"It's theft!" LBC's water nationalisation debate
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 มิ.ย. 2023
- ‘Bill-payers will not pay twice under a Labour government.’
Shadow Environmental Secretary, Jim McMahon tells the Cross Question panel water firms will be ‘made to put it right’.
Their debate arose as Thames Water risks being nationalised after accruing £14bn in debt.
On Ali Miraj's panel:
Baroness Nicky Morgan - Conservative peer and former Secretary of State for Education, and Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Jim McMahon - Shadow Environment Secretary & Labour MP for Oldham West.
Andrew Fisher - former Executive Director of Policy for the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.
Peter Hitchens - Mail on Sunday columnist, broadcaster and author.
Listen to the full show on Global Player: l-bc.co/ListenNow
#crossquestion #water #politics #LBC
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Now imagine what a private NHS is going to look like.
One that works
@@cianoglike America's, greatest private medical success story of all time
@cianog *buzzing sound* oooo thats the wrong answer, the right answer was, "plunging people into crippling debt for basic medical services resulting in more deaths and untreated ailments and diseases" better luck next time
@@cianog clever boy did you always si at the back of the class with a pointed hat on🥴
"Now imagine what a private NHS is going to look like"?
Anyone, repeat ANYONE, who has lived in the USA has NO need to"...imagine what a private NHS is going to look like."
Or ask those Americans who live in Europe.
One common theme is shock when they realise what the European model of health care actually means; they do not have to fear illness.
Those Americans who live on this side of the Atlantic also tend to get their minds blown when they finally understand that the term 'Medical Bankruptcy' is meaningless here.....
Scottish water is nationalised. The quality of our rivers and lochs is vastly better, the system better run, the bills less. This isnt some nationalistic contest or a slight against England, but to illustrate that a nationalised water system is just better. Privatising critical infrastructure is just insane.
England is the only country on the planet where water is privatised in the way it is here. Even in America most of the water industry is nationalised. Only 34 years for the British public to wake up to the reality of the disaster predicted when privatisations took place in the 1980s.
@@eightiesmusic1984 Exaclty. We in Cymru had to rescue a fraudulant company known as Hyder, who acted as a investment casino, rather than act as a water company. Dwr Cymru is suffering pulling us back from that disaster.
People don't realise how much we can lose without the SNP. So many better services, free prescriptions, free university, free dentists for all under 26, free buses for all under 23, fairer disability benefits, free 30 hours of high quality childcare, baby boxes, nurses bursaries, Scottish child payments, Scottish welfare fund, we don't have thousands of schools crumbling with a risk of death to pupils and staff, they have protected our right to roam and wild camp, our teachers and nurses are better paid, we have the best performing A&E, there's so much more I could write, and that's all despite Tory cuts and having to subside things like the bedroom tax because of them. People in England are brainwashed by Tory media against the SNP, even those who don't like the Tories, it still biases them, they just can't see it. They should be asking why the Tories don't provide the same and instead writing off billions in fraud because they don't want to go to after themselves and their rich donors for corrupt covid contracts, not attack us for having it.
@@lauralishes1 I completely agree. Recent chaos aside the SNP have done wonderful things. Labour I could almost live with, but sadly any vote for Labour is a vote for the Tories. Not because of any fault by Labour (though they exist), but becaue inevitably Labour will lose an election (I think they lose 3/5, but Im not sure of numbers) and when they lose the Tories get in, and quite frankly at this point I'd vote for Alien Overlords rather than see another Tory government ruling over us. They are that bad. They have turned me from, "Scottish, or British... hmm, bit of both" to "Westminster is a hostile foreign government!"
@@robfodder5575 high population density makes utility infrastructure cheaper to build and maintain. I've worked for a few of the water companies, in this case at least the public one is better.
Capitalism: Privatise the profit, nationalise the debt.
Crony capitalism.
@@gee_emm Capitalism is crony to begin with if not restricted and regulated.
@@gee_emm That is a bullsh*t term used by people with cognitive dissonance.
Crony capitalism is just capitalism. The parts you're criticizing are enabled by the system itself.
If you disagree with those parts, then disagree with the system.
Imagine if we did this for anything else: Crony slavery is bad, slavery however..
@@gee_emm It's called Neo-liberalism and also it's just capitalism not a crony version
Yep...! Maggie T legacy still in full flow 40 years after she started to monetize all UKs infrastructure for personal gain.
The UK just can’t catch a break.
No heat, no food, water drying up, bills hiking, rent hiking, free movement destroyed, trade destroyed, overworked and underpaid, criminals in control…
Thanks remainers
@@anonomous8719
Brexiters fault.
What happens when you knowingly elect lying criminals because you'd rather be lied to than deal with the truth.
@anonymous8719 Didn't mention brexit. Guilty complex?
@@neilg6675 in the 1980s when they were privatised - when was brexit enacted in the 80s?
Everything leads back to Thatcher, evil incarnated.
A total witch
Water should NEVER have been privatised! Many of us tried to tell them at the time but were ignored. It must be re-nationalised. If Thames Water is going bankrupt anyway why can’t the government just take it back? The corporation (and the CEO etc.) is in charge of its own debts!
@@chrisj9700 Of course there was/ is money. Where's britain? The issue is England's privatised water system. Nationalisation will pay for itself in a decade and bills will be much lower. It is a natural monopoly and profit should not enter the equation. Water was privatised because the policy is a key tenet of the neoliberal project to undermine the state and transfer wealth to the rich. It was done for ideological reasons not the red herring you cite.
@@chrisj9700where was the money coming from when it was privatised.
Loaded a company with debt and managed to pay dividends and then has gone bankrupt.
@@chrisj9700 On what planet could government not afford the money necessary? England is the only country in the world with water privatised on the model used here. If every other country can manage nationalised water so can England. You are talking absolute nonsense.
@@chrisj9700 company is worthless so will cost nothing to take it over
@@chrisj9700 if one is borrowing, it is not profit, its debt
nation builds a service, a company comes in and makes a profit out of it, and when it collapses, gets tax payers to bail it out whilst still giving the CEO millions in bonus packages!
Welcome to Tory Britain!
Saying that, Blair didn't do anything either.
When corporations were doing this to America, we didn't know that it was just a dry run for what they planned to do to everyone on earth.
The rate of political execution by the public in the last 30 years suggest that on the whole we prefer to just bend over.
@@howardchambers9679Thatcher did say Blair was her greatest creation!
The money needs to be recovered and people need to be charged with fraud
Bit late for that now. They've made so much money and offshored it, its gone and we the taxpayers have to pick up the bill and fix something at great cost.
Their shareholders should pay back.... Water, railway's, power etc should be owned by the people of the UK!
You can make a profit - but you also share in the companies when they fail - and you should share in the failure. All government-owned organisations should operate under the same rules. Or they should be privatised.
Railways and water owned in Scotland.
@@dc6807 Don't worry- they do. And then some.
@@dc6807 Sounds more like how economics doesn't work- particularly for those "down the line". Which in this case is essentially us.
@@chrisj9700money? If they are bankrupt they get £1 for it. And we will still recoup what we can to cover their debts.
Things must be bad, Peter Hitchens is making sense.
I thought that. Couldn't believe I was agreeing with him!
For once he is absolutely right what is happening 😂
True. I'm so used to disagreeing with him, that caught me quite off guard.
Hes very wrong a lot (imo most) of the time, however his beliefs are always honest and thought out. One of the conservatives worthy of respect. Its a low bar.
It also means from time to time when you find yourself agreeing with him it doesn't feel as weird as others on the right who you know are doing it for some other reason.
Lol😂
She claims there was more investment yet the last reservoir built in the UK was before privatisation. Even though the population has increased by 10 million a 17% increase, we have less reservoirs now than then.
And those extra ten million don't get their water for free. It's not like they're a burden with no extra money coming in to cover them.
The conservative governments thatcherite privatisation of water and all the utilities have been disaster for the British consumer and what did new labour under Tony Blair do nothing because in reality like sir Keir starmer new Labour they support privatisation when the vast majority of the British public want to see all the utilities nationalised
It's also, even if true, an absolutely damning indictment of her party and it's failure/refusal to invest in key infrastructure. She's basically admitting to the whole Tory stereotype "we're going to under invest in public services and then point to our lack of investment as a reason to privatise"
@@drummingtildeath
All watas for free
Drops out the sky
Theere for me n thee.
Thames Water actually filled in reservoirs and sold the land for building
She keeps blaming the lack of or poor regulation, but I’m willing to bet if the regulator had been stricter over the years then she would have one those blaming “over regulation” for stifling the companies.
She is a self-serving, degenerate snake.
And if other privatised sectors are anything to go by, these "regulators" probably move quite easily between related private industry and the regulatory body.
None of OUR utilities should ever have been privatised.
We can't own utilities. That is impossible. If it is my utility, as well as yours, then we cannot simultaneously control it.
Fundamentally, Thames water had ZERO debt when privatised. Now it has £53 BILLION debt but since privatisation has paid £72 BILLION in DIVIDENDS to shareholders. This is tantamount to an institutionalised con job . Public money being syphoned off to private employees and investors while accumulating debt that has become unserviceable with the high interest rates. Clearly what Sunak meant when he said ‘hold your nerve’ was a message to the people who benefit from these institutionalised con jobs which appear to be quite legal but are obviously abhorrently unethical and unsustainable. Just like the credit crunch con job that was manufactured by greedy bankers these schemes allow shareholders and employees to accumulate vast wealth through clearly unsustainable and deceitful financial models. When the inevitable bubble of deceit bursts those people retain their wealth while government money is used to bail out the ‘too big to fail’ banks or the essential water companies. Then the dust settles and the same conmen start another institutional con job.
We figured out a long time ago in Northern Ireland what water charges was really about, hence why we will never agree to pay for it. Private enterprise is focused on profit, its all about returns and if you can get away with maintaining low investment in order to maximise returns, then any CEO will do it. With national assets, you have to do what's in the publics interest
@@johnboy14 totally agree. But it’s one thing to not invest in infrastructure - we already knew that but to paid share holders £72BN resulting in a crippling £52BN debt must be an abuse of all financial rules. I understand that they have now secured more private investment. That’s not a surprise any company that can use debt to pay shareholders is easy money for these investors. They know that their ROÍ is guaranteed. Meanwhile we get more sewage in our water and more outages due to lack of investment!!
Thanks alot for privatising the water industry Thatcher.
I read this in the voice of Rik from The Young Ones
@@heyhonpuds😂
thanks tony for renationalising in 97 oops you didnt you got rid of clause4
🤣🤣🤣
Nicky Morgan saying it's a failure of regulation is like saying you failed to regulate a scorpions behavior, you can't, it's a scorpion
A scorpion has more of a sense of morality than Nicky Morgan ever has
Ms Morgan has , especially if you squint ,a remarkable likeness to Wurzel Gummidge.
And who needs to write and enforce the regulation ?
The government !
So, the logic of Ms Morgan’s argument is that free enterprise cannot regulate itself.
It’s like putting a paedo in charge of an infants school.
I remember in I think 1989 when water was privatised and the main sales point was a private companies could raise the capital to replace all our old Victorian sewers and storm drains, and 33 years later I watched a CEO of one of the water companies tell a Parliamentary Select Committee that it may be necessary to increase the cost of water and its treatment because they needed to make large investments to replace our old Victorian sewers and storm drains.....This was the moment I knew that the privatisation of water and our railways for that matter was just a big criminal Ponzi scheme were dividends were just paid out with no return for the public and the profits shifted to the water companies overseas owners offshore accounts with very little tax payed in the UK, which has also occurred with our privatised railway companies. Our government criticise the way Putin runs the corrupt business practises in Russia, and yet I quite happy for our own population to pay through the nose for a poor service. And because of Brexit and we know longer need to abide by EU clean water regulations we can now show our freedom by dumping more raw sewage in our rivers and seas, to enhance profit, and the final insult because of mismanagement the British taxpayer may have to bail out Thames Water. The problem is we have too many investment financiers in our ruling party where if they did the moral thing it may affect their dividend earnings so they are quite happy with the corruption.
This is what no-one else seems to mention. They already had the money to upgrade and maintain everything. They ask for it again and no-one points out to them they already had the money.
I understand that the sale of the water companies raised £7.5 billion for the Treasury; the companies were almost immediately given £6.5 billion by the government to ease the changeover and improve investment. Since then, £65.9 billion has been paid out to shareholders up to 2022. The biggest fraud in history...
Much of Tory privatisation is fraud for financiers drain capital out of society. Shareholders take the risk of companies going down unfortunate that pension funds will suffer, it has been bad management that jas caused this situation that share holders have voted for
The people responsible should be in Jail.
I do not understand, why should shareholders be compensated? The company is £14bn in debt. This needs to be paid off before any shareholder takes any money. As someone on the panel commented any shares they hold are worthless
Let it go bankrupt and buy the assets off the administrators . It’s a badly run company which both the shareholders and the banks should suffer the consequences.
I think there is a case to be made about company employees that have bought into share schemes and also pension funds, these are normal people that have done nothing wrong. The major shareholders and the individuals that have directed, executed and financially benefited from this scandal should be criminally indicted.
If the government nationalizes the company then they inherit the debts.
@@zippymufo9765gov can set up a new company, buy assets off administrators, leave the 14bn debt behind, what's the problem
That's why it's theft
Regulations don't mean anything if breaching them only means a fine. If a company finds it cheaper to go against regulation and pay a fine than it is to follow the rules then they'll just pay the fine.
Yes. And it is not even about the companies, only about significant shareholders and top executives. Even if the company takes economic damage as a result of their actions, they still get their pay, their bonuses and dividends. They laden the company with debt only to compensate other financiers. This is essentially a Ponzi scheme. If the company goes down, so what? They happily retire or find another fat job at the first line at the through. The same goes for the fund managers. They don't really need to care about the pensioners money. However their fund performs eventually is of little real consequence to them.
They’ll just raise prices to compensate for the fine. The Goverment also needs to introduce price controls on water cost to prevent this.
Mostly because the company pays the fine not the one that got bonuses by making the decision not to invest or maintain
These companies factor in the fines before, they don’t care
@@MrJonnyl123 Then change the rules. A new deal for privately owned utility companies: run it effectively, without spivvery, or go to prison for a minimum of X years and be in line for extensive personal fines.
A perfectly feasible option that I think will immediately put off executive criminals of the type we're all too familiar with.
55 billion in debt added to the water companies since privitization, 64 billion given to shareholders... investment negligible to zero..... gee, who'd a thunk it.... Oh yeah, everyone but the billionaires and their lackies...
Surely no-one ever thought the robber barons would act in the public interest?
You’re right, the tories never have done, always their own interests and their donors
Britain is so stuffed
Baroness Nicky Morgan? Geeze, they'll give gongs to any fool these days.
I remember the head of Thames water stating on TV that water would only be a small part of its business and asset management would be their main job. Now the Assets have been stripped are we really surprised. The fat cats have had their profits and now there's nothing left, so off they go.
Let Thames Water fail, then nationalise and let the investors take the hit.
Problem with that is that many of the investors are pension companies (yes, I know). Them taking the hit may in turn hit your pension a bit down the line. We don't need another episode of Trussian lunacy in the pension market.
@@stephjsinclair Nationalization without compensation isn't going to happen. It's a leftoid fantasy.
The pensions that invested got the dividend yields at least, makes more sense for them to take the hit than everyone who didnt
I wouldn't pay for someone's shares in McDonalds if it went bust, why would I want to pay for pension funds losing their investment here? It's a private company let capitalism do its thing then nationalise after the collapse
@@PortilloMoment The same could be said for every publicly traded company. SHould the government bail out everybody for the sake of pensions or should it let the market do what it does? If they want privatization that they need to take the rough with the smooth.
The water companies paid nothing for the infrastructure. Who nominates the regulator.
The shareholders have robbed the people of all the money for water and now that they have to give back they are dumping it. They should be all held accountable.
Either sort it out or go to jail. I'm sure it'll be fixed very quickly when there are consequences for their actions.
Nice to hear Peter come around to positions Christopher held for years.
So has Peter...
@@poyzer Christopher was the brighter of the two without doubt. Peter would have never been for privatizing utilities even 15 years ago.
@@Logic-101I wouldn't say so, I just think they just had differing opinions. There's many things that Peter definelty got right over Christopher though including the iraq war.
Come around? He's been pro-nationalisation for his whole life, you just believe a bunch of lies about him because you dogmatically despise social conservatives.
@@Logic-101 Given that Peter has a background as a communist, I don’t quite agree.
Shareholders don't have to be compensated, they get a vote, they should have exercised control over the company. They don't get to cause the problem by taking the money out of the company and then get paid again as a reward for their poor investment choices.
And it gets even worse than that, because our fiduciary responsibility laws ensure that shareholders can literally not lose money on their holdings. They can only ever make money or remain in a neutral position. Far too many people in this country sincerely believe they should receive passive income for merely existing.
@@alexritchie4586 I wonder if you're aware that many shareholders are pension funds and the like? Leftoids always talk about "shareholders" like they're all billionaires 😂 I can't find a UK number, but in the US 60 percent of the middle class has investments, either through pensions or personal retirement accounts.
They shouldn't be compensated anyway.
Shareholders OWN the company the prepose of ANY company that is publicly traded is to make money for the OWNERS aka shareholders. Furthermore, do you own a pension? or know anyone that does. ? guess who a shareholder is then. Would you like your parents and grandparents to have lower pensions? ever wondered where a pension is invested? INTO COMPANIES !
@MinkieWinkle shareholders make and lose money all the time. We shouldn't pick winners and losers because businesses fail. This is capitalism, not lemon socialism.
This plan has worked as it was designed.
It was designed to do precisely this.
Sorry I thought if you believed in capitalism investments are risks and now we are being told we can't do the right thing because think of the investors they need to be given more money.
The invisible hand of the irrational market in your pocket!
Water in Scotland is NOT privatised. 😎
The only sensible choice!
@junglejamesie...nor Wales. No shareholders just run for the benefit of customers.
No, it's subsidised by England
Vote these Tories OUT!!!!
I'll wager that a majority of tory members are owners of shares in these crooked companies, reaping huge rewards from them without worrying about the consequences that are coming to light that we the public will no doubt have to fund. All the holders of these companies shares should give them up now and receive 10 pence per share. They will have made great profits from them anyway. Also, they don't need more money to sit on!
Ten pence a share is too much. When BHS was full of debt the whole company went for 1 pound
And arguably that was at least 1 pound too high!
And all the other parties
Thatcher's cycle coming to fruition.
I’m sure the wealth will trickle down anyyyyyy day now..
We Own It is the place to go for objective information about all the Utilities,Rail and the NHS.75th Anniversay of the NHS this week.
Andrew is correct, the assets have been stripped from the company, meanwhile the infrastructure investment that the company was liable for under privatisation, was not done. When the hunt for profit gets in the way of delivering the service, the profit motive needs to be dropped.
As a Dane I'm both mildly amused, sad and scared because of course this'd happen, and I'm sorry for your people but lastly: sick neolib theory is all politicians know in Denmark as well.
Same Here in Germany. Atleast we didnt privatize that much. Part of our train system (Deutsche Bahn) was privatized in the 90s and went from 0 debt and fast service to being a taxpayer funded pile of debt and slower+more expansive service for all ...
why cant we just sieze it? stolen goods are siezed by the police if a criminal robs a house, these people have robbed us for years and for what? why should we pay them to take it back? they ruined it, stole from us for years and we should take it off them with no compensation, dont like it? should have done a better job and not pocketed boat loads of cash while in charge!
How can water be privatised!? It’s an absolute joke…
Privatise anything and people will get rich from it, investment will fall until whatever it is we're talking about rail, water or the NHS becomes unworkable and there's nothing more to be creamed off, then the tax payer has to rebuild it.
Just when the energy companies finally lower the bills we find out water could be going up 40%.This stinks fishy to me.
I won't pay
Energy bills are still nearly double what they were.
You can blame the regulator all you want, but that does not mean that they should have been run responsibly; they have been used as a cash cow. As for the investors in the pension funds, then those that run the funds should be culpable; they should have been doing due diligence into that which they invested in in the first place.
I've never understood the "what about pensions" argument, when the benefit to those with pensions invested in water companies is probably going to be vastly outstripped by their increased bills.
Also, water bills aren't really the right way to fund pensions. National Insurance was supposed to do that.
They have basically done the same to the water company that Ivan Bosky and Michael Milken did to so many companies during their corporate raising in the 1980s. They left a landscape of ruin and misery
It appears to the general public that CEO posts are a bit like football manager roles, if you manage to get a football club relegated and get the sack, six months later ,you appear once again on the merry-go-round of high paid football manager jobs. Surlety when a extremely high paid CEO like Bailey fails so dramatically, she should start at amazon or Evrie the following week on the minimum wage
It's jobs for the boys. It's always been that way.
No, just a job on the bins.
Demand to see the bank accounts of each regulator and you will find out why water companies have been allowed to do what they are doing. Regulators are bought and paid for and will not interfere when their own bank accounts are inflating. We must get the regulators in court and find out why this was allowed to happen. This applies to ALL regulators as they are ALL corrupt. This is a scandal and we will be forced to pay for this negligence and greed
The pension funds will have to take the management to court when they loose money.
It's WATER!!! How did you guys allow it to be privatized?!!!
That women does know you pay for water and coupled with leveraging that's what would pay for investment. To compare it schools is bizarre.
She is and always was a swivel eyed lunatic almost as bad as Truss in her day, now she is just another Lords freeloader!
If pension funds are overexposed to a single company then the people running those funds aren't doing their jobs properly.
It's different with UK gilts/bonds since only the UK government sell those but they should really be buy bonds from other countries too for diversification, to spread the risk
Why one Earth would you pay compensation to shareholders if you re-nationalise a failing business. Anyone who buys shares knows they risky and if the shares are valueless now, well thats simply a symptom of a failing business and a poor investment choice. No-one was crying when they made heaps of money when the company was first floated. Give them nothing.
The discharges have only really been bad since the decision was obvious that we were leaving the EU. Before that the water companies were under EU regulation to keep rivers and beaches clean. The blue flag system was working. We've managed to wreck the quality of water in five years, while share holders have been making hay with our money. It's time to pay back and for water company boards to face the consequences for their profit chasing at the expense of our environment.
you guys bringing back the guillotine or public hangings? way overdue imho.
@@optiondezzo1513the above is being kind.
Pmsl, there is always some halfwit that blames Brexit.
@vivburgess4300....only because this Govt have just let them. It should be illegal to just dump sewage. People can catch serious illness which in return doesn't help the health system..or the person! The man at the top should be doing his job. Full stop. Not just taking the money he is paid. Which is generally thought too much.
@@janetmalcolm6191 Absolutely! I totally agree. The point I'm making is that the Tory government had EU rules keeping the water companies in check. The EU regulations were the regulators, which is why we had blue flag beaches and our rivers were getting cleaner. Since Brexit the clock has been turned back and the government have done nothing to stop it - except take the teeth out of our own regulatory body -Offwat. Tories only protect profit. Money is the only thing they revere.
Trying to force capitalism on the nation’s utilities has left us in a real mess.
They were a mess under public ownership, but you probably aren't old enough to remember.
Look at the NHS today for an example of an essential service under public ownership ?
@@jjefferyworboys8138 I’m old enough, we were underfunding them at the time, now we pay out more to prop up these companies than we paid to run them in the first place. Capitalism only works if there is competition and choice.
@@jjefferyworboys8138the nhs was one of the best run healthcare systems in the world not too long ago
You want to look at a disaster of a healthcare system under private ownership, just look at the US
@@chrisj9700privatisation unlocked sod all investment, as no improvement work has been done!
It's all very well claiming the shareholders have invested in the water industry but the reality is they haven't. Whenever the water companies talk about investing they say we will have to increase prices for this investment to take place. They never say we will have to decrease dividends or senior management bonuses, it's always the customer who will have to pay. Then of course when those prices go up part of that increase disappears in increased dividends and bonuses and investment in infrastructure is as little as they can get away with. Then when another problem occurs they run to the regulator and demand another increase in prices to cover the investment that they didn't make from the borrowing or previous price increase.
The water companies should be told you are not going to be allowed to increase your prices or your borrowing but you are going to face the fines for incompetence and be made to carry out the investment that you said you were going to do before. If that means your shareholders are not going to get a dividend well tough you've been raking it in for years now. It's your business and if you want a return, then invest in the business and don't expect others to do it for you.
One thing the government should not do however is give them more money for something they claimed they were doing before or nationalise them. If we take them back into public ownership the shareholders and investors will have to be paid compensation so they will once again make money. No they should be allowed to go bust that's the free market and the way capitalism works. Then when they go under and the administrators are brought in the government should announce loud and clear that they will not support any other company that buys them and that company will have to do the back log of work at their own cost. When no buyer comes forward then the government should take the assets from the administrator. The 'investors' who have made billions can suffer the loss of the business, that again is the free market, and the financial institutions who loaned them the money should be paid a pittance on the pound for their reckless lending. This time those that have made money on the back of the tax payer should have to face the consequences of the free market that they claim to believe in.
Spot on. The best comment on here so far.
Yes, the only reason the company is worth money at all, it seems, is that they're a monopoly, and the faith that nobody is ever going to lose money because the government will step in
I agree totally that the shareholders have had their money in the form of dividends that were made by the company incurring debt and not actual profits. As such if the board and investors just wish to walk away then they should not be compensated for doing so.
The Energy companies keep talking about shutting off power (drum roll) because they didn't invest in clean energy or in infrastructure
Peter Hitchens has it spot on.
In France they kept the assets in public ownership and put the maintenance out to tender - to allow real competition
@@lasttempoinparis the way water was dealt with made sense - assets in public ownership and allow real competition for the maintenance, in the UK we have local monopolies - which increased debt to pay dividends - criminal
That's essentially the system we have in the UK.
@@agt155 no, it is nothing like the system in the UK, the assets are held by private companies here
@@offlimits4635 Under license. They don't really own anything, they are just responsible for it.
@@agt155 certainly not the same as in France - only maintenance is contracted out.
The shareholders should NOT be compensated any differently than shareholders of any private company would be that goes bankrupt - and has to be sold for £1. Likewise those holding debt with the company should not be compensated either. They chose to lend to or invest in the company and if they made bad decisions in doing so, well then they must suffer the consequences. The fact that many of the investors and shareholders are pension funds is irrelevant. Why should I, as a taxpayer, pay for their bad decisions? As a former Equitable Life pension fund holder who only received 25% compensation from the government instead of the statutory requirement of 90% when the company went bust because of bad decisions by the board (and failure of the then FSA to do it's job of regulating the company) I feel all the more strongly about this situation with Thames Water.
I feel sorry for the poor over worked and stressed CEO who missed her £400,000 bonus. She must be worried about her pension investments as well.
someone outta start a goFundMe for her! thoughts n' prayers
Maybe she needs to cut back on cheese sandwiches?
I think biggest issue is that compensating the investors will only get blamed on nationalisation and never on the companies incompetence. Which will lead to the next right wing government getting in and privatising it instantly again at a cut down price.
It is worth noting that the Tories didn't reverse the nationalisation of Railtrack.
It's not incompetence, this is exactly how they planned it to work. Enrich the shareholders and CEOs and when it fails, get a government bailout. Then start the whole process over again. Welcome to capitalism and privatization.
What will it take for people to stop voting Tory?
Write up a constitution and enshrine public services and utilities to make it nigh on impossible to privatise them, then. So much of what the Tories get away with is possible due to there being no written rules about how government should actually function, what's out of bounds and what's not.
@@86pp73
Austria in 2019 forbade the privatisation of water provision via its constitution.
Water privatisation in Austria is thus henceforth unconstitutional.
My friend worked at Yorkshire water and they all got shares in Yorkshire water. The company was taken over by a consortium of banks and they were made to sell all their shares back. Nationalise the water companies not the debt. Share values going to 0 for these nasty investment companies that have stripped our assets would do wonders for reducing inflation.
Make those that profit, pay it back. Let's clean up our rivers and that often sullied concept- ACCOUNTABILITY
Bankrupt. Smell ya later.
This is competition
Privatisation is literally a license to print money; with Thames Water, the debt went from zero to billions, all of which was given to shareholders as dividends. No investment was made in the infrastructure, again this was funnelled to shareholders and now it's been drained to collapsing point and the owners will simply dump it and walk away with their stolen money completely untouched by inconveniences such as laws or regulations.
That’s Capitalism, privatisation all the way.
The board in charge of that water company should face criminal charges , how have they been allowed to get away with day light robbery 😒
If Thames Water goes bankrupt then the shareholders have LOST their investment ... they should get NOTHING.
Isn't the whole thing about shares that its a risk and not a guarantee?
Privatisation was the asset stripping of national assets. It was never about efficiency, purely and simply it was about Conservative ideology which oppose national ownership. All over Europe nationalised industry's work and work very efficiently, why does it work there when it doesn't in Britain. Answer, they don't have Britain's Conservative Party.
We need to stop this!
what they did to water companies they did to the gas storage..
An absolute disgrace
How did the Romans manage the aqueducts? Better than us now no doubt, as some still standing and functioning!
So don't fine the companies, bring in legislation that would jail the bosses for their criminality.
Yet another example of the awful legacy of Margaret Thatcher.
When are the people who did this going to jail? Until this happens, it will continue.
Ofwat said this is normal business practice. Dumping debt onto a company. So it didn’t stop it.
You may want to look at debt for Arsenal, Manchester United and Spurs have and they are just football clubs not huge utilities !
Why Do Share Holders NEED compensation? It's Their Debt Thames Water Doesn't Get Taxpayers Money For Fraud?! They Should Be in Jail?
I hope the people calling for the privatisation of the NHS get the point now.
The thieves that own these companies should be forced to pay back their stolen money and then sent to prison!
Incredible that they are billions in debt but have paid out billions in dividends! Who will end up paying for the debt? WE WILL! its a fking disgrace. they have literally been giving the shareholders our money this whole time and now we're gonna get stung again.FFS!
The water companies, on average, have paid out, over the last 30 years, £30 per annum in dividends to their shareholders for each and every person and child in the UK.
shares in a company that has a Victorian dated infrastructure which needs massive repairs costing billions, shareholders get massive dividends and declare it bankrupt in a few years, easy money with no morals.
If you are for privatization, why not privatize the armed forces? what is the argument?
"it's theft" is the headline . If that headline was written about me walking off with something I hadn't paid for I'd have the police knocking on my door and quite possibly be on my way to jail. Double standards ?
Since privatisation the water companies have accrued £50 billion plus in profits, most of which has been used to line the pockets of shareholders and executives with little reinvestment in the infrastructure. Never mind bringing the water back under National control, take it back, no expenditure on buying back something that has been stolen from the country.
This happens in the U.S. also. Although my services are awesome its not the same in other areas like Texas.
Renationalise or get stuck in an endless taxpayer bailout of these privatised companies.
May as well pay taxes directly to private company shareholders. ( would save a bit on paperwork ).
As someone else pointed out, if the UK's water industry had not been privatised and if investment levels had been less than needed (as they have been under privatisation), then the taxpayer STILL would have had fifty seven BILLION Pounds that weren't doled out to shareholders to spend on other things.
Privatisation was Just the usual lazy government solution, the water in a terrible state , the whole council job mentality of a lot of the workers and the service was bad, look it up whole towns went without water for weeks. But they could have turned it around with a bit of effort.
@@mikehunt8823 I don't need to look it up. I lived in the UK from 1971-2007. I was there, thanks. I don't recall any major water shortages or "whole towns without water for weeks", except during the the drought of 1975/76 and the Camelford West disaster in 1988 (caused by the error of a private supplier company). Neither of those were within the control of local councils as the water utilities pre-privatisation were regional.
When they were privatised the government wrote off £5Bn of debt. They had a blank slate the work on the problems and chose to line their shareholders' pockets, as every private company can. But that is precisely why utilities need to be publicly owned, so that when stuff isn't fixed the politicians can hold management accountable.
Water?
Water belongs to
services of general interest like policing, fire prevention /- brigade, energy aso. Privatization brings in extraneous interests, most obviously but limited to profit for third parties. To organize water supply by private companies is a crime. Having access to water is a human right and obviously a question of survival. It is the highest of all duties of any politician, govt, and parliament to get water supply organized for everyone at a low expense for every single citizen as all of the other services of general interest. Otherwise they completely failed.
Your govt has been and is failing on you on so many levels but you don’t want to realize and accept it. It is not unlikely that you will have unrest in the next few years.
Was just getting interesting and in detail and then the segment ended. Please continue
Hi this has got to stop 3 years to fix a leaking pipe southern water and it is still leaking just left.
Infrastructure should always be run by governments, as a human right not for profit
People need to go to jail for the wromgs this time, not just say sorry and walk away or resign the responsibility !!!!! its scandalious
Profit from national assets belong to the country not privare and foreign shareholder's
I thought the sewage issue was discovered months ago. Has that still not been addressed!?????
Privatizing essential public services like water was disgusting!