Thames Water urged to ‘get a grip’ after testing just one property in illness outbreak

13 comments

1. Turns out that conclusive testing they did wasn’t so thorough after all…

2. At what point should this company be allowed to continue? It’s ripping off the public, failing to do the basics and is now endangering our health. They clearly don’t care enough to even do a basic job now, so let it fail

3. second water company to have this issue take place, just after south west water…. This is seriously bad now. The UK is slowly moving away from 1st World Developed to 3rd World…

4. > Thames initially said that since its initial tests came back clear, it did not need to conduct further tests. Thames has also not tested the wider supply or the treatment facilities specifically as a result of this suspected outbreak.

   This is probably the bigger issue. They could have easily tested the feeds into many houses at source, rather than test individual properties. They didn’t.

5. How no one will get sued for this. Gross negligence.

   God I hate it here sometimes.

6. You won’t find anything if you don’t look.

   Mission accomplished!

7. How is the state of water not a national emergency at this point? I’m all for capitalism, I truly am, but private companies offering essential public utilities that fall *so short of even basic standards* should be barred from operating, have its value decimated, and renationalized.

   If a factory was doing even 1/10th of this stuff, it’d be shut down within the week. But because it’s a vital service, Thames Water can just keep going in perpetuity.

   Revoke licences or rights of private companies failing to meet standards to operate in the areas they’re failing in, set up a nationalized analogue to said company to administer those areas and deliver the service. The private companies should be charged an administration fee of 100% of the profits for that area to cover the costs of the government operating, fixing, and maintaining the seized infrastructure and also lower prices for end users as this will only be a skeleton operation + extra periodic fines until they pony up the necessary capital so that their service can meet these minimum standards. If they can’t/refuse to pony up, they should be unable to secure a licence to operate in these areas, and will be thusly forced to sell their assets to the national agency administering it.

   This forces a reasonable sale price as their infrastructure is unable to generate much in the way of profit if they’re unable to operate in the area it’s physically located, so the tax-payer doesn’t get shafted *again*, and worst case scenario is that we now own some truly awful infrastructure. But at least if it’s a national company we can actually take some steps to fix things when things go this tits up. I think a lot of us won’t mind a share of our tax going to make sure there isn’t literal shit in our drinking water like some third world country.

   Not to mention it adds national competition to private companies. Sure private companies may be able to offer lower prices, but if they’re only justifying those prices by skimping on infrastructure, see above. Not that I even buy that private companies in *water* in particular offer much value… The traditional arguments to privatization seem to not apply here.

   1. They’re not more efficient, it’s a fucking shitshow that makes the national news every week
   2. They’re not innovating, their infrastructure is crumbling and exploding roads across the country every day
   3. They don’t have access to more capital (if anything they’re incentivized to funnel it to shareholders)
   4. They’re not more flexible, literally what can they even do at this point?
   5. Their customer service is not consumer focused, again, it’s infamously shite
   6. They’re not accountable to any regulatory oversight, they just ignore it
   7. Cost management may be a boon short term, but long term (where we are now) it’s clearly a sunk cost fallacy. You’re not saving money if its cheap up front, but costs you orders of magnitude more in ***just 35 years***.

   The arguments for other vital public services may differ, but water seems pointless to privatize.

   Clearly there is *no actual market capitalism going on here.* There is no competition, just regional monopolies securing said monopoly with what is essentially a secure real estate portfolio, and participating in wealth extraction, and enshittification (literally) to secure higher returns for shareholders. Prices go up, but less value is delivered. And the prices have gone up, and value have gone down so much, that it’s gotten to the point where it’s dangerous in both directions. Cost of living is making the country a worse place for obvious reasons I don’t need to get into, and poor quality product is making people sick and destroying the environment. Fucking get rid of it then. The job of a government is to protect its citizens. These companies are literally poisoning the water supply lmao. The only answer is that this is not okay, and these companies should be broken up. Privatization of water was a mistake, let’s just rip off the plaster now, and get it over with.

8. Water (and others) should be nationalised and run at cost, not for profit. Yes it requires government to be competent, yes it requires a workforce that doesnt strike every ten minutes, but what weve got now is just as bad, with the added insult that somewhere on a yacht in the med is a nameless beneficiary laughing at us.

9. It’s okay, anyone worried about their health can just switch to another regional water supplier…

10. At this point, I am starting to think that toilet water mat be safer to drink than tap water.

11. Since being sold off the water companies have only one objective , make money . They don’t seem to care about anything else , except perhaps getting caught out. They need to be run by the state , water is a basic human need , not a source of income for the privileged few.

12. Thatcher was a cunt

    Thatcher was a cunt

    Sing it with me!

    Thatcher was a cunt!

13. I feel like this is far more widespread across the country but poorly documented, and hard to connect and prove.