We need to pay £10bn to clean up their mess

[Andydevon]

Conservatives privatised it
And the last 14 years has seen a terrible period for water, notably sewage.

I agree that the failures must’ve been building during Blair years and they didn’t reverse it….new Labour have been complicit in the ever increasing private sector taking public utilities and services

Overall though this is Conservative ideology that has failed.

Can't disagree.

I think the drive for privatisation and the belief that the service will be run well has failed. Do we need to put a colour on it? All services should be in the public sector that are a service and not competitive with end user choice. Water, national grid etc. Railways umm even that one does not work in the market.

 

[Andydevon]

The move to an assurance monitoring by the provider does seem to be the trend in more industries than just Water. On paper the industry pays to give assurance that they are compliant rather than the Tax payer.

Of course this model only works where there is sufficient checks and penalties to force the compliance as well. Clearly this has not happened and the water industry shames us all no matter what colour rosette.

 

[wobs]

The move to an assurance monitoring by the provider does seem to be the trend in more industries than just Water. On paper the industry pays to give assurance that they are compliant rather than the Tax payer.

Of course this model only works where there is sufficient checks and penalties to force the compliance as well. Clearly this has not happened and the water industry shames us all no matter what colour rosette.

Yes, self monitoring can work in places like large industrial installations that have the resources and know how to do it to an agreed standard. They have to demonstrate they are doing so to standard, and their data inspected. It works as it can be managed more easily.

With water companies, you have sewage works dotted all over a region serving individual villages & towns, and each needs to be sampled to show compliance, and a team to run them.

 

[Notch7]

Can't disagree.

I think the drive for privatisation and the belief that the service will be run well has failed. Do we need to put a colour on it? All services should be in the public sector that are a service and not competitive with end user choice. Water, national grid etc. Railways umm even that one does not work in the market.

I think infrastructure of water, gas, electricity and rail should be publicly owned

the reason is because it is better to own the asset than rent it

I don however believe that nationalisation is necessarily the answer -when government owns stuff it tends to constantly starve it of money and give to other areas of govt. I think a private company, with shares fully owned by the government is a good option

 

[Notch7]

The move to an assurance monitoring by the provider does seem to be the trend in more industries than just Water. On paper the industry pays to give assurance that they are compliant rather than the Tax payer.

Of course this model only works where there is sufficient checks and penalties to force the compliance as well. Clearly this has not happened and the water industry shames us all no matter what colour rosette.

the regulators have no teeth, they operate in the interests of the shareholders

Keir Starmer has talked about tightening the water regulator to force the water companies to clean up their -how much power Labour could actually exert is another thing, sovereign wealth funds have huge power

I agree the water industry shames us all and Blair period did little to stop the march of privatisation -he was the pioneer for privatising the education sector with academies etc

 

[motorbiking]

Retail, generation and infrastructure are all decoupled. If we had state owned energy, we would all be suffering British Gas and not have the chance to use companies like Octopus.

 

[diy_fun_uk]

I've said it before and I'm going to say it again, I get fed up when mainly politicians will say in defence of x being run privately 'when x was in public ownership does no one remember what a shambles it was?'

Using rail as an example, absolutely no reason why a British Rail mk2 would be any worse than the current shambles and also no reason why it couldn't be better. Same holds true for water.

 

[Notch7]

Retail, generation and infrastructure are all decoupled. If we had state owned energy, we would all be suffering British Gas and not have the chance to use companies like Octopus.

false argument

we never "suffered" British gas

what we suffer now is a privatised market driven by shareholders profits

 

[Notch7]

I get fed up when mainly politicians will say in defence of x being run privately 'when x was in public ownership does no one remember what a shambles it was?'

how does a government justify privatising something? : run it down so it falls apart, then scream: "oh look how wonderful this would be if it was privatised"

 

[motorbiking]

false argument

we never "suffered" British gas

what we suffer now is a privatised market driven by shareholders profits

who drive efficiency, innovation, are motivated by being better than the competition.

British Gas, were motivated by being able to carry on doing what they always did. They have been losing customers ever since and have tried their hand at everything from Financial services, road side recovery and even software. cr@p at all of it.

 

[Notch7]

who drive efficiency, innovation, are motivated by being better than the competition

Gas network: no competition
Electric network: no competition
Rail network: no competition
Water: no compeition

Energy supply: where is the competition?

1) 75% of them went bust
2) during energy crisis they dropped all fixed contracts and were price set by price cap. That’s a monopoly



Where is this competition you speak of?

 

[Notch7]

British Gas, were motivated by being able to carry on doing what they always did. They have been losing customers ever since and have tried their hand at everything from Financial services, road side recovery and even software. cr@p at all of it.

They are a private company and are driven by shareholders profits not customer satisfaction

You claim they cr@p at being a private business:

British Gas sees profits increase 10-fold

The company managed to recover losses of £500m it made during the height of the energy crisis.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[JohnD]

British Gas, were motivated by being able to carry on doing what they always did. They have been losing customers ever since and have tried their hand at everything from Financial services, road side recovery and even software. cr@p at all of it.

you are describing what they did after being flogged off

so this is no evidence in favour of privatisation.

 

[JohnD]

who drive efficiency, innovation, are motivated by being better than the competition.

like the water companies and the railways, eh?

more efficient at sucking money out of the public

better at dumping **** into our seas and rivers

 

[motorbiking]

They are a private company and are driven by shareholders profits not customer satisfaction

You claim they cr@p at being a private business:

British Gas sees profits increase 10-fold

The company managed to recover losses of £500m it made during the height of the energy crisis.

www.bbc.co.uk

I suggest you look a bit closer..

share price 391 in 2013, 35 in 2019, They lost half of their customers in the last decade