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this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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Do they actually have a privately owned water supply in the UK?
Yes. Thatcher sold it off in '89, and since then the private monopolies have accumulated ~£60bn of debts and paid out ~£58bn in dividends. Now they're arguing with the regulator that they should be allowed to pay out more dividends, increase customer fees by 40% and not have to pay as much in fines for dumping raw sewage because otherwise the companies are "uninvestable" and they won't be able to raise the money to pay their debts and will collapse.
The water infrastructure was nationalised decades ago. Each reason has a single private company that maintains the pipes, supply, treatment etc. to everyone in that area. Being private companies, the execs have been getting massive bonuses while dumping raw sewage into public waterways recently. And why? Because as someone else here said: after Brexit, the government got rid of the environmental laws saying they couldn’t. And when you’re a monopoly in your area, are you going to spend money on treating water you don’t have to, or give that money to the shareholders?
It’s a fucking disgrace, a lot of people should go to prison for it and the whole system should be renationalised. But then people in government would lose money, and we can’t have that now, can we?
Privatised.
Just another of Milk Snatcher Maggie Thatcher's little poison pills.
And yes, it should all be renationalised. They haven't kept up with demand at any point.
Another example is Severn Trent.
They were releasing so much shit into the local nature reserve, that they have actually had to do something about it.
And that something is "building a big pipe so they can dump it directly into the Trent." They've already hacked down a load of trees to make room for it.
Before:
After:
Even to an American where we have tons of privatized utilities this is a bit shocking to me. I haven’t really heard of privately owned water companies before. Although my region is a bit more into public ownership than most I guess. We have private gas supply and private internet but other utilities are public.
Predictably, those two are fucking awful and the other services run just fine. But the next town over has private electricity and it’s a total disaster.
I can see why Thatcher has such a poor reputation now.