Another sewage incident.
United Utilities again have let sewage into Lake Windermere and only reported it well after the incident. BBC link to the story.
Untreated sewage illegally pumped into Windermere https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv266nqq48xo
UU in particular but water companies as a whole are being deliberately lax or deliberately dumping waste. What can we do to stop them?
Untreated sewage illegally pumped into Windermere https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv266nqq48xo
UU in particular but water companies as a whole are being deliberately lax or deliberately dumping waste. What can we do to stop them?
Comments
Why don't Labour make nationalisation of water a manifesto pledge?
I didn’t think I’d see the day when we needed to boil our tap water before drinking it either.
Our water should never have been privatised - nor should our power.
They have said they would buy out the train companies but not water. That was only because of pressure from the public. Blair was pro selling. Starmer is pretty close to Blair in his thinking. On top of that there is only so much money in the public purse.
Don’t get me wrong I wish Lab would bring water and power back into public ownership. However it is not that easy.
We need to give the companies reasons to do things properly. Heavy fines that would make a difference to their bottom line. Only so many offences and you lose the right to run the power or water. Very little leniency to offenders. One or two high profile cases should bring them in line.
Here's an extract from the Labour Party website:
https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/heres-how-labour-will-tackle-sewage-spills-in-uk-rivers-and-seas/
One might suggest that one must shoot a water company from time to time to encourage the others.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/15/water-industry-should-be-brought-into-public-ownership-says-mp-clive-lewis
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/15/devon-resident-told-to-boil-tap-water-over-risk-parasitic-disease-south-west
Bring a successful criminal conviction against a water boss? And we taxpayers have to fund that legal action..
I don't believe it could happen.
Well, yes. I'll believe it when I see it.
I guess complete nationalisation would be rather too costly in terms of £££, given the Herculean task a new Labour government would have anyway...
*Broken Britain* is going to take a generation or two to improve, let alone fix...
The net value of the business is peanuts, but the business still has assets and creditors with a claim on them.
I sometimes wonder what the point of politicians is, apart from playing their power games.
Throw the CEO of each company that pollutes our water in jail. Again and again and again. Sooner or later the next CEO will make avoiding such spills a priority.
Alternatively (or additionally), fines of 50% of the company’s gross turnover per offence would probably focus the shareholders minds on finding a solution.
Yep we need some kind of strong action to be taken. The Cons will not do that.
Anyone off on holiday to toxic South Devon this Bank Holiday weekend? Don't drink the water, and don't breathe the air...
There is a hilarious Billy Connolly sketch called "Dont drink the water." Its on YouTube - but the usual warning needs to be made when that story teller is involved.
But that's silly.
The answer to your first question is no, most definitely no. To the statement "But that's silly - yes.
Not sure it's silly, but breaching limited liability would have far-reaching consequences and would need to be carefully considered, and possibly restricted to a few well-defined situations. The question for me would be whether shareholders knew, or could have been reasonably expected to know, that their returns were a result of underinvestment. I'm not sure they could have, and hence it wouldn't be fair to make them liable. Whether the water companies should be fined into insolvency, rendering the shares worthless, is another matter entirely.
The problem is that shares may not only be owned by individuals as part of a portfolio. They may also have pension fund money in them. Also shares are often bought on their status (going up or down) rather than any real thinking going into it
That's a problem for the funds that invested in them, but that's not necessarily a good reason for distorting the market by allowing the costs incurred by the company to be externalised.
Let the shareholders take a bath if necessary. Pension funds will have diverse investments of which holdings in water companies will be a very small amount. There's no fundamental reason why governments should protect pension funds from the downsides of their investment strategies - that would just create moral hazard.
It is difficult. Pensions have taken a hiding from Lizz Truss and her idiotic ideas. To hit them again seem uncalled for. Why should my pension suffer because of the water companies are crap. Fine the companies hard yes, hard enough to make a difference not just a small amount but state pensions are not good. All the money will be needed to have a decent retirement.
Why should a particular company/asset be immune from downside purely because a few pensions choose to invest in them (or actually invest in managed funds which in turn invest in them) ?
If the government is going to guarantee pension values, there are fairer and less market distorting ways of doing that.
So you're arguing that water companies should be protected from the consequences of their actions because many of their shares are owned by pension funds? That sounds like a ridiculous case of special pleading to me. Should a buy-to-let landlord be exempt from an improvement to the rights of tenants if his rental properties are a retirement investment? Can I choose not to pay my taxes if my defense is "but I really need the money"?
No the water companies should pay for what they do. I did say big meaningful fines. I meant ones big enough to cause them real problems, with loss of contract a big reality.
If Truss had not wreaked the pensions then I might agree, but she did.
There are ways to punish a company without punishing future pensioners again.
I am for bringing them back into public ownership. I do think however they should be responsible for any debt that they have. We shouldn’t have to pay for their incompetence
Sure and both of those would result in lower (or zero) share prices, which would affect all investors, and I'm open to both realities, but you seem to see either as problematic.
Although a halfway decent investment analyst should be able to spot that - and I've met a few at the big pension houses. It should be a red flag for them, not a licence to pile in. They have to think longer term than that.
In my view, if the government puts any money into a private company it should receive shares in exchange. These shares could form the beginning of a National Wealth Fund. There is currently way too much corporate welfare.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/19/yorkshire-water-bosses-huge-bonuses-company-failed-customers
Shameful. How do these people have the gall to show their faces in public?
Will those problems now be addressed?
You may need to wait a while, they are busy punching left and planning their latest crackdown on immigrants.
https://archive.is/A3C83 (Bloomberg)
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/29362290/yvette-cooper-crime-immigration/
(Though this is off-topic, I guess)
The substantive policy announcement is an increase in raids, and for a taste of how that goes:
https://x.com/JacquiMckenzie6/status/1814969853196796007
Archived here: https://archive.is/w8qYz