plan for collapse of Thames Water

doodah said:
This whole affair is scandalous and outrageous.
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It makes you rage. It is the kind of thing that you expect from some third world country. Not a "democracy".

Thatcher got a state funeral remember that! We were all brought up thinking she was the best thing since Churchill when in reality her government have put ourselves in this mess.

Germany was a mess in the 80's. I mean it was literally split in half and people were driving about in Trabants. Now it is the richest country in Europe and steaming off into the distance compared to ourselves.

We are a very rich country but in reality nothing more than a massive great udder being milked for all its worth by external forces. There surely has to come a point when enough is enough and the people revolt?

This country is in need of a dictatorship to bring everything back under control like maybe our King or along those lines.
 
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adam cool dude said:
Thatcher got a state funeral remember that! We were all brought up thinking she was the best thing since Churchill when in reality her government have put ourselves in this mess.
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My opinion of Thatcher has nose dived over the years - loads of stuff she did without any kind of transitional plan i.e. reskilling and/or complete lack of future vision like with broadband - where we even sold off some of the breakthrough technologies we developed for a pittance at the time rather than benefitting from them in the long term.
 
adam cool dude said:
It makes you rage. It is the kind of thing that you expect from some third world country. Not a "democracy".

Thatcher got a state funeral remember that! We were all brought up thinking she was the best thing since Churchill when in reality her government have put ourselves in this mess.

Germany was a mess in the 80's. I mean it was literally split in half and people were driving about in Trabants. Now it is the richest country in Europe and steaming off into the distance compared to ourselves.

We are a very rich country but in reality nothing more than a massive great udder being milked for all its worth by external forces. There surely has to come a point when enough is enough and the people revolt?

This country is in need of a dictatorship to bring everything back under control like maybe our King or along those lines.
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A dictator. You've been drinking early today.
 
Sythe79 said:
You COULD, cut all subsidy to zero, turn a blind eye to people not paying their bills, wait until they have no choice but to declare bankruptcy and buy up the assets for 0.1p on the pound.
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Buy them from whom? They're all mortgaged to the hilt. Everything from pumping stations to office buildings, to treatment plants to the actual pipes in the ground.

adam cool dude said:
Thatcher got a state funeral remember that! We were all brought up thinking she was the best thing since Churchill when in reality her government have put ourselves in this mess.
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Not really, profit-hungry corporations got us in this mess, and the regulator of our successive governments allowed it to perpetuate.
It wasn't until the late 1990s that the rot started to creep in.

Sythe79 said:
1. incompetent government overseeing us all getting shafted with higher bills and taxpayer money needed to be spent
2, incompetent government overseeing us all getting shafted with higher bills and taxpayer money needed to be spent while a few private companies cream off a profit.

I'll go with number one.
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You forget that in the case of 1, it also means a lot more things won't get done. At least with 2 you will still get repairs effected and services maintained, and it won't depend on public borrowing.
 
ttaskmaster said:
Buy them from whom? They're all mortgaged to the hilt. Everything from pumping stations to office buildings, to treatment plants to the actual pipes in the ground.
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You know how. Again, all it would take is for a government to side with the taxpayer for once instead of corporations.

Whenever anything goes wrong, There's always a concern about protecting shareholders and financial institutions and sticking the debt on the countries credit card.
 
ttaskmaster said:
You forget that in the case of 1, it also means a lot more things won't get done. At least with 2 you will still get repairs effected and services maintained, and it won't depend on public borrowing.
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If the last 40 years were a case study, the evidence that's true is pretty weak.
 
adam cool dude said:
It is the only way I could see a change happening in this country. You need someone who is above everyone else.

We vote labour in the next election and it will be all their benefactors that will want a slice of the pie.
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The dictator stuff aside, there is a salient point in there. This sort of thing will only stop when the link between political parties and donors is severed.

I'm sure the donations are taken in good faith at the time, and with the best of intentions but 3-4 years down the line the benefactor come knocking and wants a return on the investment.

Something small, say maybe let that Macquarie deal for Thames Water get past the regulator. Or don't oppose the legislation change for sewage, or at least make it look like you're putting up a fight etc.

I said it a few months back in this thread, it is corruption dressed up as incompetence.
 
( Political partiy influencers - & more insidious, bilateral Israeli State contribution trumps these domestic poltical shenanigans, Saudis good at button pushing too. )
 
I'm really curious how this plays out now considering the significant media coverage and the calls for "Let it go bust, to hell with the shareholders / debt and renationalise". No matter what happens, regardless of what colour of government is in power, rest assured compensation will still be met by the tax-payer and financial mitigations allowed not to spook foreign investors of other utility companies.
 
Uther said:
All the chickens are coming home to roost. I'm not sure things can be fixed though, it's too late.
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Really is.
We are all going to be paying for it.

They should let thames fail and bring it back to public.
Raising bills to pay for dividends should be criminal on a service you have no choice but to use.


I'm actually glad we don't have the 5 percent cap in Wales on council tax. If councils need to charge more.. But they can't. And have to sell more and more assets until they have none to sell.. What then?
The money has to come from somewhere.
 
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It'll be an absolute outrage if the taxpayer foots the bill to avoid investors losing out in the event TW goes under. A private company that deliberately loaded up on debt to increase dividends whilst simultaneously running an essential service into the ground and poisoning our waterways? Madness.
 
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