Arrojo-Agudo said water companies should be non-profit with public-public partnerships, public investment and new participatory management models to involve civil society groups. England’s privatised system was picked out as anomaly; he said more than 90% of the world’s cities ran water in public ownership and increasingly members of the public were being given a voice on the company boards.
In Paris, he said, water was 100% municipally owned. “The French capital has demonstrated the transformative power of public ownership, prioritising human rights, reinvesting profits into the system, ensuring transparent governance, reducing tariffs and increasing its self-financing capacity,” said Arrojo-Agudo.
Paris being something of an anomaly in hte French system – most of it has been private suppliers for a century. But also, recall the problems with shit in hte Seine when they tried to have the Olympics there?
Who, having experienced the transformative power of public ownership, does not yearn for privitisation?
Once the state takes over there are no profits to reinvest. Just look at Scotlands water.
The state operator having no incentive for profits, they don’t make them.
Based upon experience of both publicly owned and privately owned water suppliers, they’re both a bit shit to say the least. The private ones tend to be cheaper though.
“the transformative power of public ownership”
Quite. It ends up not usually being the transformation most had hoped for, however. As we’ve all learned, ad nauseam, over the century or so that it’s been tried.
That’s obviously news to this twat, though.
Dear Mr. Arrojo-Agudo,
Thanks awfully for your opinion on this. If we decide nationally to have non-profit water companies with public investment and new participatory management models, then that’s what we’ll do. If knowing this stuff is important to you, you’ll be able to find out whether we’ve done that when you do your next survey.
Thanks again,
England.
To be fair to Paris, Tim, go look on Google Streetview at the Seine outside of Paris. It really isn’t a very big river. It’s not the tidal Thames or the Rhine or the Danube or the Rhône. It’s got very little water in it. Not much flow It’s very much what you’d expect for a smallish river going through a major city. With a sewer system goes back centuries. Of course it’ll end up with all sorts of shit in it. You couldn’t prevent it if you wanted to. What surprised me was they even considered having aquatic events in it. But Mme Hildago. The disconnection from reality of the left
We continue to fund bodies whose representatives despise us and never cease to publish reports showing their hate, or at best disdain, for us.
A good number of the UN’s rapporteurs who are hyper-critical of the UK seem to be Spics, is this payback for Trafalgar?
Public investment = taxes. Anything the government investing = waste.
The English Water system was part privately-owned part municipally-owned before Mrs Thatcher was PM: the private sector was smaller but better because it invested as needed (the rules were designed so that it made a modest positive return on investment) while 90% of the municipally-owned water companies did not invest and some of the poisoned their customers.
Water was the only privatisation where the newly-privatised companies were allowed to raise their prices by more than inflation (all others had to raise prices by less than inflation, much of the benefits of privatisation being given to customers rather than shareholders) because the local councils had not coughed up the money for necessary investment for decades and the companies would need to borrow money and pay interest in order to gradually and progressively catch up with the backlog.
At privatisation the customers of the water companies were given priority when applying for shares so they promptly had influence on the company’s boards.
Yes, Paris has shown the transformative nature of public ownership by poisoning Olympic athletes.
Is Mr Arrojo-Aguda so utterly ignorant of that which he is discussing? Or is he just a lying Marxist propagandist?
Our great Victorian forefathers built one of the richest cities on the planet…to do this they purchased land with their own money. The reservoirs they built fed the woollen mills with limestone rich “soft” water and then the riches flowed…
Until the nationalisation of the water industry, the National Parks Act and mass immigration…and all downhill since Attlee.
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the Islamic Republic of Bradistan…