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How can England possibly be running out of water?

theguardian.com

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Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#301

Post by dredmorbius »

nine_k wrote: post #49
noduerme wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, the average lifespan in the UK has shot from 46 years in 1900, when the primary heating and power source was coal, to 81 years now. It's easy to forget how much worse things were before.

This is right. The discovery of antibiotics and many other medical advances somehow influenced this, too, though.

General social welfare (housing, food, public health), basic sanitation, food and water quality regulation, and a few very early vaccines had far more to do with this.

Antibiotics weren't widespread until after WWII, as were most of the vaccines we currently consider standard.

Medicine as a whole is an astounding example of diminishing returns to innovation.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#302

Post by bluGill »

e4325f wrote: post #194
jemmyw wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Competition is possible, it just is rarely worth it. NYC subways worked fairly well as a competitive system until the city started passing maximum price laws (which in turn meant they couldn't maintain the system and eventually the city took it over). However the competition meant redundant service to the dense areas as each built there, at the expense of less dense areas that should have got service. It also meant that where lines did cross each other (a complex task even in 3d) they generally didn't built transfers even though a single system would have.

The claim competition is not possible is therefor false. We can debate if we want it, but it is incorrect to claim it cannot work.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#303

Post by hardlianotion »

fredrikholm wrote: post #253
bluecheese452 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These systems were built at a time when the country was much poorer. It can afford to replace it.

Sweden's conservative government are pressuring building regulators to re-evaluate whether "all rooms require windows" in order to make the construction of apartments cheaper. "Perhaps a better plan would be to replaces cranes with horses and ropes such that we can once again afford windows" was my first thought when I read that in my turn of the century starter apartment with giant windows in every room. Like, GDP a…

No - just bring back window taxes

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#304

Post by vixen99 »

einszwei wrote: post #71

Thatcher era privatization has been proven to be epitome of "short term gains for long term pain". Water, Power, Gas and Rail all privatized in a short span of decade and now the future generations will be footing the bill.

Agreed!Two things here: 1. Totally deficient regulatory framework and 2. The argument for those on the Right or Left is - do those running the company bear the consequences of their actions? Do public servants? Almost never. We need water, power, roads etc., So define the goals for these and get people to run them (public or private) who will bear consequences for a F.U. Politicians almost never face the consequences of their decisions. If there was at least some linkage the future might be different. That is a fundamental problem with bureaucracy as well.

As a far distant example: Tony Blair sails into opulent old age as a 'respected statesman' having lied about weapons of mass destruction incurring the deaths of 150K - 1 million.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#305

Post by mr_toad »

runako wrote: post #294
krona wrote: post #145

Earlier 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 infrastructure they inherited was never designed for the things it's being asked to do today I am not British, but this is confusing. Was private capital forced to take on the burden of privatizing the water system? Or did private investors err in their economic analysis? (Or did those investors just assume the problems would happen long after they personally had gotten paid?)

They’ve being paying out dividends and bonuses while running up debt and not investing in infrastructure. Some of these companies are already worthless on paper. Clearly they intend to make as much as possible and then walk away.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#306

Post by qcnguy »

KoolKat23 wrote: post #293
qcnguy wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying dividends is good. It's how you attract the capital for investment without having to raise it via sale of government bonds or money printing. The problem here is financial illiteracy - the alternative to paying dividends isn't that the same money all gets spent on the water network. Large scale investment is rarely funded from general revenues as it'd require spending years accumulating a huge cash pile that s…

Government bonds are considered lower risk and the interest rate is lower, i.e they will attract the same money for less. Private shareholders are more expensive. This also doesn't consider "debt recapitalisation" where these private companies draw down new debt on promise of future cash inflows from consumers and then suck out dividend cash "de-risking" their holding in the company. The government can bail it out or…

Government bonds are only low risk in economic theory. In real world practice lending to left wing countries can be high risk as they like to accumulate too much debt and then default. That's why the UK government is paying 5.8% on its bonds at the moment despite being able to print its own money, which is the same average interest rate paid by Thames Water. Lending to Thames is not seen as riskier than lending to the state, despite that Thames faces huge regulatory constraints like price controls and the British government can literally force people to give it all their money.

> private companies draw down new debt on promise of future cash inflows from consumers

This is what governments do too.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#307

Post by qcnguy »

happymellon wrote: post #289
qcnguy wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments don't pay for infrastructure by saving up surplus tax revenue in a piggy bank. They take out loans to pay for it, same as the water companies do. The UK pays around 8% of its spending on interest payments and that's rising rapidly, despite the fact it can print money. British water companies are in lots of debt because they aren't really private. They're forced to spend huge sums to repair Victorian-era i…

You really twist yourself around here. But this? > Decades of populist left or centre-left governments have kept the prices artificially low whilst requiring investment, resulting in a huge accumulation of debt. Bloody Tories, the whole problem isn't that they were in charge for 32 years from 1979-2024, it's the 13 years of Blair. They have been powerless to stop the spooky Left and fix the pipes before the water was…

The Tories are a centre-left party. That's why they lost the support of conservative voters at the last election and are now in the doldrums, with much of their base having defected to Reform.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#308

Post by dahart »

refurb wrote: post #266
komali2 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to assume my age, I'll go ahead and assume your race, because I can't imagine why someone would support think Ronald "Strapping young bucks" Reagan, President of "School desegregation is a bad thing," steered the USA in a good direction. The same guy that opposed the voting rights act? The guy that didn't want an MLK day because people weren't acknowledging the 'reality' of the man? The guy that vetoe…

We were talking about making the country better not the media circus around it. The US and UK economies were terrible. Stagflation, “malaise”. Reagan ushered in a decade of strong economic growth. I’m sure all races would trade of a higher paycheck despite the media comments.

> Reagan ushered in a decade of strong economic growth

By what measure? Can you source that claim?

“Since World War II, according to many economic metrics including job creation, GDP growth, stock market returns, personal income growth, and corporate profits, the United States economy has performed significantly better on average under the administrations of Democratic presidents than Republican presidents.”

Reagan was the only Republican that reduced unemployment by a little bit, but he was in the lower half of presidents who did that. But he failed to increase employment significantly, he increased the deficit significantly, and he did damage with the bunk feed-the-rich “Trickle Down” theories.

Even Trump agreed. “During a March 2004 interview, Trump stated: ‘It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.’”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_p...

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#309

Post by qcnguy »

scythe wrote: post #295
qcnguy wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments don't pay for infrastructure by saving up surplus tax revenue in a piggy bank. They take out loans to pay for it, same as the water companies do. The UK pays around 8% of its spending on interest payments and that's rising rapidly, despite the fact it can print money. British water companies are in lots of debt because they aren't really private. They're forced to spend huge sums to repair Victorian-era i…

>This is exactly what would have also happened if the water companies were not privatized The post office in the United States is not privatized and yet has been able to set prices in a way that sustains the business for centuries. You can't simply assume that all public entities will ignore fiscal reality. In fact you may run into the opposite problem: when a utility is public, their debts appear on the government b…

Yes, in theory nationalized companies can set prices rationally and turn a profit. In practice they rarely manage this for long because sooner or later a populist comes along and forces them to lower prices in order to win votes. It's not just water where the UK has a problem with this. Transport for London has also been forced to underprice its services for years by London's socialist mayor, it's a big part of how he won votes, meaning they've been building up a huge tech debt backlog. He clearly expects that the rest of the country will eventually bail London out and he'll be seen as the hero.

The US is a very right wing country. It's politicians are better able to avoid populist price controls. Maybe with Mamdani that's now changing.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#310

Post by qcnguy »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #291
qcnguy wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments don't pay for infrastructure by saving up surplus tax revenue in a piggy bank. They take out loans to pay for it, same as the water companies do. The UK pays around 8% of its spending on interest payments and that's rising rapidly, despite the fact it can print money. British water companies are in lots of debt because they aren't really private. They're forced to spend huge sums to repair Victorian-era i…

>Decades of populist left or centre-left governments have kept the prices artificially low whilst requiring investment The overwhelming majority of people would disagree that the Conservative Party can be described as "left". Since 1979, the Conservatives have been in power for all but 14 years.

Their voters obviously don't agree. Not only have they defected to Reform on a massive scale, but Reform recruiting former Tories like Dorries is hugely controversial within the party base, exactly because Tories are viewed as being too left wing.
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