UK Election!

Errmmm – capitalism?

Yep but it doesn’t have to this bad, surely?

The water company bosses should be up in court and properly held to account for the shambles their blatant profiteering has caused

What crime do you think has been committed?  I can’t think of one

Given my political background I am both mildy pleased that Labour are in government in Westminster and disappointed that they won so many seats in Scotland.

Capitalism is only part of it; to date, Ofwat have been a thoroughly inept regulator.

Additionally, multiple governments have been unconcerned about utilities being owned by foreign companies – Macquarie and Thames Water being a prime example; maximise and extract the profits then sell-on when problems are becoming apparent but before they become significant.

Governmental failure to retain a ‘golden share’ when privatisation occurred.

It was well known at privatisation that there had been huge under-investment for decades but there was no attempt by government to ensure that investment would be prioritised way beyond off-loading future liabilities.

A textbook example of how to get it wrong.

Oh well. Another generation of naive voters are about to discover the reality of loopy Labour in power.

I quite enjoyed it last time round, despite not being a Labour voter at that point in my life.

Not aligning with your Guardian reader political echo chamber isn’t “trolling” btw.

Basking in a bit of contrarian-driven validation? Go you!

Worth noting that all dividends are, and have been, fully sanctioned by the regulator Ofwat. The fact they happen is down to the model of monopolised privatisation. They have to simultaneously hold companies to account for spending and delivery, whilst also making them investible for private equity, and thus capable of giving payback on investment. I’ll make it clear I don’t in any way agree with it, but that is the way it currently works.

It’s not just water companies being evil and stealing money, it is heavily regulated, and these headline dividends are part of the regulatory operating conditions of the entire industry. Quite often, profits have been made on money borrowed/loaned against an asset base that increases in value. What does not happen though, is water bills customers pay going direct to bosses or investors. Regulated cash is off limits, and investment that can be recovered from customer bills is strictly controlled by Ofwat. There are huge, complex performance commitments the companies report on each year, and will be penalised/rewarded by Ofwat for failure/achievement of a whole raft of performance metrics.

What crime do you think has been committed?  I can’t think of one

Literally tens of thousand of breaches of the water industry act and environmental permitting regulations.

fully sanctioned by the regulator Ofwat

Does anyone else put an extra “t” in there automatically when they read it?

Quite often, profits have been made on money borrowed/loaned against an asset base that increases in value. What does not happen though, is water bills customers pay going direct to bosses or investors.

Borrowing against the asset base… not using that money for investment… and then asking the public to pay more for investment… all within the rules no doubt… but that the money does not go “direct” from bills to bonuses and payouts is pretty much irrelevant to the end user being asked to put more money into a utility that money has been extracted from.

To be fair to Of’wat staff past and present, they often detail how limited they are by the legislation they operate under. Time to look again at that… and any new legislation should also include a clear path back to pubic ownership should failures continue.

Balls of steel indeed.

The black Labour candidate that campaigned in Clacton and how it was on the campaign trail.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg3j8y77g04o.amp

New legislation should be about reform of the whole system and the way performance is achieved and managed, and the industry regulated. But there are obvious limits to clamping down on the current model as it is, due to the whole investment/return question. Public ownership, or the threat of it, achieves nothing in and of itself. The same could be said of any industry. It doesn’t suddenly make businesses work perfectly and everything delivered well and effectively. I’m not against public ownership of key industries, but not for their own sake and not without an understanding of what it would take. Government and civil service would have to get bigger again, a great deal of expertise would need to be brought in to avoid the same failures under a different ownership model.

Not aligning with your Guardian reader political echo chamber isn’t “trolling” btw.

I agree.

OTOH as soon as someone accuses another of being Woke, Steve Albini’s comments always come to mind

https://x.com/electricalWSOP/status/1665265230673321984

aaargh, I can’t usually get tweets to embed except when there’s a swear word in it. Not trying to avoid the swear filter, can’t see how to embed without.

[edit – I remembered as x.com it won’t embed but i think still works as a link, as twitter it embeds. I have changed to x and if the link doesn’t work, but you want to see what Mr Albini said about the antiwoke and which i’ll probably get banned for now, change x for twitter. is that all clear]

[Also, FAOD – I apologise for the swear word, i agree totally with the sentiment]

Public ownership, or the threat of it, achieves nothing in and of itself.

Agree. But the “threat” of removing the assets (and the government and/or another body taking on the running and risk) has to be in place… otherwise… the owners of the utility can just shrug… they’re not going to be shut down after all… the clean water must keep running and the sewage must be handled (well, perhaps not the last one looking at the current situation)… the utility can’t be allowed to fail, therefore there must be a clear process, visible to all parties, as to what will happen if the business falls short. There needs to be a process laid out where the company and the utility can be separated.

If I’m vaguely left wing and liberal, but don’t read The Guardian (and never have), can I still be part of the echo chamber?

Finding the political spectrum discussion interesting TBH. Probably deserves its own thread. Unless I’m an outlier, suspect that opinions supported/disagreed with here (and elsewhere online) aren’t always necessarily in line with people’s actual feelings.

In my ‘ideal’ world, I’d be chasing a very liberal, very socialist, bordering on anarchistic (in it’s actual meaning) society. I recognise that’s not something that can happen in the real world currently, so here my pragmatic politics come out as a bit left of centre and socially liberal.

Not aligning with your Guardian reader political echo chamber isn’t “trolling” btw.

It’s not that you are disagreeing with the majority – the problem is how you are presenting it.

Literally tens of thousand of breaches of the water industry act and environmental permitting regulations.

Ah – I meant criminal in relation to the assett stripping / exporting of money that seemed to be Binners point

A quick point… The Guardian, BBC, Sky etc get posted/cited more in these threads partly because they’re not behind a paywall. If a story appears in lots/all the usual places, you’re most likely to post a link to the telling that everyone can read and comment on rather than something that bounces people back after a headline and a teaser paragraph… it’s almost bad manners not to really. Whenever I paste an FT or Times link, I feel I should include an apology.

OFWAT are toothless as they don’t have much power.  It is cheaper for water companies to pay the small fines that OFWAT can issue rather than fix stuff.

Yep. I’ll never get my head around the huge dividend payouts, whilst running up huge debts and running the system into the ground at the same time. No pun intended.

I think …….

If you have a company worth £1,000,000,

The bank might lend you £500,000 based on that valuation.

You need to keep that £1million valuation though to keep that loan rolling over every time it’s due to be repaid.  Even if the company isn’t doing so well.

So you pay a dividend, which props your share price up, because investors just care about the return on the investment.

According to popbitch Kier Starmer doesn’t like avocados. Does this put to bed whether he’s working class or not now? ?

That answers the avocado question which came up so often on the doorstep!

Definitely a man of the people.

spawnofyorkshire
Full Member
According to popbitch Kier Starmer doesn’t like avocados. Does this put to bed whether he’s working class or not now? ?

No. Only if he’s partial to Heinz Ravioli cold, from a tin.

Well, that’s not so much working class as Poopscoop class**.

Which is much betterer.

** Could make a good name for a new class of Royal Navy destroyer actually.

Could make a good name for a new class of Royal Navy destroyer actually

Environment agency coastal patrol surely?

Environment agency coastal patrol surely?

Lol, wish I’d thought of that!

we need to know where he shops to be sure.

Seeing as we are still sometimes banging on about Starmer – something I picked up today.  He is in favour of looking at changes in the law around end of life and assisted dying and a free vote in parliament on it.

Im vaguely keeping track and so far its more thumbs up than down for me.

Here’s some news to cheer up the climate deniers https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/11/cumbria-coalmine-was-unlawfully-approved-government-says

Reform starting to argue among themselves already

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw0yxnpj2dgo

It seems someone just realised he’s not in a political party but working for a private limited company and he’s not on the board

I have just been informed by Nigel Farage that Richard Tice is taking over as deputy leader of the party. Consequently I no longer hold that position.

I am considering my position more generally in light of this change.

I have long held concerns about the control of the party…

— Ben Habib (@benhabib6) July 11, 2024

Reform starting to argue among themselves already

Good move on their part. Tice left them open to being accused of being members of the elite whereas Yusuf is a man of the people as his concierge app shows.

Read that article and realised my mother-in-law probably (she won’t admit to it but also won’t discuss who she did vote for) helped vote in one of the five reform MPs. I now have to try and be civil to an enabler of racism…

The emergent Tory leadership campaign summed up beautifully by Jay Rayner

So anyway Kemi said Suella was, like, losing it, and Suella said Kemi was like, the worst for badmouthing her, right, and Kemi's mates were all nodding, and then EVERYONE was oooh, get her. And yeah, so it was all a bit extra. Cos really NOBODY BLOODY CARES.

— Jay Rayner (@jayrayner1) July 10, 2024

Reform starting to argue among themselves already

So we now have two parties where hypocritical children of immigrants can **** over people like their parents?

Can you imagine the therapy sessions…..?

So we now have two parties where hypocritical children of immigrants

It is ironic one of the best arguments against immigration is the arsehole kids of immigrants who want to block immigration.

Its only a miniscule fraction (which some might argue includes me) but I do think they havent used their best argument of “yes my parents were a net positive to the UK but then what about me?”

Amazing trolling.

It was inevitable I suppose.;)

‘More Fawlty Towers than Downton Abbey’: Jacob Rees-Mogg’s bid to become a reality TV star

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/jul/10/more-fawlty-towers-than-downton-abbey-jacob-rees-moggs-bid-to-become-a-reality-tv-star

Reform starting to argue among themselves already

Lee Anderson is going to be busy as chief whip then. Don’t they have to understand every piece of legislation coming through the house so they can advise the party on voting? Can’t imagine he has a big team either.

‘More Fawlty Towers than Downton Abbey’: Jacob Rees-Mogg’s bid to become a reality TV star

Don’t mention Ze Germans. Or Ze French. Or Da Italians, Spanish, Poles, Czechs, Dutch etc…

Reform didn’t take long to get into their ‘cleansing’ either, did they?

Not strictly for this thread, but I hear Biden has referred to Kamala Harris as ‘Vice President Trump’ and introduced Zelensky as ‘President Putin’.

If the Democrats don’t get their act together soon and ditch Biden, that’s Ukraine gone.