Ban dividends along with bonuses. They shouldn’t be taking any money out of a company that is failing in its job to maintain its infrastructure.
And ban bonuses whenever they dump raw sewage into water bodies?
Its Monday, is the Labour party for or against nationalising water companies?
Such a weak, liberal response.
Just nationalise them without compensation and put the executives on trial.
No bonuses no dividends.
Roughly 1/5 of the water running through the system is lost each and every single day.
Imagine any other company in the world with a 20% damaged; misplaced or lost rate of their product every single day.
Now make that a critical resource for the functioning of vast swathes of industries and services.
Now make said already critical resources necessary for the life of human beings.
That’s water companies and they have avoided having to take heavy responsibility for decades.
Trouble is you can’t ban private companies from issuing bonuses.
You can however fine, and even imprison, negligent company directors…….
They shouldn’t even get a bonus, they shouldn’t get anything. It’s going to cost 20bn to fix their shoddy work and that’s being charged to the tax payer.
Not sure why a critical industry such as national water or power are even privatized in the first place.
Oh right, Tories and greed. That’s why.
There is already a leakage reduction incentive in place and companies that don’t hit their targets get penalised. Senior executive compensation is obviously linked to this as well since bad performance leads to reduction in shareholder returns. If Ofwat wanted leakage reduced much faster, they could have set the targets or penalties other than they did.
I wonder how many people in this thread know that water leakage as a % of input isn’t particularly high in England?
France is above (just barely), Italy is almost half of all input leaked in some areas, Spain is shockingly slightly worse than England considering how dry it is.
And yet every time anything comes up about water scarcity, everyone will pop in with a statistic they read about water leakage for which they have no context.
If you want to nationalise the companies, by all means, but the underlying idea that water companies here are uniquely bad at leakage simply doesn’t hold up.
(For reference, Germany is about 10% and the lowest any country has managed is about 5%)
They are not fixing the leaks because it is not economical for them to do so. Untold numbers of small leaks across enough pipe to stretch to the moon.
We privatised the system, saying it would be more efficient. And it is, at making money.
The wider societal concerns went out the window long ago.
Ban fat cat bonuses full stop
No one but the filthy rich get fucking obscene bonus payments
For that matter, make those rich fucks actually prove their worth like the rest of us
Edit: to clarify the focus of the bonuses that should be banned
It’s hard to find information on this, but according to the Infrastructure Leakage Index we’re relatively middling in our performance on this issue. It’s not like we have exceptionally bad leakage compared to the rest of the world, but 20% sounds like a big number when it equates to so much water lost.
The question is what to do about it? How expensive and disruptive will repairs be? Is it even practical/feasible to get down to below 10%, for example?
I’m just saying that without further context on the 20% leakage number it’s hard to say what should be done and what level of culpability the water companies have, or whether this is considered generally acceptable by the industry, in which case it seems a total stepchange in the industry would be required.
The fact that a utility service that delivers an actual necessity of human life can be owned and profited from by private individuals to the tune of £billions is ridiculous.
The lib Dems acting as a better representative for the working people than labour? We live in truly exceptional times
It’s not a SMART goal is it? (For all you corporate nerds like me).
How many? 80%? Reduce leaks by a % of water volume? Etc etc.
Basically- How do you define when the target is met?
Basic infrastructure should be state owned and not for profit.
Just a little moan related to this article.
I can’t believe I am being labelled an extremist lefty amongst some of my family and friends for thinking you shouldn’t be able to make profit from water and it should be nationalised.
The fuck is happening in this country.
How can we, when our elected officials constantly let us down everyday and treat our lives as a joke.
I mean how could they face each other at the next conservative convention.
Or, we fine them and the fine keeps rising until they fix them. If that still doesn’t stop then look to nationalise.
And, you know, the whole dumping sewage into every water way in the UK
Imprison bosses that let raw sewage flow into our rivers!
If people aren’t aware of the numbers, the UK uses roughly 14 billion litres of water a day. About 3 billion is lost via leaks in the mains water pipes!
I recall reading in the New Scientist of the scandalous amount of water lost between dam and consumer through leaking pipes and aging infrastructure. That was in the 1990’s.
Should also ban all MPs from using private healthcare until the NHS backlog is sorted out and the NHS is properly staffed and funded or at least ban MPs who have private healthcare from voting on matters affecting the NHS, including the budget.
And dividend payments
Last night on LBC there was an interview with one of the water companies PR talking heads. His explanation/justification for the leaks was as follows (I’m paraphrasing)…
“So…. yea, we have leaky pipes. But so does Europe.”
^(Aside: I’ve noticed over the years that when a response begins with the word “So”, the rest of the sentence is going to be complete bollocks.)
Nationalise. Or, if they have to implement a hosepipe ban, fine them in shares. I.e, they have to pay the fine in shares of the company.
The best way to sort this out is to stop dividends to share holders until leaks are fixed and they stop polluting the waterways. That’s when you see action.
Oh no, they don’t get the £120,000 bonus on top of the £500,000 base salary.
29 comments
Ban dividends along with bonuses. They shouldn’t be taking any money out of a company that is failing in its job to maintain its infrastructure.
And ban bonuses whenever they dump raw sewage into water bodies?
Its Monday, is the Labour party for or against nationalising water companies?
Such a weak, liberal response.
Just nationalise them without compensation and put the executives on trial.
No bonuses no dividends.
Roughly 1/5 of the water running through the system is lost each and every single day.
Imagine any other company in the world with a 20% damaged; misplaced or lost rate of their product every single day.
Now make that a critical resource for the functioning of vast swathes of industries and services.
Now make said already critical resources necessary for the life of human beings.
That’s water companies and they have avoided having to take heavy responsibility for decades.
Trouble is you can’t ban private companies from issuing bonuses.
You can however fine, and even imprison, negligent company directors…….
They shouldn’t even get a bonus, they shouldn’t get anything. It’s going to cost 20bn to fix their shoddy work and that’s being charged to the tax payer.
Not sure why a critical industry such as national water or power are even privatized in the first place.
Oh right, Tories and greed. That’s why.
There is already a leakage reduction incentive in place and companies that don’t hit their targets get penalised. Senior executive compensation is obviously linked to this as well since bad performance leads to reduction in shareholder returns. If Ofwat wanted leakage reduced much faster, they could have set the targets or penalties other than they did.
I wonder how many people in this thread know that water leakage as a % of input isn’t particularly high in England?
France is above (just barely), Italy is almost half of all input leaked in some areas, Spain is shockingly slightly worse than England considering how dry it is.
And yet every time anything comes up about water scarcity, everyone will pop in with a statistic they read about water leakage for which they have no context.
If you want to nationalise the companies, by all means, but the underlying idea that water companies here are uniquely bad at leakage simply doesn’t hold up.
(For reference, Germany is about 10% and the lowest any country has managed is about 5%)
They are not fixing the leaks because it is not economical for them to do so. Untold numbers of small leaks across enough pipe to stretch to the moon.
We privatised the system, saying it would be more efficient. And it is, at making money.
The wider societal concerns went out the window long ago.
Ban fat cat bonuses full stop
No one but the filthy rich get fucking obscene bonus payments
For that matter, make those rich fucks actually prove their worth like the rest of us
Edit: to clarify the focus of the bonuses that should be banned
It’s hard to find information on this, but according to the Infrastructure Leakage Index we’re relatively middling in our performance on this issue. It’s not like we have exceptionally bad leakage compared to the rest of the world, but 20% sounds like a big number when it equates to so much water lost.
The question is what to do about it? How expensive and disruptive will repairs be? Is it even practical/feasible to get down to below 10%, for example?
I’m just saying that without further context on the 20% leakage number it’s hard to say what should be done and what level of culpability the water companies have, or whether this is considered generally acceptable by the industry, in which case it seems a total stepchange in the industry would be required.
The fact that a utility service that delivers an actual necessity of human life can be owned and profited from by private individuals to the tune of £billions is ridiculous.
The lib Dems acting as a better representative for the working people than labour? We live in truly exceptional times
It’s not a SMART goal is it? (For all you corporate nerds like me).
How many? 80%? Reduce leaks by a % of water volume? Etc etc.
Basically- How do you define when the target is met?
Basic infrastructure should be state owned and not for profit.
Just a little moan related to this article.
I can’t believe I am being labelled an extremist lefty amongst some of my family and friends for thinking you shouldn’t be able to make profit from water and it should be nationalised.
The fuck is happening in this country.
How can we, when our elected officials constantly let us down everyday and treat our lives as a joke.
I mean how could they face each other at the next conservative convention.
Or, we fine them and the fine keeps rising until they fix them. If that still doesn’t stop then look to nationalise.
And, you know, the whole dumping sewage into every water way in the UK
Imprison bosses that let raw sewage flow into our rivers!
If people aren’t aware of the numbers, the UK uses roughly 14 billion litres of water a day. About 3 billion is lost via leaks in the mains water pipes!
I recall reading in the New Scientist of the scandalous amount of water lost between dam and consumer through leaking pipes and aging infrastructure. That was in the 1990’s.
Should also ban all MPs from using private healthcare until the NHS backlog is sorted out and the NHS is properly staffed and funded or at least ban MPs who have private healthcare from voting on matters affecting the NHS, including the budget.
And dividend payments
Last night on LBC there was an interview with one of the water companies PR talking heads. His explanation/justification for the leaks was as follows (I’m paraphrasing)…
“So…. yea, we have leaky pipes. But so does Europe.”
^(Aside: I’ve noticed over the years that when a response begins with the word “So”, the rest of the sentence is going to be complete bollocks.)
Nationalise. Or, if they have to implement a hosepipe ban, fine them in shares. I.e, they have to pay the fine in shares of the company.
The best way to sort this out is to stop dividends to share holders until leaks are fixed and they stop polluting the waterways. That’s when you see action.
Oh no, they don’t get the £120,000 bonus on top of the £500,000 base salary.