As an illustration of what the Thatcherite privatisations of the 1980s now mean, you could not have a better example than the London super sewer. It costs £4.2bn, and you might expect that Thames Water, the privatised company that controls the whole of its length, should obviously be expected to pay for it. Not a […]
Posts under ‘Water’
Tory privatisation economics: try the London sewer, the mother of all scandals
Aug 15th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.
Do we want predatory capitalism or an economy geared to the common good?
Mar 29th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Despite the predictable whines of some FTSE-100 bosses reported yesterday about a post-election Labour-SNP pact, Ed M should flesh out more about his vision to replace ‘predatory capitalism’ both because that is what a majority of people want and also to put paid to the ignorant mantra that self-interested executives like to propagate that anyone […]
Share:
The sharks are circling Scottish Water
Jun 4th, 2014 by Dave Watson.Scottish Water is a public corporation that delivers a publicly owned water and sewerage service to the people of Scotland, unlike the privatised service in the rest of the UK. It’s a model that has served Scotland well, delivering clean fresh Scottish water to homes and businesses and removing sewage along some 60,000 miles of […]
Share:
Floods, climate change and Cameron’s money burning machine
Mar 2nd, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Cameron is a rootless chameleon politician, but his daily masquerades putting on new guises sometimes do get in the way of each other. Having delayed and reacted late as the floods engulfed the Somerset Levels and then beyond, as soon as the growing climactic violence put his own leadership on the line he swung round, […]
Share:
Water is a public service – not a commodity
Feb 17th, 2014 by Dave Watson.Water is a public good, not a commodity. Today there will be a hearing in the European Parliament on the European Citizens Initiative – Right to Water (watch it live online). Nearly two million people signed this initiative across Europe, asking the European Commission to propose legislation implementing the human right to water and sanitation as recognised by […]
Share:
Government gets into bed with gas industry
Nov 15th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.There are seemingly no limits to how far this government will crawl into the pockets of the private sector to do them a favour to maximise their profits at taxpayers’ expense. Greenpeace has just discovered via freedom of information (FOI) rules that a major state subsidy scheme for gas-fired power stations in the UK is […]
Share:
And another thing… time to take back water into public ownership
Jul 21st, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Did you know that two-thirds of our water companies are owned by foreigners? Does it matter? Well, yes it does. They can major on water supplies in their own home country and neglect the UK arm of their business, they can fail to deal quickly or adequately with leaks in the UK even when it […]
