After admitting to spending years “sweating the asset” and paying billions to shareholders in dividends. Oh and making the Thames an e.Coli soup in the meantime… but it’s the customer who must pay!
by harry_atkinson
After admitting to spending years “sweating the asset” and paying billions to shareholders in dividends. Oh and making the Thames an e.Coli soup in the meantime… but it’s the customer who must pay!
by harry_atkinson
35 comments
Not really customers if we have no choice.
Ya know more and more each day does the phrase
“Eat the rich”
Start to seem like a damn good idea.
Alternatively………fuck off.
Outrageous and we can’t even trust Labour to put an end to this even if they win the election.
Worst timeline.
Great opportunity for one political party or another to get ahead of this mess finally and clear it up.
Decades of underinvestment and loading the company with debt have led us to where we are now .
Government: well cut out the red tape and make your water bills cheaper
Companies: k thx hun
Government: why aren’t you sending cheaper bills?
Companies: we private, not your decision.
Government: we’re going bring back the red tape
Companies: HOW DARE YOU. I AM ADDING 40% TO ALL BILLS
Labour sadly wont make all these companies public again. I will be surprised if they do.
Only country with this shitshow of privitised water
Let it fail and nationalise it with a share price of 1p, those shareholders are scum.
Go and fuck yourselves
“Privatise gold, nationalise shit!”- Thames Water, probably
Privatise the profits, socialise the debt. Classic.
How about no? Mainly because they were given the money to make the improvements by the government, and they paid it out in dividends to their shareholders instead of using the money for its intended purpose. Double-dipping cunts.
And that’s why their service should be taken into public ownership.
I have terrible water pressure in my house, when an engineer came around he said it was poor and below their guaranteed pressure, but Thames Water won’t do anything about it…
It’s almost as if privatising a necessary public need, thereby inserting the profit motive, isn’t the brightest idea in the world.
Incidentally, did you know we are the only country in the West to have privatised water?
CANECEL YOUR DIRECT DEBITS IF THIS HAPPENS CANCEL IT ALL UR COUNCIL TAX UR WATER ELECTRICITY FUCK THEM ALL LET THEM SUFFER WE NEED TO DO THIS AS A COLLECTIVE
Nationalise!
im so confused there were 3 articles saying he specifically refused to pass on investor issues to customers.. which is it?
I’m from a country where, though the water is sporadically privatised depending on the state government, it is heavily regulated and subsidised by the government to protect consumers. So when I first saw my water bill in London, I was appalled. 6 years later, and Thames Water still manages to shock me with how low they can stoop. Isn’t there anything the government can do to stop this??
Dwight D. Eisenhower, corporate tax rate: 90%
Why?
Because high corporate tax rates create incentives for big businesses to spend on things like new locations, new hires, new equipment and product research and development which are deducted from taxable earnings.
In other words, its better to spend a majority of earnings on expansion than to horde it and pay uncle sam 90% of it.
Amazing that you’ve got maniacs running round smashing ULEZ cameras because it’s the most unfair thing ever invented and yet this actual legalised theft doesn’t seem to bother them much.
Pumping 72 Billion litres of sewage into the Thames is not cheap.
Basic utilities (water, energy etc…) are basic necessities and should never have been privatised, especially with the ridiculous notion of “competition” in energy sector, it’s not like when you switch suppliers they come round and pull a big cable out and put one in for the new supplier. All of these need to be renationalised and any profits going in to the public purse, not shareholder dividends!
What are we actually paying for? Because it’s sure as shit not going on, you know, actually maintaining their infrastructure. Recently round the corner from me there was a burst pipe with water pouring out through the pavement and down the street **for five weeks** despite loads of reports about it on the website. Two years ago my street was [a metre underwater](https://www.islingtoncitizen.co.uk/2022/09/16/councillors-residents-thames-water-flooding-islington/) and local homes and businesses ruined because of another broken pipe. They could not give less of a fuck if they tried. But yeah, privatisation improves efficiency…
Water privatisation is an absolute fucking joke and everyone knows it. And still Labour (and the tories mind) are going to do nothing about it come the election “oh but it will cost” well look right now, it costs us every fucking year and will keep getting worse until we remove the profit motive
My bill as can’t get a meter has gone up 60% since 2020…. Customers? Hostages. Paying for the super sewer I guess.
The government better fucking step in here or there will be rioting. What the fuck are they doing in number 10?!
You’d of thought that paying for sewerage… You know..
The money should have gone into turning my shit to water again.. not pumping into the river, or into shareholders pockets.
Imagine if every Thames Water customer refused to pay. Legally they cannot cut you off and given there is over a year’s delay in the court system as it is. They can’t sue everyone anytime soon.
(For the know it alls, no court loss = no CCJ, it’s impossible to get a CCJ over the line without default or summary judgement and that involves serving of a claim at a court, and that debt going unsatisfied).
Time for the people to say enough is enough. No election is going to change this for years.
Amazing levels of incompetence and neglect from the government (no surprise there), regulator and Thames Water themselves. Bills rise 40% for sub-standard service. Drains regularly overflow, the Thames is an eColi soup, water pressure laughable.
“How else are we supposed to pay dividends?” He added.
I just bought a 2 bed flat, not particularly big and only two of us living there. Thames Water want me to pay £1k per year for water. I’ve protested that it’s outrageous and makes no sense. I was paying half that in a bigger flat when renting. They sent an engineer round who said fitting a water meter would be a ball ache because of potential asbestos in communal wall and need everyone’s approval. He also said £1k is a made up number and to challenge it again. I’ve challenged it again and they’re saying sorry tough titties. And they wanna up it even more?? Are they high?
Why should I HAVE to pay this private company over the top for their fuck up? Labour should come out and say they’ll bring this lot under public ownership and get rid of these cunts.
I’m fucking fuming.
I have never understood the rationale of making utilities like water and electricity be capitalist business enterprises rather than just government provided services which operate at a loss to provide something critical for life.
Some things are just necessary for a society to function, and those things should be provided by the government at a loss if needs be. We already do this with the police, fire brigade, and military. Those things operate at a loss, they don’t make us money, because they are a service we need.
Having water be a private, capitalist enterprise has never made sense to me, because why wouldn’t a greedy capitalist just buy the water company and raise prices 1000%? Since everyone needs water, they would be forced to pay. And the barriers to entry means that it’s not like another company can easily open their own water company to compete. So to prevent this, the government has a regulator who sets prices, but then that’s not true capitalism at all, so you end up in a stupid half/half situation which is neither fish nor fowl, and then you end up in this mess.
Why the fuck is that not government owned??