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:
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.
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.
Well no, we actually have this model in the UK with internet, electricity and gas - you have one infrastructure maintained by a national operator, but you buy your services from any provider you wish, so there is competition in for example who provides your gas, even though obviously no one comes to your house to change your gas pipes every time you change providers.
Is there any difference though? The gas you get in your pipes is the service, it doesn't change at all no matter who your provider is. You could imagine a situation where your water/sever infrastructure was maintained by one company but the service is sold by a selection of providers, who then have an incentive to pressure the operator to provide a certain standard of service.
It's easy to see how that might be beneficial for Internet: pay Openreach for last mile access but your chosen operator takes over after that. You can see an advantage for electricity and gas if you squint really hard: your supplier is responsible for buying power to add to the grid to serve you, and different suppliers can make different (if heavily constrained) choices.
It's really hard to see how this works with water. Upstream of your taps is an essentially fixed set of water collecting infrastructure. Downstream of your waste pipe is a natural monopoly sewer system which collects waste towards a single geographically determined water treatment plant. What is there for a competitive operator to change?
The honest answer is that water privatisation was the product of a very specific brand of 80s-00s magical thinking that believed the private sector was necessarily more efficient even without a plausible model of how the efficiencies would happen. There's a reason water and rail were two of the last privatisations, long after all the things like British Airways where there were reasonable grounds to believe the private sector was a better home.
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.
i prefer the boil the frog variant where the regulators turn the screws by applying financial and criminal sanctions until the private firms are persuaded to play ball … there will be some threats of bankruptcy… that is the game but owners in any guise share / bond /loan holders must be held to account eg force the private firm to default their loan or go to jail
Nationalised industries can be (and often are) structured as ordinary companies where the government owns all the shares.
The ability to sue thing also depends a lot on where you are. The Crown Proceedings Act 1947[0] waived most of the special protections government operations got, especially in "commercial" areas. So in practice it's not worse here than suing any other large organisation.
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.
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.
there needs to be application of conspiracy laws (or similar) to force eg MacQuarie to play ball or have their international banking licence terminated
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.
They call it an outrage, they talk about public outcry - yet this is the democratic will of the British people. This was not an accident - this was a choice.
It was a manifesto promise by the conservatives to privatise water companies, and so they did.
It was a manifesto promise by the conservatives to cut environmental regulations, and so they did.
This is not a scandal. This is what Britain wants. Yes, like other British political decisions it might seem peculiar, but it’s their choice to make.
Those complaining are a minority, or else they would have representation in parliament that would have lead to a different outcome - and yes, you can wring your hands about how FPTP makes for an unfair democracy - but they voted for that too when given the choice to switch to STV, recently.
You do know the odds of a significant labour victory at the next election are high? "Those complaining" are probably now in the ascendency. They just won most regional council elections.
Renationalisation is not impossible. Which of course implies taxation to fund investment for capital works.
I think the number of people who even read the manifesto is tiny. And within that group, those who realised privatisation was going to result in something other than individually (and temporarily) saving some money, even smaller. A minority you might say...
And given our low turnouts and small proportion of the country that voted for that party, saying it's what Britain wants is disingenuous.
Ok, well let’s say it’s what Britain voted for, even if they were generally wilfully ignorant as to what they were actually voting for.
For what it’s worth, I remember ecological campaigns against privatisation of water - I remember a greenpeace chap giving a talk at school saying it would result in sewage on beaches and in rivers - and here we are.
Information was available. A choice was made. We reap the consequences.
Wait, you're saying that British voters in 1989 couldn't reasonably have known the Conservative Party favoured water privatisation, because they wouldn't have read the small print of their manifesto? And also that voting margins and turnouts were so small that the election results might not be representative?
This was the third successive Thatcher government, after the previous two had sold off Britain's nationalised companies in aerospace, telecoms, car manufacturing, oil and natural gas [0]. It got reelected in a landslide victory with 75% turnout. [1].
And then you call someone else disingenuous?
The British people absolutely got what they wanted, and have only themselves to blame.
Extremely incorrect. Nationalisation of water polls as a remarkably popular policy with a clear public majority in favour, even among exclusively Tory voters. As does rail.
The lack of movement on the issue is not due to lack of public will, but the lack of desire from a dying government to deliver effective policy.
Which is borne out of electoral choice. It hasn’t been the will of god that the Tories have been running the show unopposed for over a decade - it has been the will of the public.
Renationalisation of water may be popular now, but when everyone was promised cheaper water bills in the 80’s, it was an absolute tub-thumper for thatcher - same for rail - people seem to forget how much British rail was a national symbol of hatred, and the fervor with which privatisation was embraced.
No, this is public will, and governments that realise that by doing whatever idiotic thing the public is demanding today to retain and grow power prosper - at least for long enough for the cabinet to all line up a very comfortable retirement.
By the time the consequences come along, enough time has passed that it can be blamed on literally anything but any of the people responsible, from politicians who implemented it to voters who voted for it.
There seems to be confusion as to where the sewage issue has originated - while it may have manifested relatively suddenly, the circumstances have been building through policy and voter apathy for the last 35 years.
> Those complaining are a minority, or else they would have representation in parliament that would have lead to a different outcome - and yes, you can wring your hands about how FPTP makes for an unfair democracy - but they voted for that too when given the choice to switch to STV, recently.
The AV referendum was indeed lost, but that does not guarantee the correctness of your other claim, that "those complaining are a minority, or else they would have representation in parliament that would have lead to a different outcome".
The party in power in the UK is usually less than half of all votes cast.
And even when not, that it is representative democracy rather than referendums on literally every question means that voters have to collapse all the various topics they care about into one question of "which colour do I pick?" every couple of years — in an election there is no way to represent "I like Blue national defence, Red personal freedom, Green environmental issues, and Yellow on electoral reform", so looking at the debates listed on Wikipedia with the benefit of hindsight, even though I'm bi and the Blue party was homophobic, I might well have voted Blue due to this from the Red party:
"""On 24 May, Kinnock was interviewed by David Frost and claimed that Labour's alternative defence strategy in the event of a Soviet attack would be "using the resources you've got to make any occupation totally untenable".[citation needed] In a speech two days later Thatcher attacked Labour's defence policy as a programme for "defeat, surrender, occupation, and finally, prolonged guerrilla fighting ... I do not understand how anyone who aspires to Government can treat the defence of our country so lightly".[9]""" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_United_Kingdom_general_el...
In 1987, the Red party was seen as a shower of incompetence much like the Blue party is today.
This is a highly disingenuous argument, flagged by your reference to STV, which any one versed in UK politics knows was a stitch up of the Lib Dem’s by the conservatives.
The UK is controlled by a powerful ruling class that maintains FPTP and other undemocratic institutions to their benefit, as I imagine you well know, and regular polls of the population (as noted by other responses) clearly contradict your assertion.
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...
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.
Well, finally the Tories are getting voted out. It's all very delayed though.
People knew what they were leaving as it was everyday life with its pluses and minuses. They didn't know what they were getting into instead though, and now we know it's hard to change.
I guess this was the Trojan horse of brexit. Market it as “let’s get away from EU regulation so we can do good regulation (and racism)”, and actually mean “let get away from EU so we can do bad regulation (and racism)”.
I’m often very critical of EU regulation so I sympathise with the first bit (less so the appalling “no refugees” racism shit). For example, Sweden used to have a public housing system where subsidised public housing wasn’t just for poor people. Then the private landlords took the state to EU court crying about unfair competition etc etc and won, and now public housing has to be run like a company which contributes to higher rents. The same process was repeated for most public services. Some of that was the trend at the time and would probably have happened anyway, but it sucks that it’s enforced from Brussels.
EU does mandate a particular model of economy of its member states, one which relies heavily on market solutions to most problems. Using annoyance with the ongoing crumbles of every public service as an excuse to do more of the same is a stroke of evil genius.
And actually, that's exactly what most of us remainers pointed out was going to happen, because tories can't resist reducing standards of living, working protections, or consumer rights.
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.
> Bristow attributes blame to “massive underinvestment by private water companies who’ve failed to do their duty.” UK water services were privatized in 1989.
Yet another example of why essential services must be public. Privatisation for the sake of it is bad. Private companies will seek maximum profit and cutting costs, they don't care about anything else.
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.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] thread(crazy, TIL)
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/327-1901/letter-from/7205...
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 does almost by definition. Sewers are a natural monopoly, it's physically infeasible to switch providers.
Yeah I know this model but here the one infrastructure is the service.
It's really hard to see how this works with water. Upstream of your taps is an essentially fixed set of water collecting infrastructure. Downstream of your waste pipe is a natural monopoly sewer system which collects waste towards a single geographically determined water treatment plant. What is there for a competitive operator to change?
The honest answer is that water privatisation was the product of a very specific brand of 80s-00s magical thinking that believed the private sector was necessarily more efficient even without a plausible model of how the efficiencies would happen. There's a reason water and rail were two of the last privatisations, long after all the things like British Airways where there were reasonable grounds to believe the private sector was a better home.
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?
The ability to sue thing also depends a lot on where you are. The Crown Proceedings Act 1947[0] waived most of the special protections government operations got, especially in "commercial" areas. So in practice it's not worse here than suing any other large organisation.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Proceedings_Act_1947
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.
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.
It’s not even just that. They have borrowed £60billion(!) and given it to shareholders as dividends.
People should be in jail.
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.
It was a manifesto promise by the conservatives to privatise water companies, and so they did.
It was a manifesto promise by the conservatives to cut environmental regulations, and so they did.
This is not a scandal. This is what Britain wants. Yes, like other British political decisions it might seem peculiar, but it’s their choice to make.
Those complaining are a minority, or else they would have representation in parliament that would have lead to a different outcome - and yes, you can wring your hands about how FPTP makes for an unfair democracy - but they voted for that too when given the choice to switch to STV, recently.
Renationalisation is not impossible. Which of course implies taxation to fund investment for capital works.
And given our low turnouts and small proportion of the country that voted for that party, saying it's what Britain wants is disingenuous.
For what it’s worth, I remember ecological campaigns against privatisation of water - I remember a greenpeace chap giving a talk at school saying it would result in sewage on beaches and in rivers - and here we are.
Information was available. A choice was made. We reap the consequences.
This was the third successive Thatcher government, after the previous two had sold off Britain's nationalised companies in aerospace, telecoms, car manufacturing, oil and natural gas [0]. It got reelected in a landslide victory with 75% turnout. [1].
And then you call someone else disingenuous?
The British people absolutely got what they wanted, and have only themselves to blame.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/mar/29/short-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_United_Kingdom_general_el...
The lack of movement on the issue is not due to lack of public will, but the lack of desire from a dying government to deliver effective policy.
Renationalisation of water may be popular now, but when everyone was promised cheaper water bills in the 80’s, it was an absolute tub-thumper for thatcher - same for rail - people seem to forget how much British rail was a national symbol of hatred, and the fervor with which privatisation was embraced.
No, this is public will, and governments that realise that by doing whatever idiotic thing the public is demanding today to retain and grow power prosper - at least for long enough for the cabinet to all line up a very comfortable retirement.
By the time the consequences come along, enough time has passed that it can be blamed on literally anything but any of the people responsible, from politicians who implemented it to voters who voted for it.
There seems to be confusion as to where the sewage issue has originated - while it may have manifested relatively suddenly, the circumstances have been building through policy and voter apathy for the last 35 years.
For me, the party options are:
• Red MPs do 35% of what I want
• Blue MPs do 25% of what I want
• Yellow MPs do 49% of what I want, but basically never make any difference because there's so few of them
Which would you pick, if you were me?
I left the country because of what Blue did.
The AV referendum was indeed lost, but that does not guarantee the correctness of your other claim, that "those complaining are a minority, or else they would have representation in parliament that would have lead to a different outcome".
The party in power in the UK is usually less than half of all votes cast.
And even when not, that it is representative democracy rather than referendums on literally every question means that voters have to collapse all the various topics they care about into one question of "which colour do I pick?" every couple of years — in an election there is no way to represent "I like Blue national defence, Red personal freedom, Green environmental issues, and Yellow on electoral reform", so looking at the debates listed on Wikipedia with the benefit of hindsight, even though I'm bi and the Blue party was homophobic, I might well have voted Blue due to this from the Red party:
"""On 24 May, Kinnock was interviewed by David Frost and claimed that Labour's alternative defence strategy in the event of a Soviet attack would be "using the resources you've got to make any occupation totally untenable".[citation needed] In a speech two days later Thatcher attacked Labour's defence policy as a programme for "defeat, surrender, occupation, and finally, prolonged guerrilla fighting ... I do not understand how anyone who aspires to Government can treat the defence of our country so lightly".[9]""" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_United_Kingdom_general_el...
In 1987, the Red party was seen as a shower of incompetence much like the Blue party is today.
All you’ve said is entirely true.
The UK is controlled by a powerful ruling class that maintains FPTP and other undemocratic institutions to their benefit, as I imagine you well know, and regular polls of the population (as noted by other responses) clearly contradict your assertion.
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.
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.
People knew what they were leaving as it was everyday life with its pluses and minuses. They didn't know what they were getting into instead though, and now we know it's hard to change.
I’m often very critical of EU regulation so I sympathise with the first bit (less so the appalling “no refugees” racism shit). For example, Sweden used to have a public housing system where subsidised public housing wasn’t just for poor people. Then the private landlords took the state to EU court crying about unfair competition etc etc and won, and now public housing has to be run like a company which contributes to higher rents. The same process was repeated for most public services. Some of that was the trend at the time and would probably have happened anyway, but it sucks that it’s enforced from Brussels.
EU does mandate a particular model of economy of its member states, one which relies heavily on market solutions to most problems. Using annoyance with the ongoing crumbles of every public service as an excuse to do more of the same is a stroke of evil genius.
Yet another example of why essential services must be public. Privatisation for the sake of it is bad. Private companies will seek maximum profit and cutting costs, they don't care about anything else.
https://www.tideway.london/the-tunnel/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ3ipd9pDCA
England is not the UK. This article discusses England and its privatisation of water services. The author should pay better attention to these specifics.