Pevenseagull
meh
- Jul 20, 2003
- 20,693
Were going to give people £15.
Now giving people another £100.
'Faulty valve'
f*** these companies
Now giving people another £100.
'Faulty valve'
f*** these companies
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[Drinking] South west water up compensation
- Thread starter Pevenseagull
- Start date
Privatise them - more competition will means lower prices and better quality service for consumers and customers 
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Water is essential for life, not a choice And should never be for profit.
I could use £100. Someone once told me there is a lot of money to be made in providing people with water.
Privatise them - more competition will means lower prices and better quality service for consumers and customers
Ha ha ha ha ha yeah, we’ve privatised almost everything available and none of things have happened. Most of our services are terrible and some of the most expensive in Europe.
Guy Fawkes
The voice of treason
- Sep 29, 2007
- 8,297
So do valves never go faulty if they are owned and run by the state?
We see constant politicking about the lack of money in public services and cuts being made, so why do people think nothing can and will go wrong if under state control? Surely the evidence says it could and probably would happen regardless of who was in charge
Part of the reason to privatise water was simply that the state couldn't afford the level of investment required to improve to the standards required (especially drinking water quality) so how do people make the blind leap that suddenly the state will solve everything and all problems that require major investment to deliver will (seemingly) immediately happen overnight and that the state will be able to easily finance them without taking money away from other parts of the services that taxation and Government debt has to pay for? (hopefully not more PFI deals that cost multiples more than they should)
Government borrows from private sector investors to deliver investments = good
Private borrows from from private sector investors (often at better rates than Governments would get) = bad / greed / disgusting that private investors profit from these things, shouldn't be allowed, etc..
Society's thinking is so messed up at times
I seem to recall that the state (i.e. the government) didn't WANT to borrow money to invest . For a reason which I'm not sure was valid, borrowing by water authorities counted towards the PSBR, even though they were not state-owned (which some people might not realise). I suspect it was more of a political thing. At the end of the day, as Mrs T quite rightly said, the cake that has to be sliced up is only so big, but she then allowed the privatised companies to make the cake significantly bigger (see your water bills) and then take a massive slice away in dividends that wasn't needed previously. The model was always bound to drive a certain behaviour i.e. to maximise dividends and push the boundaries of the regulator as far as they could in a game of cat and mouse. What has happened at Thames Water recently - they are apparently defaulting on their debt repayment (£14bn) - is awful. Thames Water was debt-free at the point of privatisation. They built up a debt of £14bn, with all interest payments being paid, or due to be paid, by the consumer. The owners have withdrawn £7bn in dividends from a virtually risk-free operation, whereby the government has to give them 25 years notice to withdraw their licence (I think I've got that timescale right - certainly used to be the timescale the last time I heard it mentioned by the FD of another water company.
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 36,023
trouble is a lot of focus on the debt and the dividends (mostly to holding companies that hold the debt) and no attention to £190bn of investment.
would be better if they operated as non-profits, then maybe the investment might get more noticed. i doubt they'd be run much differently, or the regulator take more action.
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Are there any examples of this? Genuine question because I'm surprised - personally I'd be happier lending money to the UK treasury than any private company and so I would tend to demand a lower rate of interest.
Good to have the discussion, though. And your point about publicly-run organisations making mistakes is quite valid, of course.
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
The Water companies haven’t invested a penny, but are still paying dividends to their shareholders. Raw sewage is being poured into rivers, lakes and sea.
They are being fined for breaking the law but charging customers to foot the bill.
happypig
Staring at the rude boys
Anything can go wrong in any system.
That’s why you should keep essential spares so that when something fails it can be swiftly replaced.
However when the accountants get their hands on things they decide that it costs too much keeping spares everywhere so they move them to regional depots. Then they decide that having several items held regionally is “money sitting on a shelf”so they centralise them.
Then they decide that holding spares at all is a waste and they rely on vendors to send them out when needed. Of course the vendor’s accountants have had the same idea so you end up with hardly any.
The accountants (on both sides) are happy as they have a service level agreement with (not very punitive) compensation when the SLA is missed.
I lost count of the times I had customers out of service because spares were en-route from a vendor at the other end of the country.
Really or wind-up?
Guy Fawkes
The voice of treason
- Sep 29, 2007
- 8,297
How do you know whether South west water had any spares or not? Have they said that the issue here is that they didn't have the part and there will be a lead time before it arrives? and that caused the water quality issues that has led to some getting ill because they kept supplying this infected water due to not having a part to resolve the issue?
I doubt whether it being under public or private ownership, that individual valves would be monitored to identify the moment they go faulty, given the high number of valves any water network will have.
They've failed on water quality, with parasites found in the supply.
Rightly question why sampling didn't pick this up earlier and led to the reservoir or whatever the source was from being taken out of the network before it reached a stage where customers could get ill (presumably to be cleaned which would take time as i guess it would need to be drained and disinfected, repaired, refilled, sampled & passed before being returned to use and that wouldn't necessarily be quick.) but it's unfair to presume that all the water companies would have missed it too through their sampling regime, and led to customers getting ill before it was discovered (or that it definitely couldn't have happened if state owned)
One thing this does also show though, is things like Fergal Sharkey challenging water company CEOs to drink waste water as a really stupid thing to demand. Water has to be treated first to make it potable / drinkable, and his comments show a complete lack of awareness about what it takes to make and deliver clean drinkable water but makes a good headline and gets public opinion to turn on water companies as the public ask why not drink it?. There is a reason why it (untreated rainwater, etc) goes to waste and is not redirected and distributed back in to the clean water supply, and this water quality failure in SWW is one.
Undertones' Feargal Sharkey challenges water boss to drink sewage overflows that firm claims is 'mostly rainwater'
The musician and environmental activist said he will donate £1,000 to charity if water boss Lawrence Gosden accepts his dare.
Guy Fawkes
The voice of treason
- Sep 29, 2007
- 8,297
NHS hospital trusts paying hundreds of millions in interest to private firms
Exclusive: Guardian analysis of hospital trust accounts found 101 owe about £50bn in future unitary PFI payments
www.theguardian.com
There were some examples where the deal signed meant that they'd be making payments for the length of the contract, but at the end of the contract, the trust / state wouldn't own the asset.
There were some deals signed that failed to include potential sources of incomes going to the state but remaining in the investors hands and that the more successful it was, the more it cost the state. (example below is of an airport that was built in Scotland where the developer would own the terminal, enjoy all the retail rights, and was paid a charge for each passenger - although in this case, the deal was ended early by it being brought out but still cost the tax payer an estimated 25m to buy them out when it cost £9.6m to build)
PFI contract at airport costs [pounds]25m to cancel Executive: old deal 'not value for money'
THE Scottish Executive has agreed to buy out the controversial [pounds]9.6m PFI contract for Inverness airport terminal, which has earned the…
www.heraldscotland.com
"Today's announcement is the culmination of more than three years of campaigning to bring about the end of this PFI deal - one of the most inept deals this Labour government has ever mishandled.
"The terminal originally cost [pounds]9.6m. However, after only six years, the PFI repayments have almost equalled that and the PFI owners are expected to receive a lottery-style payout of more than [pounds]25m.
"The PFI owners are therefore expected to have received around [pounds]35m. If so, they will have received four times as much as the building cost."
He added: "The fundamental f law in the PFI deal was that the more successful the airport became, the more it had to shell out to the merchant bankers. For every new passenger at the airport, the bankers pocketed an extra [pounds]3.
There is also often a higher cost for work done by the state as a lot of companies prefer not to work for them (lots of hoops to jump through, like getting on the approved supplier lists, etc) so often put inflated estimates in for jobs as they simply are not keen to do it, so something that should cost a private individual / company say £100k to do may cost the state £400k. Sadly often people agreeing to these overpriced deals are people that don't have a clue how much things should really cost, so look at the tenders they receive and pick from those, rather than question why they are all far higher than they should be.
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Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Back to the water companies.
Privatisation is a legalised scam. Since the 1990s, investment from the privatised English water companies has gone down 15%, and they’ve built up a debt mountain of over £60 billion (paid for by us). Meanwhile, shareholders have received £72billion - £2 billion a year on average
Privatisation is a legalised scam. Since the 1990s, investment from the privatised English water companies has gone down 15%, and they’ve built up a debt mountain of over £60 billion (paid for by us). Meanwhile, shareholders have received £72billion - £2 billion a year on average