The state of water in the uk

Can you explain what you mean polnan?

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Added to the failure to update old systems, another problem is customers putting unsuitable things down drains and toilets.

polnan a statement like that needs explanation.

Personally, I think that with the owners of TW, especially MacQuarrie, having taken £84 billion in dividends out of TW, for example while loading it with, I think £53 billion of debt, any corruption would have to be on an enormous scale to have had any significant effect on the state the waater industry is in. Such a huge scale - £billions - that someone would have noticed.

At regular intervals the water main pipes on the main road burst flooding the road and rendering it unpassable .
On one occasion the back up water flooded onto my father's garden washing away his garden shed ,compromising three trees and washing down a great deal of stones .
I've had the entire area renewed with new garden sheds ,hard-core and railway sleepers .
An increasing number of houses in his road have paved over front gardens and not much garden left in the back area meaning that the area tends to flood when it rains heavily.
Passers -by have seen me forking the lawn and asked me why I do it .
I reply that it's to prevent a flood next time the drain in front of the house can't cope with heavy rain fall .
I welcome changes to our water board .
It's caused me a great deal of expense and hard work .
I'm concerned when I drink tap water and think that it's best to boil it .
I don't use plastic bottles. I reuse glass ones .
I don't want to spend another day in our local A and E .

But surely re-nationalisation will off-load Thames massive debts onto the taxpayer?
Funny, innit, but profits always belong to shareholders, whilst debts belong to the public sector......

Shareholders are not responsible for a company’s debts.

Who is responsible for a company's debts?

The company is responsible for its debts.

The directors of the company need to be prosecuted for gross negligence.

First you have to prove gross negligence. Easy to say though.

Companies are almost always Limited Liability as long as directors don’t break the law they cannot be held accountable, the most likely penalty for incompetence is to be banned from being a director.

Thames would have been given a contract by OFGEM where assets were transferred to the company, some of those were stripped away from Thames, why they were allowed to do that remains unexplained, but it seems it was legal. It would have been reasonable for the value of sales to be reinvested in the company, that obviously was not in the contract.

Its normal practice, a company making best use of its asset's, they don’t have moral duty to customers their duty is to shareholders.

There was a very interesting article in the Guardian yesterday by Nils Pratley, their business correspondent. He suggests that permanent nationalisation may not be the answer. He cites HS2 of a classic example of the way civil servants are not most suitable for managing large infrastructure projects. the contractors have done very well ut of it, but the cost has soared.

Instead he suggests the company should come into 'Special Adminstration. In what he describes as a 'debt for equity swap'. the share holders, who have mostly written off their investment in the company are wiped off, and the bond holders, a lot of the investment was drawn in by the sale of bonds, not shares and are owed £15.2 billion, should also suffer a hefty loss by having the bonds downvalued by 30%. This would leave the company for the enough leeway to get the extra investment to keep going.

To my mind this should be accompanied by giving Ofwat a through shake up, giving it more powers and instructions to us them and its remit being clear that it is there, first and foremost to protect consumers. This means far tighter financial supervision, much greater control of directors salaries and bonuses and dividends paid to shareholders. It will definitely mean replacingthe current head of OfWat and its senior management .

Over the last couple of days I've noticed that my washing has an unpleasant smell .
I've had to rewash the garments and add Zoflora and the smell is still there .

I don't normally boil my drinking water , but having had an upset stomach yesterday - I shall in future .
I never thought that this would happen in the UK .