44
Thames Water makes bid to lift bills by up to 44% - BBC News
(www.bbc.co.uk)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
44 points (97.8% liked)
UK Politics
2868 readers
543 users here now
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
What's with all the water news coming out of the UK?
Piss poor management for decades has finally been noticed.
Years of poor management and a push for profits over sustainability.
Once the water companies were privatised, they took out massive loans and performed no maintenance. The loans were purely to pay shareholder dividends. Now they're loaded down with debt.
Atop this, that crumbling infrastructure can't handle the increased water flow that's due to rainfall increases. So there's been a general trend of dumping raw sewage into rivers (the fines are cheaper op ex than the capex needed to fix the situation).
It's parasitic capitalism at its finest.
Sounds a lot like how private equity firms destroy companies.
The bit about the fines being cheaper than the fix is terrible.
Privatisation in the 80's has lead to a shitshow, first figuratively and now literally.
I don’t defend the decision; but when it was enacted it did work; in exactly and only that specific circumstance, for an exceptionally short period of time. It offloaded a comparatively small bill to the private sector, in exchange for the monopolies; a terrible idea IMHO.
I liken it to a house move. If I must pay removal people, I can either pay them what they ask, or burn everything I own and save on the price of the movers. Burning everything might save me money during moving week, but after that one initial saving, I will be paying ungodly amounts to repurchase everything I burned.
We’re one of the only places in the world with Privatised water, and we’re doing a dramatic reenactment of the case study of why it’s not a good idea.
It's strange because it also goes against any argument normally used for privatisation.
How do I shop around and get other companies to compete for my service when I can't get a different water supplier or waste removal?
I disagree with the privatisation strategy at the best of times, this just makes the mind boggle.
Leaking