Campaigners gather on Fistral Beach, Newquay, as they take part in a National Day of Action on Sewage Pollution. Picture date: Saturday April 23, 2022.
WATER company bosses were paid almost £15 million in bonuses last year despite overseeing 825 unlawful sewage discharges a day, leaving every river in England and many coastal waters polluted.
Labour vowed today to “hold water bosses to account for negligence over unlawful discharges” and a campaign group is gathering tens of thousands of signatures on an online petition calling for the bonuses to be scrapped.
The petition has been launched by pressure group 38 Degrees, whose name derives from the angle at which fallen snow turns into an avalanche.
The group said: “Despite sewage being pumped into our rivers and seas 825 times a day last year, water company CEOs received nearly £15 million in bonuses.
Starmer’s unfitness as leader didn’t just emerge when he conned his way into Labour top job, at least according to survey of staff during his tenure as DPP
Starmer CPS, image thanks to the Skwawkbox
Keir Starmer and his acolytes like to make much about the fact that he was the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) before becoming an MP and therefore ran the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
But according to a survey of staff about halfway through his five-year tenure, he ran it badly – and almost into the ground.
According to an Evening Standard article in 2011, the survey found that 88% of staff thought Starmer and his subordinates ran the service badly – and four out of five thought Starmer’s and his team’s values were not consistent with those of a proper CPS.
Instead of taking the criticism on the chin and changing how he ran the CPS, Starmer blamed the staff and forced them to undergo ‘retraining’:
The Crown Prosecution Service in London is badly managed and failing, according to a damning survey of its own staff leaked to the Standard.
Only one in 14 believes that planned reforms will improve prosecution rates, while just one in 12 feels that “change is managed well” in the organisation. When senior CPS officials were told the results, it is understood that instead of speaking to staff they ordered “retraining” for them.
The embarrassing verdict by the CPS’s own people, contained in a 12-page document passed to the Standard, threatens to heap more pressure on the Government which has ordered the closure of 100 courts and a 25 per cent reduction in the CPS budget. The cuts have led to mounting fears over the public’s reduced access to justice.
Prosecutors dropped tens of thousands of criminal cases in 2007, despite having enough evidence to bring offenders to court. The CPS halted action against more than 25,000 defendants because it was not in the “public interest” to continue. More than 2,000 cases destined for crown court were also thrown out because it failed to get files ready in time.
The sharpest criticism is reserved for CPS bosses. Just 21 per cent of staff believe the actions of Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, and his senior staff “are consistent with the CPS’s values”. Only 12 per cent believe “the organisation as a whole is managed well”.
A source in the CPS said staff were amazed by the retraining order, saying: “It was a strange reaction. It seemed like the higher-ups were trying to brainwash us into going along with all the damaging reforms.”
Banged up #Assange, banged up kids for stealing bottles of water and tried to get an autistic kid extradited to the US while failing to prosecute the killers of Mr Tomlinson or Jean Charles de Menezes not to mention Jimmy Saville. You are a monster and that’s your legacy.
A typical reaction to Keir Starmer’s chest-thumping
According to an overwhelming majority of CPS staff, Starmer’s unfitness to lead did not begin when he conned his way into Labour’s top job – and his petty, vindictive response to their criticism is entirely in keeping with his track record as the ‘leader’ of a political party.
LABOUR’S internal war intensified today as former leader Jeremy Corbyn tied the party’s unprecedented decision to ban him from standing again to a broader assault on democratic rights.
At the same time his successor Sir Keir Starmer insisted on LBC radio that he had never supported or been friends with Mr Corbyn, whom he described as a “friend” when running for the leadership.
The Islington North MP, who was banned two weeks ago from being a Labour candidate in Islington North at the next election by the national executive committee (NEC), penned a piece in the Islington Tribune condemning the “insult to the millions of people who voted for our party in 2017 and 2019” as well as to those who supported Sir Keir’s leadership bid on the basis he would, as he claimed, maintain Mr Corbyn’s radical policies.
Keir Starmer has accused the government of “turning Britain’s waterways into an open sewer”, as data showed raw discharges were sent into English rivers 825 times a day last year.
Private water companies have been consistently accused of failing to take action, and the Environment Agency admitted there were more than 300,000 spillages into rivers and coastal areas in 2022, lasting for more than 1.75m hours.
The alarming figures led to calls for the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, to resign, and added to the pressure on Rishi Sunak to do more to tackle the issue.
Clean water has become a politically charged topic in the runup to May’s local elections, and Labour and the Liberal Democrats are mounting campaigns against the government’s record on raw sewage.
Extinction Rebellion has been joining with other groups to campaign against UK government policy of treating rivers as “open sewers” but the phrase was originally mine. Granted it’s obvious but is there an earlier use of treating rivers as open sewers than mine?
The Morning Star has an article discussing how the left should respond to Starmer. One comment: The next general election is expected in 17 months or so, I suggest that it’s the sooner the better if there is to be a party challenge to Starmer’s.
