‘Brexit to blame’ for UK’s sewage problems – “You have to blame the government for this whole sorry mess. The industry is out of control and it’s our rivers and beaches that are picking up the tab for that profiteering.”

39 comments

  2. Yeah I’m sure it’s absolutely enabled by brexit but the government repeatedly choose to let it happen regardless.

  3. Going to have to disagree here, but I know Brexit is much hated (and agree) so hear me out…

    I’m not sure I like the idea of blaming the fact we’re not in the EU, when the actual *cause* is corruption and profiteering within our own country.

    It’d be a bit like blaming “NHS incompetence / underfunding etc.” for Britain’s obesity. The NHS can help with the issue, but isn’t the *cause* of it.

    The blame should lie elsewhere, with those responsible. Not with the fact we’re not in the EU anymore to keep those people in check – that doesn’t address their corruption, it just puts a muzzle on it.

  6. I will never blame a government for doing what they said they would do.

    I solely blame the voters who voted for the tories.

  8. Everything is out of control, 12 years of Tory rule and people still don’t get it.

    Things are going to get bad, really, really bad.

  9. Not the problem , it’s not having a detailed plan to improve & replace the existing system that is no longer fit for purpose

  11. Brexit hasn’t helped but you can’t really blame Thatcher’s dream of privatised, for profit sewage being pumped into the sea all around the coast of the UK.

    England and Wales became the only countries in the world to have a fully privatised water and sewage disposal system in 1989.

    A year later in 1990 Surfers against sewage was set up in Cornwall because of the tragic state of our water quality. In the 30 years I have been surfing and going in the sea regularly, nothing has really changed. You still get ill if you go in the sea regularly around the British coast, you still paddle about in a toxic soup full of turds, sanitary towels and cotton buds around the coast. Water quality is as bad now as it was when it was run down to justify the national sell off. Nothing has changed.

    Sure The Environment Agency has been effectively neutered by the last decade of Tory rule both in terms of legislation and budget cuts but to blame all this on Brexit and not being able to source chemicals is a complete red herring.

    Our overall incompetence surrounding ongoing and predictable procurement during Brexit is a contributing factor, but the root cause is easily traced back to a sustained lack of investment by the water companies going back decades – because they were sold off as a profit making investment opportunity.

  12. Lmao, I love how when we were in the EU everything was blamed on being in the EU and now that we’re out of the EU everything is blamed on not being in the EU.

  13. Remember back in the day when people would start grand projects that they knew they wouldn’t live to see the finish of because it would make for a better future for the majority.

    What happened?

  15. Brexit or no Brexit, our beaches and rivers are being horrendously polluted.

    Those in power who made the allowances for waste water companies to pollute are responsible.

    Unfortunately, that will only mean fines for the water companies that will be passed on to the ‘customers’ (as if we have a choice) to pay. The shareholders never seem to miss out on their dividends.

  16. Back in our day…

    The immigrants are…

    Blitz spirit…

    The youth are too lazy…

    Blame everything on the government…

    Cycle lanes are to blame for this…

    You have it too easy…

    Just typing the answers you’re going to get when you explain why this is happening to the elderly who insist on voting tory.

  23. **NATIONALISE THE F——KING THING ALREADY.**

    Why are we so dumb to have privatised public infrastructure, it’s such a con. Doing it for something as basic as water just blows my no-doubt PFAS-riddled mind.

  25. Wrong and wrong again. It’s a compound issue of the state not giving a shit about treating rivers and seas like open sewers when the industry was under public ownership, then the industry post privitisation not being able to deliver the scale of improvements needed without biting into shareholder profits. What we need is a re-nationalised industry that is properly held accountable to the public, and raked over the coals if it doesn’t perform its duties

  27. Brexit happened, then the legal standards were intentionally lowered and yet there are nutjobs in these comments trying to shift the blame away from Brexit. This isn’t a supply chain thing, it’s allowing companies to do less than the bare minimum for the same prices. Of course they will disregard any respect for nature if it increases their executive bonuses for free.

  28. Blaming Brexit only makes sense if the EU had more stringent regulations than what we have now, and assuming we decided against keeping said regulations.

    Whichever way the coin lands, the collective blame is on the Government, Ofwat, and the for-profit water companies milking all of us.

  29. There was a vote last year on whether or not it should be illegal to dump human sewage into the rivers and oceans. The Tories against the law that would have prevented it.

  30. isnt it funny how we privatise our essential services which in turn often get bought up by other nation’s nationalised companies that then benefit from our being gouged and their own citizens being subsidised. EDF to name one.

  34. this sounds like the “thanks obhama… ” thing where every little inconvenience happened would make you blame the same person…

  35. I remember reading, or watching a documentary, maybe over a decade ago about how campaigners used the EU to clean up our beaches way back in the day

    They wanted cleaner, sewage free beaches but the UK government said they were OK and refused to do anything about it. So the campaigners – maybe surfers and swimmers – discovered that there were all these EU regulations about pollution in the sea off beaches. They used those regulations to take the government to court and won, and gradually over time we had to clean up our pollution (I might have mis-remembered the specifics but that was the broad gist).

    When the referendum was won by Leave, one of the first things I thought was that our beaches were probably going to go back to being full of shit again. Because whereas I thought it was wonderful that environmentally minded British people used EU regulation to force the UK to clean up the pollution, probably half the population thought that was actually a terrible thing, using foreign laws to make the UK do stuff.

    So I am not surprised at all that we’re back to shitty beaches again.

  36. It’s the tories fault, though they caused brexit and that’s part of the problem. You can’t run services as a business it doesn’t work!

  38. > Stanley Johnson

    > Feargal Sharkey

    These feel like generic ethnic names from some fanfic author, or perhaps something Douglas Adams would come up with to poke fun at the UK

  39. It’s not our fault, we agree with you but we can’t do anything because of the EU…its not our fault, its cause of brexit…sorry we can’t do anything its covids fault

    When are they going to take some responsibility?

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