The lie
Thames Water is demanding just three things. It wants to massively increase prices for its customers who would have no choice but to pay them or have no water. It wants its regulator to cut its fines because it cannot afford to pay them and it wants to keep paying dividends to its shareholders.
Now do you really think Thames could suggest anything like that if it was a truly private company like all the others? Obviously not, any other company would have to cut prices to keep customers and improve service too, it would have to pay all its fines in full and if that meant it couldn’t afford to pay dividends then its shareholders would just have to suck it up.
If after all that it went to the wall, its rivals and competitors would step in and steal its market share, customers might have to be protected and supplied while the transition was made but that would be it; the shareholders would take the hit, the managers would be looking for new jobs after being complete failures and capitalism would continue its onward march.
It all goes to show what a disaster the privatisation of the water industry has been, and what a con. This is not really privatisation, this is monopoly profits with no risk at all and no liabilities that you cannot walk away from. The taxpayer was always going to be left holding the baby if anything went wrong because you cannot last one day without water and the cynical owners of the water companies knew that full well.
That is why they have the government by the throat, that and the fact that if ministers let Thames go to the wall, the taxpayer will be liable for its huge debts.
It has all been a lie and a con. The owners of Thames have made billions at our expense, the regulator has been captured, neutered and is now ignored.
The government will probably capitulate, it is too embarrassing and expensive to do anything else, at least for the Conservatives. After all this was all their idea, their plan and their triumph, it would be too much to ask them to accept that it has all been a fraud and it has cost the country billions.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
As Margaret Drabble put it “England’s not a bad country... It’s just a mean, cold, ugly, divided, tired, clapped-out, post-imperial, post-industrial slag heap covered in polystyrene hamburger cartons.” (She obviously forgot the bit about polluted waterways)