How many workplace pensions take profits from privatised water company investments?
How can England possibly be running out of water?
191–200 of 524 posts
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree about rail - nationalised British Rail was pretty terrible, had more accidents per distance travelled, and carried far fewer people. It think it made little difference. Nationalised water in Scotland is no better than privatised in England and Wales, and has a higher rate of sewer leaks: https://theferret.scot/scotland-behind-england-sewage-leaks/
From the same site: https://theferret.scot/water-pollution-scotland-england-most... One thing of note about Scotland is that water is free (i.e. paid for by taxes) there.
It isn't free but it is less expensive. In fact in Scotland the annual water bill averages to £490 compared to £603 in England. This is despite a lower population density (which means more infra required per person comparatively).
So despite the best efforts of critics, they can't really show that Scottish water is any worse in terms of sewage outflows etc - if anything it is marginally better on that metric, and significantly cheaper to run. And the actual water quality is good, although that has a lot to do with incidental geography. Why would I want it privatised?
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Always the immigrants. Weird that they are to blame, even though water abstraction has been trending downwards for close to 30 year.
> faster than it would naturally Implying migration is 'unnatural'. Which it isn't, humans have migrated as long as they've existed, and without migration the population in the UK would be trending down, which is a very bad problem to deal with.
It's not a very bad problem, you are just repeating the official narrative
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
By definition every penny of profit always comes at someone's expense but I don't think we'd advocate for nationalising Tesco's?
That's true, but supermarkets compete with one another on price and other factors. They are motivated to do things to get more customers. Yes, there are many cases where supermarkets have been bad actors, but that's solvable with competition regulation. Water service is very different, and the current setup in the UK seems pretty insane - you can't have competition on who supplies water to your house. People aren't g…
Railways are another example of competition not being possible and where privatisation makes no sense.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
The responsibility to look after the citizens basic needs such as water is on the government. Not private for-profit companies. If they can't do their job, then we shouldn't pay our taxes ?
You could say the same argument about food, but the system of privately owned farms moving food via privately owned logistics companies to privately owned grocery shops works very well. Yes, it's the responsibility of the state that it's citizens can acquire their needs, but that doesn't mean it has to be government owned.
Giving how much subsidies farmers get, and they still whine all the fucking time, I would gladly nationalize them all.
Corn ethanal? Gone. Crazy EU stuff? Gone.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think the neglect and failure to invest in infrastructure is the worst Cumulative capital investment by water companies in England and Wales since privatisation: £250bn. The infrastructure they inherited was never designed for the things it's being asked to do today, and it has a life expectancy. It would literally cost trillions to upgrade the entire sewerage system. This isn't apologia, it's just reality. The r…
The thing is, if a water company is in good financial health, with low debt and lots of money to invest in infrastructure, it’s completely legal for private equity to buy the company, stop investing in infrastructure, take out loans until a third of customer bills go on interest payments, and take the loaned money as ‘management fees’. Then dump untreated sewerage in rivers and demand more money from bill payers, bec…
You're arguing a kind of strawman of unbridled economic liberalism which hasn't existed in England since probably the late 19th century, if at all.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Particularly when, as in the case of UK water privatisation, there's a fairly convenient revolving door between the supposed regulator and the privatised water companies. Poacher turned entirely ineffective and rather friendly gamekeeper...
Nitpick - English water privatisation, I don't think the rest of the UK has private water companies - we certainly don't here in Scotland. Scottish Water is controlled by the Scottish Government.
You're absolutely right, English - my family north of the border are no doubt cursing me as we speak, I'll go and replace the cone as penance next time I'm there.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#198> Future generations, who will be dealing with long, dry summers, would probably be shocked at the profligate way clean tap water was used to flush toilets, water gardens and run washing machines. Climate change means societal change. There was a time that Northern Africa was one of the best places in the world to grow crops. They were at the top of civilization for thousands of years. Climate changed, what people co…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinetown
An absurd satirical play. Due to extreme water shortages, private toilets are unthinkable, public toilets are managed by a corporation. Yes, it's pay to pee...
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#199I'm aware that England is not Scotland... But I was in Scotland a few years back (from Colorado) and I was constantly surprised by the incredible amount of water that came out of each faucet whenever I turned it on. Like, I get that nobody wants to wash their hands in a fine mist, but there's a point beyond which more means nothing.
I'm not sure how faucets work in the US, but most valves here in Europe are not binary: you don't have to open them all the way.
It varies, just like across the USA. Some places have low pressure and rate limiting requirements for faucets of various types, other places do not, because they have ample amounts of water.
In many places in Europe it is ironically the sewage system that actually depends on high rates of flow to function properly and retrofitting them is effectively not plausible, while also causing sewage issues because water has been made expensive, which then causes lower usage. In other places in Europe you aren’t even able to flush toilet paper because the system cannot handle it. In America, because of the nature of our development we don’t really have the antiquated sewage problem as much, but we have things like septic systems and private wells that are still widely used in places because they are so sparsely populated or even just because connecting into the public sewage system is getting increasingly financially infeasible as the financial chickens come home to roost after squandering ~$100 trillion dollars over 25 years.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
An interesting thing that happens here is also the conflation of company and country. You mention the oil companies blocking and obscuring the research, but GP was putting the blame on the shoulders of the "oil countries." Something to be aware of with the rise of weaponised xenophobia and general background islamophobia.
Corruption and undue political influence stemming from a large source of extractive income isn't a an issue particular to Islam as I can see it; in fact I'd say it's something endemic to the human condition. But, when it comes to oil production what I would say is that due to the overlapping geography of the foundation and consequent spread of Islam and largest and easiest to extract oil resources in the world being…
Big money from resource extraction is always boom/bust and always struggling with corrupting influences. The folks who control the political strings are always flush with cash, and their only priority is maximizing return on their assets.