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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?

#391

Post by qcnguy »

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 in rail does exist in the UK and privatization turned around the network's fortunes. The ridership graph is very clear:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail#...

Traffic dropped a lot in the Great Depression but stabilized immediately after, and remained stable right up until nationalization in 1948 at which point the network entered a period of continuous decline, eventually falling to a level of ridership last seen in 1865. That is a staggering failure.

The moment the railways were privatized ridership starts going up again, despite the privatization not being complete and being unable to roll back the huge damage done under the decades of state ownership (before nationalization the railway companies were entirely self sufficient, which they no longer are).

So to argue that privatization makes "no sense" you have to ignore the fact that when privately managed usage of the railways goes up and when run by the state it goes down. If the goal of the railway is to be used, then it does make sense.

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

#392

Post by wizzwizz4 »

krona wrote: post #226
tomrod wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So sewage wasn't dumped, because the law prevented it? Or sewage was dumped, and it was against the law? I'm having a hard time reconciling the theoretical claims made in the thread with the blinding light of what actually happened.

Well sewage has to be dumped (especially in storm conditions), and the water companies have licences to do so. However Thames was found to be in breach of the license, so were fined. Many people claim these things happen because "shareholders" however it was completely widespread practice to dump sewage before privatisation and the system is literally designed to do so. This doesn't make it OK, however.

Sewage doesn't have to be dumped. Simply separate your black water and grey water. Storm drains can go to rivers (if the rivers have capacity – if not, it's sometimes easier to give the river more capacity than to build more sewers), and the amount of water in sewage pipes will be independent of the amount of rain.

Sure, the sewers might not currently be designed that way, but that can be changed. (It's a logistical challenge, but it needs to be done.)

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

#393

Post by patanegra »

michaelt wrote: post #181
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 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…

Can you show me which UK water companies are in such a situation?

My provider is Thames Water. They are losing money.

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

#394

Post by greyw »

rainingmonkey wrote: post #376
greyw wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I heard the rich are leaving the UK eroding your tax base. Im sorry but it is going to be higher taxes for you all

That's a myth, all the breathless reporting of an "exodus of millionaires" comes from one very dodgy report. Of course, the narrative suits the wealthy owners of the media, so the story gets repeated anyway. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/07/the-british-we...

The outcome is not as clear as you make it to be. The Norwegian wealth tax hike resulted in a loss of about $600mn of tax revenue. We will see at which point the british will end up on the laffer curve.

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

#395

Post by qcnguy »

midnightclubbed wrote: post #384
qcnguy wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> 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. Rather than placing price controls on private companies the US slashes taxes to the point where public services then cannot invest in infrastructure and maintenance - and then use that as an argument why public services should be privatized. If tax cuts aren't populist poli…

The difficulty of getting people to vote for tax rises is a good justification for privatization. This difficulty isn't some uniquely right wing thing. The Democrats and Labour don't campaign on general tax rises either. At most, the left are willing to campaign on "tax rises for people who aren't you". That's because any party that wants to raise taxes on the majority loses.

So, governments of any color have to work with that as a constraint. Given that nobody has worked out how to convince everyone to accept big increases to their tax bills, you can either pay for new expenditures with borrowing or with cuts elsewhere. Sometimes cutting elsewhere is also hard, so either:

1. Everything gets put on the credit card. This ends badly.

2. Stuff is privatized. This yields an immediate cash influx, and voters are usually happy with the results which is why very few privatizations have been rolled back. The reason is that outside of very left wing spaces most people trust private companies on pricing much more than governments. Private companies run special offers, sales, sometimes cut prices even in the face of inflation and can be visibly seen competing on price. Government owned organizations never do this.

It's also (quietly) popular with governments on both left and right for another reason - it means they have less stuff to manage and less stuff that can blow up. If there's a problem with a privatized industry they can just tell you to switch to a competitor instead of needing to campaign on it and promise to do better.

Natural monopolies do exist and sometimes governments just have to bite the bullet and run such things themselves. But there's a lot of room to debate what is and isn't a natural monopoly.

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

#396

Post by yesfitz »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #17
chii wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so a few oil countries can squish some extra money so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?

Too right, this is why I have switched to green hydrogen for my household heating. Sure, for now I’ve had to jerry-rig a hydrogen storage tank in my back yard and I’m piping the stuff over the roof, but I’m sure the govt will catch up soon. I’ve converted my car to run on renewable wood pellets, stop moaning start fixing. It’s all about individual choice, the oil companies are simply responding to demand. My next ste…

I'm sorry you feel so powerless about these things. I hope you find a way to take control in ways that matter to you.

Personally, I've largely replaced my car usage with walking and biking, installed insulation in uninsulated parts of my home, got more comfortable with less heating/cooling (sweaters and fans), and am planning to upgrade to a heat pump when the time comes.

It's good to live your values without falling into scrupulosity, both for yourself and others.

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

#397

Post by Hilift »

sandbags wrote: post #34

As the article mentions, privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources. What the article doesn’t mention is that pre-privatisation a new reservoir was built every year up to about 1960 and then every few years until privatisation in 1992. So we are about 30 years behind in adding capacity to the system. This combined with the inadequate levels of i…

> privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity

Of course not. The water company was in terrible shape (read: lacking funds) before it was dumped on a commercial company that does not have deep pockets like Chevron. Thames Water owes £16.8 billion. That money is already gone.

No one is going to swoop in to save the day. Taxpayers will eat the bill, and invest even more to reverse decades of neglect. All of those hard decisions labour committed to make are unnecessary when nothing is done and they are made for you. The country has limited funds, and is spending funds it doesn't have on things like billions on hotels for 29,000 unauthorized travelers so far this year.

UK external debt is £2.7 trillion, and whats her name said yesterday it may be necessary to ask the IMF for a loan? Water company indeed.

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

#398

Post by joncrocks »

patanegra wrote: post #390
autoexec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to things like utilities every penny of profit comes at the expense of the public. Either prices are raised so that a small number of people can stuff their pockets with extra cash above what it costs to deliver the service and maintain the system or they get that extra money by failing to deliver the service or they do it by failing to maintain the system itself. I think the neglect and failure to inve…

My provider of water is Thames Water. In the past 10 years, they did cumulative turnover £18,107 turnover, and profit -£1,180. So they in fact operate with a negative margin -6.52%. In the UK, owning a utility company is nothing easy. Shareholders are definitely not stuffing their pockets. The biggest owner is Ontario pension fund (32%). I guess, poor retired Canadians are not very happy about this investment. So I w…

I think that this might be some useful context.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/30/in-charts-h...

Overall the debt held by the company has ballooned since the 90s, meanwhile large dividend payments went out to shareholders. This appears to be extraction of value out of Thames Water (TW).

It's hard to see those graphs and then take TW seriously when they complain they need money for investment.

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

#399

Post by qcnguy »

KoolKat23 wrote: post #389
qcnguy wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no contradiction. Thames and gilts both pay ~5.8% on average. This is about the same as "Baa" (moderate risk) corporate debt. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BAA Thames' debt costs are normal for a company of its type, but for a government this bond yield is danger-level high. That's why there's so much talk in financial circles now about the UK needing another IMF bailout, although I have grave doubts abo…

Very interesting thanks.

You're welcome!

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

#400

Post by midnightclubbed »

qcnguy wrote: post #363
gjm11 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within whose party base? If you're saying that the Tories are viewed as too left-wing by Reform voters, then I assume that's true because Reform are further right than the Tories, but so what? If you're saying that Conservative voters find it "controversial" (whatever exactly you mean by that) that Reform is recruiting former Conservative politicians -- well, I'm sure they don't like it, no one likes it when some oth…

> Pretty much no one other than extreme rightists would describe the Conservatives as a centre-left party If an election were called tomorrow your next government would be Reform with a massive majority of 339 seats. It is the most popular party in the country by far. It would collect 33% of the vote vs Labour's 18% and the Conservatives would get only 17%, translating to their near-total destruction (only 35 seats).…

> modern left wing goals like unlimited mass immigration.

Ahh and there we are. It's the immigrant's fault. Once all those illegals are out the of the country we'll be great again - the world will once more bend to Queen Victoria's will and Bobby Charleston will again lift the world cup for England, it's rightful owners (hard /s btw).

No major party on either side of the Atlantic are pro-illegal immigration or advocating unlimited mass immigration (or anything close to unlimited).

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