Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How can England possibly be running out of water?

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 524 posts

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

#501

Post by blibble »

Retric wrote: post #422
jermaustin1 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Page 10 of their 24/25 annual report says they only pay 8% toward interest payments, the largest outgoing is infrastructure, then opex. https://www.thameswater.co.uk/media-library/l13deqmw/thames-...

That doesn’t answer the question. However, any money paid to shareholders while accumulating debt, including deferred maintenance, etc was financial smoke and mirrors not actual profit.

yes, paying dividends out of debt is completely illegal

but apparently not if you wrap it in half a dozen companies in various tax havens

(that have no legitimate purpose other than various types of laundering)

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

#503

Post by danans »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #471
wredcoll wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just piling on but: > a textbook conservative, especially not economically Wtf is a text book conservative supposed to be, exactly? And have we ever had one? All the republicans in my life have raised the national debt and spent their time passing laws about culture war issues.

Conservatives have generally been at least somewhat pro-market. American Republicans haven't been fiscally responsible, but until Trump they were meaningfully more pro-market than the alternative. Trump's economic views have at least as much in common with Bernie Sanders (as Bernie keeps pointing out!) as with pre-Trump Republicans.

> Trump's economic views have at least as much in common with Bernie Sanders (as Bernie keeps pointing out!) as with pre-Trump Republicans

This is a myth that has the effect (intended or not) of normalizing Trump's economic policies with Bernie supporters.

Bernie Sanders only says that Trump speaks politically about the same working class struggles that he speaks about. That's it.

Bernie opposes 99% of Trump's actual economic policies, including the broad tariffs that are hitting the working class the hardest.

The only other economic policy Trump has done is tax cuts for the wealthy and cutting social safety net programs. Those are in direct conflict with everything Bernie stands for, but they are wholly supported by nearly all pre-Trump Republicans. If you have any doubts about that, just review the vote tally from the big beautiful bill.

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

#504

Post by gerdesj »

jmyeet wrote: post #476
oceanplexian wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People have this propagandized view that the "free market" (which isn't real) is responsible for innovation. In the last century and a half, we went from candle light and horse and buggy, to the lowest level of global poverty in the last 5,000 years of recorded human history. If capitalism wasn't responsible then what was?

China is almost solely responsible for the reduction in global extreme poverty [1]. [1]: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...

Please expand your thesis.

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

#505

Post by p1necone »

qcnguy wrote: post #307
happymellon wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was hopeful that the eventual endgame of right wingers blaming everything on the left when the right was in charge for literal decades would be for them to eventually maybe consider that that wasn't the problem.

Turns out I was wrong, all it takes is to no-true-scotsman everything into the "bad wrong left wing" bucket on the quest to move the overton window ever rightwards. Hilarious. The mental gymnastics knows no bounds.

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

#506

Post by marcus_holmes »

michaelt wrote: post #475
patanegra wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you show me which UK water companies are in such a situation? My provider is Thames Water. They are losing money.

Sure thing! According to https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgleg70r7rno > When Thames was privatised in 1989, it had no debt. But over the years it borrowed heavily and its total debt - which includes all of its borrowings and liabilities - now stands at £22.8bn, according to latest financial results, external. > Its debt pile increased sharply when Macquarie, an Australian infrastructure bank, owned Thames Water,…

The flip side of this is that Thames Water is clearly not an ongoing concern and can therefore be re-nationalised at zero cost [0]. I believe there's language in the original privatisation deal around this.

Ofc, that doesn't claw back the billions that the PE pirates made off with, but at least the UK wouldn't have to pay them even more to get its water supply under control again.

[0] even if the UK had to pay market value for it, the market value for a business so drowning in debt would be close to zero.

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

#507

Post by wpm »

nerdponx wrote: post #474
swiftcoder wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a financial wiz, but it seems like they are playing games here, as a huge chunk of their stated losses for the year is some sort of loan write-off against their parent company. > £1,271 million of expected credit loss provision recognised against the intercompany loan receivable from TWUL’s immediate parent company, Thames Water Utilities Holdings Limited. This balance is fully provided for, as it is not deem…

It blows my mind that this is legal in any developed nation. The whole PE playbook seems like embezzlement carried out in broad daylight.

That's because it is!

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

#508

Post by wpm »

alephnerd wrote: post #275
e-khadem wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the classic answer to these problems, but I think these "non-profits" and "civil managements" are inherently problematic. Let's say that John Doe is a very accomplished visionary individual, and has quite a few revolutionary good ideas around improving the water system. Obviously Mr. Doe needed lots of lab equipment to gain experience and insight into these systems, and realistically needs a lot more if he wa…

> but I think these "non-profits" and "civil managements" are inherently problematic. I'm not talking about "non-profits" or NGOs. I'm talking about legislating autonomous organizations within ministries with full autonomy and remit to execute on their jobs and only report directly to the Minister or the Permanent Secretary. This is what Singapore does, which itself is based on the British colonial model. At some poi…

Sounds a bit like the Chicago MWRD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Water_Reclamation...

Albeit, we elect the commissioners

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

#509

Post by dahart »

refurb wrote: post #499
dahart wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

1979 inflation: 13.3%, GDP growth: 3.2% 1984 inflation: 4%, GDP growth: 7.4% Higher growth less inflation is great for us workers

Hehe, I agree less inflation is good, but that’s a completely cherry picked comparison. 1984 was a one-time GDP growth peak and it immediately dropped and never happened again even though Reagan still had 4 more years. 1979 was the peak inflation and has never happened again under any president. 7 out of 8 of Reagan’s years produced GDP growth ranging from -1.8% to a max of 4.6%. Clearly 1984 was an outlier and not something Reagan’s policies either caused or could maintain. Reagan’s average GDP growth from 1981 to 1989 is 3.84%, and it’s lower than what happened on average during Truman, Johnson, Kennedy and Clinton’s terms. It’s also lower than Nixon’s term, so Reagan wasn’t special even for a Republican president. Does that Wikipedia article’s coverage of multiple metrics for over 70 years with a pretty clear pattern and summary do nothing to sway you?

Some other things that are good for us workers include low federal deficits, income growth, low inequality, and job creation. And Reagan scores poorly on all of those metrics. People aren’t even debating these facts, they’re only debating _why_ Reagan and other Republicans seem to consistently bring the economy down despite their confidence in their economic theories...

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat... [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG?location...

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

#510

Post by antisthenes »

MangoToupe wrote: post #466
graeme wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really isn't true. Most people aren't even close to reckoning with what net zero would involve. Most people haven't even got a stock vs flow model of carbon and think that lowering co2 emissions means reducing global warming. (As opposed to reducing the speed of the increase). You yourself haven't got a model. If we stop using fossil fuels today, billions die. The energy from fossil fuels has generated widesprea…

It's rather easy to say we don't have a plan after decades of inaction. It's been obvious we're trying to commit mass suicide for a long time now.

The people at the top don't need the people at the bottom once the wealth has been amassed/extracted.

That's the sociopathic capitalist dream. Leech off the working class, then gut it until only a skeleton remains to service your needs.

Post reply on HN