The privatisation of #water firms has had a clear result:
1. to fund profits to #shareholders, investment was constrained;
2. low investment has led to the #watercrisis, #pollution & water losses through leaks;
3, (Finally) under-funding is to be rectified & funded via loans;
4. the ongoing costs of loans will be repaid by customers through higher bills.
The only thing the #investors have done is stolen our money, offering no actual benefits;
the #Tories' #kleptocapitalism in a nutshell!
The mess privatisation has made of the UK's water system is symptomatic of much of the general economic malaise in the UK now.
The biggest issue of all - the housing crisis - is also the direct result of the massive transfer of public assets into private hands initiated by Thatcherism (neoliberalisn).
Almost every aspect of the UK's broad spectrum under-performance compared with neighbouring countries - including the tragic disintegration of its welfare state - can be traced back to this transfer of wealth out of the public's hands.
What about the brexit factor? - that too, as far as its key leaders were concerned, was part of the same neoliberal project to 'free' capitalism from state (or superstate) control.
@GeofCox @WTL @ChrisMayLA6 @CheRosach
Actually privatisation has nothing to do with the state of the water industry: it's *always* been this bad!
https://mastodon.me.uk/@tokensane/110401280960480737
1/11 This is going to be my first long-form post. I don't know if this will go anywhere, but I want to get this off my chest. The UK has a problem with sewage in its seas and rivers. The Standard Model of this on the Left is that greedy privatised water companies have focused on paying shareholders rather than investing in infrastructure. Hence we are in a literal mess. This narrative is seriously incomplete, verging on wrong.
@tokensane @GeofCox @WTL @CheRosach
Fair enough, but I think we can all agree that provitisation, presented as the 'answer' to the previous problems, very much wasn't!
@Myryama @tokensane @GeofCox @WTL @CheRosach
Agreed, in this model, lax regulation is the key issue, but that would not be a mistake, bu rather a feature of how the #privatisation was intended to (further) enrich the rentier class
@ChrisMayLA6 @Myryama @GeofCox @WTL @CheRosach
I always apply Hanlon's Razor: never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. Regulatory capture is a well known failure mode, made more likely because any effective regulator needs to hire people who understand the industry, and there is generally only one place to find them.
Telecoms had the same issue until OfTel was merged with other media regulators to form OfCom. Now we have vastly better telecoms. Reform OfWat!
@tokensane @Myryama @GeofCox @WTL @CheRosach
Hmmm... OfCom hasn't been os great on #broadband - inadequate push towards rural broadband by OfCOm on BT/OpenReach has led many rural communities (such as ours) to organise their own internet connectivity
@weematt @CheRosach @ChrisMayLA6 @Myryama @tokensane @WTL
I think the peak of private water company investment in the UK was in the 90s - in response to new EU regulations!
But what's the point of the private company + regulator model? What's really needed for natural monopolies, especially those crucial to public health like water and energy - as @CheRosach and others have said - and indeed where national networking is essential, like transport - is public ownership and a thoroughgoing public service ethos. There is a plethora of evidence from around the world that it simply works better.
In France 57% of the economy is in the public sector, and over another 10% in other forms of social ownership, eg. co-ops - and the 'capitalist' less-than-a-third that remains is far more state regulated than the UK. Indeed, the world's most successful economies - Norway springs to mind - do tend to have high levels of public ownership and state intervention.
The UK neoliberal media have been saying for years - decades - that the French - indeed 'the European Social Model' - had to lead to decline - stories that mysteriously disappeared when it became obvious that it was the UK, with its privatised infrastructure, that was actually getting in a hell of a mess.
@tokensane @Myryama @GeofCox @WTL @CheRosach
(no pun intended)?
@tokensane @Myryama @ChrisMayLA6 @WTL @CheRosach
I don't think 'it's *always* been this bad', and I think your thread rather glosses over the detail on exactly why, when, and how the UK got to its current crisis in favour of the more general (correct) point that there has always been a problem.
It's a bit like the argument that there were problems with British Rail, so privatisation hasn't created the UK's rail problems - but rather than the typical British approach of looking back at just its own history, looking at the comparative progress made by publicly-owned railways in neighbouring countries actually better illuminates how privatisation has held the UK back.
The fact is that in the UK's water system both leaks and river pollution are at record levels - this is not to say there was never a problem, just that it really is getting worse, not better. Britain’s bathing waters rank 24th out of 30 European countries - just 16% of England’s rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters are in a “high or good status”, down from 25% a decade ago.
There is also a question of the form of private sector involvement - in general, in my country (France) this does not take the form of UK-style 'selling the family silver' privatisation, but simple contracting, retaining ultimate state, democratic control - and the assets - a better model I think than the UK's 'regulator' model.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
WTL
GeofCox
Token Sane Person
James Evans
Shield Maiden
CheRosach
Matt Graham
Dan