Lunchtime news.
When is that odious, devious cunt going to stop droning on about the £22 billion black hole?
IIRC, the Tories were bleating on about the situation they had inherited from the previous Labour government after ten years in office.
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Probably.
So Starmer just following suit
You’d/everyone would just prefer him to shut up and get on with the job, but people are forgetful fickle idiots so I suppose when enough time has past where nobody is going to forget about who caused it and the huge job they have ahead in filling that hole.
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FIFY
When I’m as old as you I will probably think the same, but for now I’m holding out hope that they are just idiots😢
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Pffft. You won’t get that far.
There’s a Phd in “the descent from normality to Cynicaloldgit; the how, the why, and the science” somewhere.
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Some questions just cannot be answered.
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Here’s a better idea: renationalise it and prosecute the fuckers.
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Renationalising it at this point would be a nightmare scenario for government. It would cost billions. They can’t afford to take it into public ownership.
Thames Water is abcase study for why privatising natural monopolies is absolutely insane.
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Renationalisation is better than the alternative: letting private companies continue to take billions in public funds from the exchequer while further fucking up the environment.
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Money is never a problem for governments.
Starmer & co still droning on about the £22 billion black hole, while simultaneously creating a bigger black hole.
They’ll find the money somehow to nationalise if they want to.
Problem is, they probably dont want to.
Chances are they all have shareholder pals skimming a fortune in its current format.
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It is when you’re borrowing capacity is shafted and the tax burden is a breaking point.
Oh hang on though. Just tax the rich - those notoriously easy to tax people. Right?
I get people don’t like Starmer/Labour but the position they are in with spending is massively understated.
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So why wasn’t this done before?
Because none of them wanted to?
This isn’t a Starmer/Labour thing.
ALL politicians when given a choice between
- Protecting the interests of their cronies
or - Doing what’s best for the whole population, will choose option one every time
Its a knife edge issue. Thames Water is on the verge of collapse anyway, just been fined over £120m and is in receipt of a government loan. I also believe they’ve been restricted in how high they can raise bills.
Renationslisation doesn’t really change anything, you’ve still got the the issue of having to invest vast sums of money to build capacity in the system. Plus for the vast majority of staff they simply change the colour of their hats.
Perfect world, Thames Water funds the required investment themselves, but I’m not convinced there’s actually a contract mechanism that makes that happen. Good question to ask why there isnt.
I think they’re trying to push Thames Water to make the investments, while making it increasingly difficult to turn a profit, pay dividends and manager bonuses. I think its your only real option for the moment.
Worth noting that while Thames Water is the big one that draws all the attention, none of the other water companies are much better. And that includes the zero profit Welsh Water (weird ownership model there).
This whole issue has been years in the making.
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They are responsiible for their own mess though. They continued to ensist shareholders earned their yearly dividends and pushing profits into the back pockets of investors rather than put it into maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure.
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True, my point is I dont think there was any contractual obligation for them to upgrade infrastructure, only maintain. I’ve no evidence of course, but there hasnt been any peep along the lines of why haven’t they increased capacity.
It could also be easier just to absorb the fines. If that’s the case then there should be jail time.
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Part of the problem is that they haven’t even bothered to maintain the infrostructure, just let it crumble until leaks become so bad that they can no longer ignore it and are forced to carry out emergency repairs
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