England’s water companies are “environmentally insolvent” because they do not have the financial means to raise the £260bn needed to deal with their sewage spillages, academic research has found.
The report, by Prof Richard Murphy of the Corporate Accountability Network and Sheffield University, recommends nationalisation without compensation and raising the necessary funds through government ISAs for the public and higher charges for heavy water users.
First he’s going to steal your pension. Then he’s going to steal you pension to pay for stealing your pension.
“higher charges for heavy water users”.
“Only about 3 to 5% of water use happens at home. About 5% is used by industry to provide products and services (all business essentially falls under this category). And the rest?
The rest is from agriculture”.
https://grantham.sheffield.ac.uk/how-much-water-does-the-uk-use/
That’s going to help in the fight against inflation then……
Making heavy water is expensive, needs very accurate fractional distillation, and is required in small quantities in niche areas. I don’t think they’re going to make meaningful profit on that market regardless of the margin they might achieve.
Addolff: ’Only about 3 to 5% of water use happens at home..’
So blaming people WFH for the problem was a non-starter for the water companies then?
Matt,
there’s loads of it at the bottom of that Norwegian fjord.
People drink more tea at home than in the office and have to go to wee-wees more often.
I thought that the biggest consumer of water was “leaks”…
JuliaM, if you’re talking about SE Water, there’s a pretty persistent rumour going around that they were carrying out maintenance and managed to drain a large-ish reservoir, and promptly had an “oh shit” moment when the weather turned two days later.
True, but the water companies only deal with the 10% that is domestic and industry. Farmers get it from the sky – in this country at least, mostly.
Just seen this. Don’t agree with everything, but worth a read.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/thames-water-straw-broke-uks-back
The water companies have been a good example of mismanagement in British industry. There is nothing to suggest that their operation would be any better under state control, because it would be the same fuckwits running them. Where the mistake has been, is that we have allowed (foreign) companies to come in and asset strip utility companies of cash and saddle them with debt. This same pattern has happened down the years with care homes, Manchester United etc etc. I remember some captain of industry on Today a few years ago denying that this happened because “No on would run a business that way.” Problem is, mate, that these companies are not interestted in the business, but what they can make out of it and flog later on to some other sucker.
“Farmers get it from the sky”: you don’t visit East Anglia much, then?
Ottokring may well be right about the management (‘may well’ being trad Brit understatement), but not about the professional staff who generally do care.
Incidentally, water companies themselves don’t intentionally discharge untreated sewage. What happens in wet weather is that surface water is channelled into the sewage system, and overwhelms the treatment plant. Who does that? Well, consumers, highways authorities (which are definitely state controlled) and all the rest. Does the populace shit or piss more in wet weather? Of course not (well, I might shit if there was a lightning strike nearby).
And, for the record, it was no different prior to privatisation – no-one gave a shit (!) then – muck went into rivers or the sea. Trust me, it would be no different if they were renationalised.
Finally, if you don’t want the easy and cheap option, then you (and I and everyone) will have to pay. That’s true whoever runs the system. Sure, the water is free when it falls out of the sky. The costs are in treating it, storing it to cope with the vagaries of the weather, delivering it – and dealing with the water they delivered when you have shat, pissed, menstruated, washed or otherwise contaminated it. I can’t see why it’s their business to deal with water that they didn’t deliver in the first place. And incidentally, where does the shit come from in the first place? Out of the arseholes of the populace – or the mouths of polititians (same thing, really).
dearime, +1. Where I am on the Essex sunshine coast we get about 555mm per year – Tangier gets 710mm per year.
Tim, “for instance, lactating cows need between 60 to 100 litres of water per day, while lactating sows and gilts may require 15 to 30 litres per day”.
https://ahdb.org.uk/water-supply-problems-a-guide-for-livestock-farms
I believe East Anglia receives less precipitation than North Africa
Last line typed before doing some digging obviously.
Building a well? Make sure you’ve got the necessary extraction licence.
Related; OfWat can’t be entirely without blame, regardless of what the management have been up to. That’d be before any of the firms end up dealing with the planning system. I wouldn’t want to take ZeroHedge at face value without serious amounts of salt to hand.
(I couldn’t get the link to work on t’other thread either. Strange).
humph
I have to walk six miles a day in the baking sun with a bucket on my head just to catch dengue fever. But for £3 a month…
“Where the mistake has been, is that we have allowed (foreign) companies to come in and asset strip utility companies of cash and saddle them with debt. This same pattern has happened down the years with care homes, Manchester United etc etc. ”
Ah, but our host has repeatedly told us that this is the way for a country to operate nowadays in a globalised economy. Make and produce nothing, import everything, and pay for it all by selling foreigners our ‘wealth’. As long as our asset prices keep going up and we can offload them onto foreigners, we can buy all our food, energy and actual useful stuff from abroad.
And guess what – foreigners have little incentive to run UK based companies well, the best thing is to starve them of investment, and extract as much cash as possible and run them into the ground, because hey, its not your water or social care system is it? Or even your football club, in the case of Man Utd.
It is of course a Ponzi scheme that is on the brink of collapse but I’m just a peasant farmer, what do I know of economics?
When Man Utd files for bankruptcy there might be a couple of hundred thousand people upset, and a couple of million people laughing like drains. Net win, I’d say. Well worth flogging that sort of useless tat to Johnny Foreigner.
Murphy calculates that the net value of the companies is £13bn.His “sustainable cost accounting” analysis suggests that without price increases the water industry will lose almost £16bn a year paying to deal with sewage, largely because of increased interest costs.
So a man with zero practical knowledge of accountancy, who had a ringer take his exams, is a fit person to assess the accounts of companies of any complexity? He can’t read a balance sheet and doesn’t understand depreciation? You’d be better off grabbing someone from one of the pubs he’s been barred from in Downham Market
> higher charges for heavy water users
Is this higher charges for the nuclear industry or nuclear weapons manufacturers?
The problems of the water industry should be a very good learning experience for the public. Ultimately there is no ‘government’, no ‘big business’ who can make the problem go away, there’s just people who need to use water and have a functioning toilet. Thats it. Everyone of us is in the same boat, we need to drink the same amount of water and to get rid of the same amount of sh*t per day. And ultimately the only people to pay for all this is us, each and every one of us. You can pay private businesses to do it, or you can pay the government (both charges and taxes) to do it, but the funding of the process has to come from actual people.
” When Man Utd files for bankruptcy there might be a couple of hundred thousand people upset, and a couple of million people laughing like drains. Net win, I’d say. Well worth flogging that sort of useless tat to Johnny Foreigner.”
Not so funny when JF does it to your water supply system though is it?
I’m quite happy for there to be some sort of restriction on what can be sold abroad. And now we’ve regained some independence we have the ability to add those restrictions, if only we had a government that acted for the good of the British public.
“I’m quite happy for there to be some sort of restriction on what can be sold abroad. ”
Ah, but if we can’t sell all our assets to JF, then we can’t afford to run a massive trade deficit either. Thats the economic model we are running – run a huge deficit on actual goods, pay for it partly with a surplus on services, and the balance has to come from JF buying Uk assets. If we stop him doing so then the balance doesn’t balance any more…….or rather it will balance, because it must, but in a way that makes us considerably poorer.
Thats the cleft stick we are in – stopping JF buying our stuff and running it into the ground makes us poorer. Allowing JF to buy our stuff and run it into the ground makes us poorer. We have gone down a road from which there are no positive escape routes, only painful ones.
No, I’m saying there’s some assets we probably want to keep out of the hands of JF, but I’m happy for the owners to be allowed to sell the pointless shit like soccer clubs. And we can keep on creating as many soccer clubs (etc) as there are JFs willing to buy them
Ottoktring…
When I saw “heavy water” that was my first thought as well! I own a jacket like Kirk Douglas rocked
@TW
True, but the water companies only deal with the 10% that is domestic and industry. Farmers get it from the sky – in this country at least, mostly
Gov’t solution:
– Ban water companies building resevoirs with their own money
– Pay farmers to build small resevoirs with taxpayer money
Ref: Farming Today 1 June
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001mchm
.
Tim,
Why have you not linked to your AS pieces eg
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/j9uhp3s2cfd45161xaphnowycwd4j8
@Excavator Man – “it was no different prior to privatisation”
There were differences. The population has grown. For example, the population of london in 1981 was 6.8 million, while it is 9 million today. That might mean more sewage to handle, though the introduction of dual flush toilets may have reduced it. The other major difference is paving over land which previously could let rain soak in. This means that a lot of rain that previously would find its way into rivers now gets into sewers, causing more average and peak flow.
“Trust me, it would be no different if they were renationalised.”
That’s also true, as the water companies have no influence over the factors I mentioned.
@Charles
That’s also true, as the water companies have no influence over the factors I mentioned
Yep, Ofwat dictate everything they can and can’t do. They’re state controlled businesses which provided a fixed income for investors, pension funds etc
Then socialst Gov’t and msm waged war by banning return on capital and, as Tim says, a fascist system prevails: Do what we demand or else
– De-bank Farage or else… reports now suggesting it’s an EU Law