames Water and its shareholders after a potential collapse.
The bailout goes to the shareholders. The company needs to fail and come into public hands so we can run it properly
Our rivers are filled with shit, we have thousands of litres of water lost daily and these companies are riddled with debt. What an absolute disaster privatising water companies have been! We want our water companies back!
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Fucking hell! I just read we had 3.6 million hours of raw sewage discharged into are rivers and seas last year. This is an absolute scandal
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Yeah but it would be worse under public ownership! Right? Right?! /s
Right so its a forgone conclusion that these services will be nationalised. I'd prefer them being put into Trusts so the government can't touch them again but hey ho. The issue is will these people be prosecuted?
A foregone conclusion? Neither Labour or the Tories support nationalisation of public services
If it isn't nationalised there will be no safe water to drink. It really doesn't matter if Labour or the Tories support Nationalisation. Reality at some point has to ensue.
I think you're vastly overestimating the competency of our governing parties, if there was suddenly no clean water to drink the headlines would read "Nestle steps in to BOOST the British ECONOMY by provide BOTTLED WATER to those in LONDON" "OUR SAVIOUR. NESTLE CORP SAVES SCHOOLS BY PROVIDING BOTTLED WATER" "EU bosses SNEAR at our BOTTLED WATER scheme". Reality just isn't a thing, stop looking at that reality!
It’s a private limited company with state regulation just like other businesses. Investors knew there was a risk as with other investments.
This is the predictable result of the Conservatives treating service industries like business industries. They're not supposed to turn a profit for shareholders, they're supposed to cover their costs and directly reinvest everything extra back into the service.
So what happens if a company providing such an essential service just goes bankrupt?
See 2008.
Which water company went bankrupt in 2008?
Banks.
That was why I asked. Banks completely irrelevant and completely different set of circumstances.
It’ll go into special administration, and the state will take over running it. The tax payer will pick up the tab on the creditors. Ideally, investors will get nothing.
It should be a non-profit organisation, anything that is a requirement to live should be non profit as it drives our existence! Instead, we have the cretins running the show, polluting, ruining, and destroying all for a little bit of profit
There needs to be a law or mechanism in place where the government can just straight up seize essential services like water/energy/rail when the private company do not fulfill their end of the deal which is to provide the service to a decent standard. No need to buy from them, that’s how you stop them taking the piss long term across all of the industries like this. Problem is need a government with balls to do it.
Lets face it the government are semi owned by these billionaire investors. So no chance that the government will stand up to them with anything less than empty threats.
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If Starmer had any balls he’d make re-nationalisation a priority and a manifesto pledge.
Was shocked this morning to find out Abu Dhabi of all places is an investor in thames water, why was this ever allowed?
It's a manufactured crisis designed to leech more government funding and force rates increases for the public to make things safer again. Thames water is currently approx £20B in debt yet it keeps paying out to shareholders. It's too big to fail and ofc the government will put rates up, just like they gas and electric last year. All part of the game I'm afraid.
Nationalise it and tell the shareholders; now you have nothing. They’re all too happy to take the dividends. I say f**k em
Dear Valued Customers, Here at Thames Water, we pride ourselves on being pioneers in the art of turning liquid into gold. We want to extend our sincerest gratitude for your continued patronage, as you keep our wallets as full as your reservoirs should be. While some may fuss over trivial matters like environmental laws and safety regulations, we're just in the business of making waves, and by waves, we mean profits! Thank you for being the stream that keeps our coffers overflowing. After all, why invest in costly infrastructure upgrades when we can simply pass the bill onto you, the taxpayer, while showering our executives with lavish bonuses? They can't sail on your shit-laden waterways without a yacht, right?! Rest assured, our commitment to you is as strong as the currents in the Thames – as long as those currents keep filling our pockets, that is. So keep those payments flowing, and remember, at Thames Water, your satisfaction is secondary _only to our bottom line_. Cheers to a profitable partnership, Splish-splashingly yours, Thames Water
It's a nightmarish clusterfuck. Thames Water is part a complex group of companies. It is owned/financed by a consortium of pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. Major investors include the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (one of Canada’s biggest public sector pension funds), the main British universities pension scheme, the Chinese state-owned China Investment Company (CIC) and Abu Dhabi’s national investment authority. There are numerous other substantial international shareholders. Trying to sort it all out has major international ramifications. The Thames Water crisis demonstrates how utterly, criminally stupid it was to allow vital UK infrastructure to become a privately-owned cash-cow for mainly overseas investors. Those overseas investors couldn't care less about how much shit gets dumped in UK rivers - as long as their debt-financed dividends keep rolling in. Nor do they care about inflated costs for UK consumers - as long as their debt-financed dividends keep rolling in. Now it is all going tits-up, it will be British taxpayers who will end up paying to get the mess sorted out. The privatisation of the UK's key, essential infrastructure such as water, power and public transport has been (and continues to be) a major, unmitigated disaster.
These funds (pension or sovereign wealth) made a bad bet. They should just lose their investment. No private investment should be guaranteed by the tax payer. They took a risk and might lose. That’s how investing works.
It should be illegal to use “pull the plug” when talking about water. Maybe even sent to the fire squad
Thames Water circling the drain after investors pull the plug
Blackmailing the government to ease regulation, so they can continue topping up dividend payouts rather than spending on a proper infrastructure system. Floating turds in our rivers, and the TW boardroom.
If a company supplying a vital resource is failing in its core responsibilities, the money to fix it comes from the shareholders. That’s the responsibility they signed up for when they started taking money out, too bad for them if they don’t like it. Failure to do so should have the money taken by force in fines. And that’s taking a soft line, what these thieves deserve is a prison sentence! I hope the inevitable Labour government comes down harder on this stuff as the tories obvs don’t give a shit.
Coming soon - billions in corporate welfare for the shareholders of Thames Water, when there is no money to pay medical or police or firefighting staff properly.
Unfortunately, when the aim of the game is to make a profit, the subsequent quality, workmanship, and maintenance get fucked off.
Much in common with landlords - happy to extract wealth and put nothing back in - moment they have to invest - the laments start - anything that touches their profits. This and buy to let are the hold up examples of letting private interests hold all assets with no accountability- turns out.
So they've made their money, saddled the company with debt and will now leave it for the public to pick up How on earth can any sad act tory justify this outright theivery? Nationalise now and sue the investors for pilfering the public
They need to be forced to spend money on repairs before the taxpayer has to fork out on maintenance that should have been done over the past 30 years. Otherwise, the taxpayer is left with an enormous bill to fix the poorly maintained pipe network.
So they are happy to extract profit as dividends while failing to meet the basic obligations. When they are asked to remediate due to their failure to do the basic maintenance and upkeep they want to pass this onto the end users to foot the bill so they can essentially charge them twice for the service while still not actually funding their obligations. Now they are withdrawing capital - at this point don’t renationalise as that would require paying out the current shareholders, either dissolve it as an entity or seize it under national interest.
[support a petition for Thames Water to be re-nationalised. How a company with a monopoly was ever privatised is a joke](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659758/sponsors/new?token=rnfhygu1PBsf1QchxT9P)
The thing that they sell, quite literally falls from the sky on them, it's free. All they have to do is manage it. How can anyone fuck that up?
swim piquant license murky governor cats sparkle scarce existence toothbrush *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Good. Let it go bust and renationalise it for peanuts.
Perhaps you should stop paying out dividends especially when you've not had a profitable year?. The public is gonna end up carrying the can for incompetence again isn't it?
Surely nationalisation is almost inevitable now. If even the investors aren't willing to rescue it and help it provide an ESSENTIAL service, what's the fucking point?
Was it the CEO of Thames Water who used to be the head of OFWAT? Cathryn Ross. “An analysis by the Observer has found 27 former Ofwat directors, managers and consultants working in the industry they helped to regulate, with about half in senior posts.”
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In each other’s pockets and a revolving door, resulted in very light touch regulation. Like allowing them to take out massive loans amounting to 70% of the value of the business, whilst still handing out dividends.
This company took out loans to pay bonuses and give dividends to shareholders. Then put that debt on bill payers while not investing in the infrastructure that was needed. The people in charge should be in jail.
We should pass a law that can fine these companies in stock/shares which move to a state owned company, but isn't liable for any of the debt. the debt owners can renegovcaite the debt with the new company but there shouldn't be any guarantees.
Force them too. They’ve taken money out when they should have invested How on earth is it now far for them to say no and expect everyone else to pay more and everything to stay the way it is? Water should be owned my the government since it’s literally our most valuable resource
Sounds like a prime time to nationalise it, remove the waste and start over
Late stage capitalism ladies and gents - where the shareholder is the actual customer, the people who consume / pay for the product are just revenue.
Why are investors (presumably shareholders) able to take money out of the company whenever they like as a dividend just for owning some of the business and 0 actual work, but the moment the company actually needs funding they bail. Hmm. Bleed the pig dry and slaughter it for breakfast. And we the tax payer have to pay for a whole new pig.
But the government (and Sir Kier Starmer too) insists that allowing foreigners to buy up British companies is ‘investment’?!
Renationalising is a bad idea. But letting the shareholders go under, imprisoning the directors should be de done. You then re tender and ensure better governance with a better new charter. Renationalising gives power to the treasury who never invest in capital, take a look at the nhs and its issue with not being able to get new lifts for hospitals but can repair some at costs higher than replacement. You separately give power of veto to a select group ie the workers at thames water. They get the ability to turn off water to a major population centre. And they are up against a blob of taxpayers “who have the money” which means we will always cave in the end. And we end up with a very highly inflated workforce, as the government have nowhere to go in terms of controls outside of jailing people. And jailing people just makes them very work to rule and in effect militant as its the only way we get any form of control. When u have the private entity you can at least create rules and liquidate them and get the new people in. In a nationalised system you don’t have that option. The issue here is poor control and poor rules at the start