Thames water

[urban genie]

Would you classify taxis as public transport?

Black cabs yes, private hire no

 

[Mikeegrini]

Fuck the shareholders off, take it back wholly, how can they be paying dividends out if they are in debt?

Apparently they took on the debt, (well some of it) .....wait for it ......to pay dividends!?!!

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Hopefully there’s no ‘bailout’ and the government just appoint people to run it as a nationally owned water company.
Company goes bust, declares bankruptcy, shareholders get nothing, the banks get nothing and the foreign owned parent companies get nothing. “The value of your investment can go down as well as up, now fuck off”.

 

[smeeagain]

What criminal offence has been committed?

They’ve borrowed against future profits and paid out millions to shareholders and bonuses to directors, most water companies have done the same or similar to the tune of £72 billion nationwide!
If you don’t think that’s criminal ,fair enough!

 

[threespires]

This country was the guinea pig/poster child for rapid and aggressive privatisation in the 80s and onwards. Academics throughout the world have studied us to understand the experiment better.

I think there were two main goals with the policy programme introduced by Thatcher in the 80s and continued thereafter. The first a clearly stated one that was around economic performance and then a less explicitly stated one that was around political/cultural outlook. IMO the then government was significantly more successful in the latter than the former which in itself than had implications for it's ability to delivery anything like the first set of goals.

Taking that second goal first, it was around the concept of 'popular capitalism' and how it and the role of the private enterprise was viewed by the ordinary person especially relative to the state. Through various campaigns and the opening up of share ownership, 'Ask Sid' et al, they created a sense that ordinary people could be involved in the economy in a way they hadn't been before and they popularised the concept that everyone could have full agency and take advantage of this new type of economy. This narrative went hand in hand with the trickle down ideas of the time. It was in some ways analogous to the culture wars people talk about now and the Conservative party definitely won it because the Overton window has shifted rightward ever since.

In fact, by their own admission, they were much more successful in this than they thought they would be and created so much political capital that it allowed them to go faster than they had anticipated with their programme of privatisations with little strategic/technical thought, simply ideological zeal. There was no tiered approached to what should/shouldn't be kept in public ownership, simply what politically could or couldn't be gotten away with. So a small number of areas were viewed as a step too far but most stuff was fair game. This then exacerbated the underlying issues in achieving their explicitly stated economic goals because it meant they went full steam ahead on a broader policy programme when they had:

• almost no plans
• little to no evidence of what would or wouldn't work either from other countries or from the initial privatisations
• little experience or expertise in policy execution (after all this was pretty radical experimental stuff).

As a consequence many privatisations, notwithstanding any broader political debate about them, were often just a cobbled together, sometimes opportunistic, mess. The disaggregation of industries and supply chains in order to create both real and imagined markets had huge complexities and sometimes very little actual expertise applied to it. The ineffectiveness of some of the regulatory frameworks to this day stem from poor transitions to the new model, and you could of course argue a political desire to make those frameworks toothless.

As someone has already said, the world has changed hugely from a technology perspective in the last 40 years so it is very hard to make an apples to apples comparisons. However, it is hardly surprising that the evidence for improvement is at best patchy and is often damningly absent given the way much of it was executed. I say this as someone who worked in a number of these sectors during privatisation and de-regulation. This is before you even get into the debate of whether the policies themselves had inherent flaws.

If you had said 40 years ago that ultimately the approach by politicians of the day would become to privatise the profits but socialise the risks and losses people might have seen things slightly differently but that was not the narrative that was sold.

As for Thames Water, given the gravity of the situation I assume some investigation will take place into whether corporate malfeasance plays a part in what has happened.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Black cabs yes, private hire no

What about drivers that hold a dual licence?…

 

[urban genie]

What about drivers that hold a dual licence?…

what about them

 

[Blue Mist]

They’ve borrowed against future profits and paid out millions to shareholders and bonuses to directors, most water companies have done the same or similar to the tune of £72 billion nationwide!
If you don’t think that’s criminal ,fair enough!

It may be morally wrong but its not criminal.

 

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

I’ve just spent nigh on three weeks with Thames water coming through the pipes! Couldn’t get back quick enough to sup water from the tap and bathe my magnificent limbs in northern water!

 

[denislawsbackheel]

Any nurse that joined 30 years ago at the age of 25. Next year any nurse that joined at 25 will also be eligible to retire at 55. I would think that's quite a few but sadly when I telephoned Wythenshawe Hospital to ask they told me to fuck off as they were busy dealing with malingerers, time wasters, soft bastards and mard arses.

They can, but will get a very small pension. For a full pension they have to work to 65.