Water should be nationalised

I think that everyone ought to read the Guardian piece about the pollution of our waterways and the death of our rivers.

www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read/2022/aug/04/all

Then tell us how good privatisation of our water has been.

The 'inefficient' and 'overmanned' idea of our nationalised industries was promoted by the Thatcher government to justify privatisation, but at heart, what she wanted was to disassociate the state from the 'socialism' of nationalised industries and utilities.

Interesting conclusion from a 2004 paper looking at privatisation

the UK’s experiment with privatisation came after decades of relative economic decline. The election of Mrs Thatcher occurred because of growing public discontent with poor economic growth, rising inflation, growing unemployment and poor labour relations in the UK. Privatisation has not proved to be an economic miracle. But as part of the wider restructuring of the economy that occurred in the 1980s, involving tax cuts, public spending caps, trade union reform and the closure of declining industries, it has contributed to reversing the perception of the UK as ‘the sick man of Europe’ – albeit that the UK’s GDP growth rate has not noticeably increased as a result.

www.researchgate.net/publication/5001632_The_UK's_Privatisation_Experiment_The_Passage_of_Time_Permits_a_Sober_Assessment

One of the problems with privatisation has been that, contrary to the belief that 'markets' are self regulating and offer the best value for money, the 'market' doesn't provide a social service, so the government has to subsidise uneconomic services that are needed by the population, like rural bus services, and left to itself the market will abandon standards wherever it can get away with it. There is also a tendency for monopolisation by the big companies, which restricts consumer choice (which was supposedly a benefit of privatisation) . This means they must be subject to regulation by the state, so there is still a cost element for the state. And when the state cuts costs for political reasons, as evidenced in the Guardian piece I've linked to, regulation fails and standards fall.

maytime2

Welsh Water is a not for profit company, so I suppose it's halfway to being a nationalised company.

welsh water not for profit.. BUT it owns a subsiduary company that does all the work, gets paid a LOT
to do so, pays its many board members a fortune AND has shareholders, so not quite as transparent as it might appear....

All public services should be nationalised. End of.

All privatisation does is rip off the very people they are supposed to be serving and make the rich richer.

“Yorkshiregran” I agree about the waste of resources, pre privatisation. However, now is not 1989, when water was privatised. There wasn’t the scrutiny existing as there is now.

There are 400 plus Flood Action Groups in Britain and various River Trusts and Angling Clubs and hordes of people who “ wild swim” They all watch the rivers, planning applications, etc etc. And they are connected by various media portals.
It still takes a huge outcry to get anything done. BUT it’s still not the unquestioning situation that existed in 1989. The public are not quite as helpless as they were in 1989.

Disclaimer: If you're squeamish, look away now!

Not to the point but waste/used water, once it's gone down, is sewage, not sewerage. Sewerage i.e. the sewers and associated engineering hardware, is what carries the raw sewage to the sewage treatment works. Once there, it goes through the screens to remove wet wipes, dentures and other stuff that people shouldn't flush. It then goes into settling tanks. The settled sewage goes for biological treatment, either filter beds or 'activated sludge'. The sludge that settles out of it may be dried and used as fertiliser, digested to produce methane and electricity or discharged into the sea. The treated effluent may get tertiary filtration treatment before discharge to a water course. The various stages it goes through are monitored in the laboratory to check the effectiveness of the process. Reader, I was that analytical chemist. The really interesting samples were the trade effluents that came to the lab from industrial sites. One sludge I remember particularly always seemed to arrive during our coffee break. It came from a place where there was a cheesy biscuit factory and it was lively, yellow stuff. It used to burst out of its screw top plastic container and creep across the bench!

People need to STOP VOTING TORY! Conservative ideology is ‘small state’; privatisation of all infrastructure including health and education. What we are seeing now is the result of 13 years of Conservative government. As long as people vote them into power, the country will continue to be run by the rich, for the rich. Anyone who votes Tory knows exactly what they’re voting for - it’s not a secret!

I agree, but when I said that on another site, I was hung out to dry, so to speak. So glad to see grans have more sense than locals in my area.

I think recent events and price rises have shown that either NFP or nationalisation are required in not only water but railways, fuel, airlines and possibly electric and gas companies. In fact, any company that is posting huge profits at the moment while the rest of us are struggling to eat, let alone pay electricity bills. Directors who are getting massive bonuses and shareholders rubbing their hands with glee at their dividends should be ashamed of themselves unless they are donating most of it to charity. LOL.

Margaret Thatcher is firmly to blame for starting this situation, she initiated this privatisation, it's been, water, electricity and gas being all energy, railways, transport of all types, even council houses, not to mention repeated attempts to slowly privatise the NHS, and the blessed TORIES ALWAYS THE DAMN TORIES, are still doing it. The only people gaining anything are the shareholders now, the prices may have risen, but to keep shareholders happy, prices are so high everywhere the entire economy has about slowed to a stop but shareholders are still exacting their pound of flesh, our flesh. On top of all this, salaries have sunk so low basic good living standards cannot be maintained, and talking about maintenance the privatised companies don't do more than to keep it ticking over ecause the shareholders want their cut. It's time to nationalise these services, run them properly, pay good living wages with the perks and pensions, and generate enough money to maintain everything to correct standards. But if Brits keep voting the TORIES IN ITS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, THE COUNTRY HAS NOT ONLY GONE TO THE DOGS ITS BEING EATEN ALIVE BY THEIR VORACIOUS APPETITES. evidence of this is the low wages, high living costs that the UK is world famous for.

Thank you Sylvia. I would love to know the silly reason they will give. Please tell them it makes one Grandsnetter really angry.

We seem to have this idea that things ran so well when they were nationalised. They didn't. What is more, they were all run differently in different areas so although they were national companies, they had a certain amount of autonomy. I'm not saying they should have been privatised per se, I think we need an entirely different model to nationalisation where the Government cock it up and Privatisation where the money imbalance is so awful. A system where all profits are ploughed back into the infrastructure is needed with an overall strategy in place which is run by experts rather than the Government. I don't think the supply of water should be a political football as it is crucial to life.

The gas and water utilities should never have been privatised. I see that the NHS is being sold off to the US bit by bit by the back door. Just this last week the salaries and bonuses of the gas companies were announced . A company making billions of pounds profit should not be charging the people of this country large amounts for their utilities. Why can't they tighten their belts and use some of their profits to keep prices lower this year ?

Yes, agree. And gas, electricity and transport. They are fundamental to basic living conditions. The trouble is, anyone who suggests such a thing is quickly labelled a ‘Marxist’!

As I understand, the flooding in West Yorkshire has increased since water privatisation: Previously, the waterways were dredged regularly. Since privatisation they have not been.

I agree whole heartedly- it an essential not a desirable - shamelessly exploited

As someone who worked for 28 years in a huge water company, both before privatisation and afterwards, I can honestly say the waste BEFORE privatisation was horrendous, too many staff, sometimes not enough work, people promoted just because they had been there longest not how efficient they were, answerable to no one and still no ability to choose who you got your water from. Just water rates to pay irrespective.
Things honestly became more efficient afterwards, promotion based on ability. Be careful what you wish for!

The following paragraoh from the Guardian, came about through the activities of ‘ Windrush against Sewerage Pollution’
It shows that the water companies have been dumping sewerage into our water ways but charging us for the privilege over many years. At the same time paying their senior staff and shareholders well.
From the Guardian,
“ The next month, all of the water companies bar one (the small Welsh provider Hafren Dyfrdwy) admitted their treatment works might have been non-compliant. The EA said its investigation into the information provided by those companies would require examining billions of data points and could take two years, but preliminary checks suggested “widespread and serious non-compliance”.
Sickening eh!

In the 1980s the Tories under Margaret Thatcher starved the then publicly owned water companies of cash and borrowing powers with which to upgrade the infrastructure and then, when they inevitably failed to meet required water quality and sewage disposal standards, sold them off in 1989 to private enterprise, relieving them of all debt and providing a hefty subsidy to boot. At that point England and Wales (which has since had its water company transferred to a form of community ownership as other comments have noted) was the only country in the world to have wholly privatised water and sewage disposal systems. Despite the advantageous financial situation the private companies inherited they have dismally failed to upgrade the infrastructure preferring to pay some £57billion to shareholders - almost half of what they collectively invested. As a result they have presided over wholesale discharge of sewage into our rivers and seas and worse, lied about it. Southern Water, my local company, was fined a record £90m in 2021 for the crime of discharging sewage thousands of times into the Solent and English Channel from 2010 to 2015. Despite this, the EA have judged them the worst polluters on 2021 - clearly nothing has changed. Water and sewage disposal systems are public goods and should not be operated for private profit so you’re right - water companies need to be taken into some form of community ownership and any surpluses reinvested in improving the infrastructure, not syphoned off as profits to private equity companies like Macquarie Asset Management which has recently taken over Southern Water having extracted profits from Thames Water and left them saddled with debt and little in the way of improved infrastructure - the original reason, they claimed, for their investment.

pce612

All essential utilities should be nationalised.

I don’t agree, I think not for profit companies are a good alternative, in that they protect income and make sure it is reinvested,

All essential utilities should be nationalised.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, Whitewavemark2, not at all, but I’ve heard that during the years when water was nationalised, there wasn’t anything like enough investment in often crumbling infrastructure - this came from dh, a civil engineer who for some years was involved in the water sector.

Of course leaks are still happening. At the moment we are affected by a major leak in the nearby main road - for nearly 2 weeks now there have been no buses anywhere near our house. Dh has spoken to the bloke in charge, as he often does - it’s a huge mains pipe, 80 years old, for which a spare section needs to be specially made, and the leak has undermined the road, so that has to be fixed, too. Altogether a huge job, in other words.

I count us lucky that our water supply has not been affected - dh was told that the work should be finished by tomorrow morning, so ?.

t.co/6Z2mcl3BgT It says it all. Ugh

Ilovecheese

Yes, of course it should be nationalised, but that is against Tory ideology, so I don't suppose either of the main parties will do it.

Ooh! Ilovecheese that comment is subtle but absolutely brilliant! ?

grandtanteJE65 I have Dutch friends and they think it’s hilarious the way in which we manage water in England. ( Wakes and Scotland being different);
Managing water in England encompasses, the Environment Agency, the local council and county council, Ofwat and its committees, the Water companies, independent Drainage boards,, there are too many fingers in the pie. They all have staff, equipment and their own way of operating. They resist efforts to cooperate,
Enforcement of the law is practically non existent,
The Water Management Law ( Google Sir Micheal Pitt review 2007 ); that came into force in 2010 had little statuary laws and the rest was advice suggesting good practice. It’s laughable.
Except it’s not, as it puts all the consumers of water ( us) behind every other consideration,

Yes, essential services should be privatised, especially with severe climate changes on the way. Matter of fairness and survival.