Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-take-water-back-public-hands

THE crisis of capitalism is running out of your taps and pouring into our rivers. Britain’s water industry is lurching towards calamity, poisoned by the priorities of profit and abetted by politicians in the pocket of the privateers.

The largest water company in the country, Thames Water, appears to be on the edge of insolvency after its investors refused to pump in cash essential to the company’s survival — apparently because the reluctance of regulator Ofwat to authorise even steeper increases in bills to households made it an unattractive bet.

And alarm was spread about the annual Oxford-Cambridge boat race on Saturday having to row through the sewage-ridden Thames, with doubts being cast on maintaining the tradition of throwing the cox of the winning crew in the river on health and safety grounds.

Now there are calls for the government to declare a national emergency as discharges of raw sewage into rivers and seas across Britain reach a record high.

These are the fruits of the handing over of the most basic resource to the tender mercies of monopoly capital. The sewage in the rivers is one side of the coin, the riches sitting in shareholders’ bank accounts is the other.

…

Nationalisation may be forced on the government in the case of Thames Water. But state control can only work in a context of planning, investment and a role for both workers’ and consumer interests.

That was Labour Party policy until Keir Starmer abandoned it. It is time the labour movement demanded its reinstatement.

Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-take-water-back-public-hands