... on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Morning Star Editorial: The neoliberal model of privatised water is sunk

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/neoliberal-model-privatised-water-sunk

INVESTMENT in Britain’s water utilities took a dive under Thatcher’s government. By 1980 investment by the regional water authorities dropped by two-thirds as the neoliberal straitjacket into which public expenditure was confined limited their ability to raise capital.

Contrast this to the present situation where the now privatised water companies have racked up millions in loans that seem more valued as a source of ready cash to pay bonuses, dividends and sweeteners than infrastructure investment.

The total debt burden of the dozen privately owned water companies stands at £65 billion which this year’s Commons report says is perilously close to the 70 per cent gearing at which commercial credibility is compromised.

Jo Maugham, director of the Good Law Project, which has been involved in legal challenges to a number of water companies, says: “The water sector has been poorly regulated for decades. It has been poorly regulated primarily by allowing water companies to over extract water from aquifers and reservoirs but also cash from operating entities within the water companies, and they’ve been allowed to underinvest in water infrastructure.”

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The logical case for public ownership is sometimes challenged by the suggestion that taking these failing enterprises into public ownership would be prohibitively expensive.

This is, of course, true if these enterprises were to offered for sale at the price their owners value them. A socialist government armed with a popular mandate and backed by a working class armed with both resolve and the necessary instruments of coercion might simply dispossess these rapacious incompetents and instruct them, individually and as a class, to find an alternative way of making a living freed of the responsibilities of ownership.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/neoliberal-model-privatised-water-sunk

Post author:dizzy
Post published:28 August 2025
Post category:Cost of Living crisis Eat shit Margaret Thatcher nationalise Neo-liberalism plutocracy privatise Socialism the filthy rich
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Outrage as Thames Water allowed to pay just a fifth of record pollution fines

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/outrage-thames-water-allowed-pay-just-fifth-record-pollution-fines

THAMES WATER will only have to pay a fifth of its record £122.7 million in fines under a “sweetheart deal,” with industry regulator Ofwat branded “outrageous” by water campaigners today.

The heavily indebted utility firm was handed the penalties in May for failures over sewage treatment and paying out dividends.

It has already passed a deadline for paying them by August 20 but has now agreed to pay only a fifth by the end of next month, with the remainder subject to securing a private rescue deal and cash injection.

Ofwat said that it had set a final “backstop date” of March 31 2030 for payment of the remaining penalties whether or not Britain’s biggest water company avoids insolvency.

It would have 30 calendar days to pay up after securing such a deal or at the end of an insolvency process that would see it placed into a government special administration scheme.

River Action chief executive James Wallace said: “It is outrageous that Thames Water has been allowed to kick its fine down the road.

“This fine must be paid by those responsible, not future owners and investors.

“Ordinary people do not get to walk into court and say, ‘I’ll pay the rest of my penalty if I get a better paying job.’ Yet that is exactly the sweetheart deal Thames Water has secured.

“This is not accountability. The investors who drained the company and pocketed £170 million in dividends in October 2023 and March 2024 may never feel the consequences.

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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/outrage-thames-water-allowed-pay-just-fifth-record-pollution-fines

April 2023 Surfers Against Sewage and Extinction Rebellion protests in St Agnes, Perranporth, Truro and Charlestown which unveiled spoof Blue Plaques to the MPs and Conservative Government who allowed raw sewage to be dumped in the sea (Image: Surfers Against Sewage)

Post author:dizzy
Post published:28 August 2025
Post category:crap pretend Labour Eat shit Labour Party nationalise Neo-liberalism plutocracy privatise
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‘Never-ending cost-of-living crisis’

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/never-ending-cost-living-crisis

Labour urged to reform energy pricing over surprise rise in bills

LABOUR was urged to reform energy pricing yesterday as unions and campaigners warned that a surprise 2 per cent rise in bills will hit 12 million homes already in fuel poverty.

GMB union hit out at the “never-ending cost-of-living crisis” after regulator Ofgem announced that the average household’s energy bill is to rise to £1,755 a year from October — despite wholesale prices falling by 2 per cent over the past three months.

Standing charges — the figure consumers pay per day to have energy supplied to their homes — are set to rise by 4 per cent for electricity and a whopping 14 per cent for gas, or 7p a day.

The 2.21 per cent year-on-year rise means average annual energy bills will be £713 higher than in winter 2020/21.

GMB national secretary Andy Prendergast said: “People are already struggling under a never-ending cost-of-living crisis.

“Any increase in energy prices could crash millions of household budgets.

“To make any green transition work, the UK has to be pragmatic: taking advantage of cheap gas prices to cut bills instead of subsidising heat pumps for the richest.

“The poorest in society must not be the ones who bear the biggest burden for saving our planet.”

Energy minister Michael Shanks blamed wholesale gas prices remaining 75 per cent above their levels before Russia invaded Ukraine.

But End Fuel Poverty Coalition co-ordinator Simon Francis said: “We need urgent reforms to fix the broken pricing system, steps to ensure households benefit from targeted support for cold homes, a nationwide insulation and ventilation drive, reform of energy trading rules and lower standing charges.

“Meanwhile, expansion of renewables and upgrading the grid must be funded by investment or by tackling excess network and energy company profits, not by loading more costs onto struggling households.”

Pointing out that gas unit rates remain almost double pre-crisis levels and the cost of electricity in Britain is set by the most expensive generator — usually gas-fired power stations — he added: “It’s time for action — wind and solar are far cheaper ways of generating power and North Sea gas reserves are unable to meet domestic heating needs from 2027.”

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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/never-ending-cost-living-crisis

Post author:dizzy
Post published:28 August 2025
Post category:Cost of Living crisis crap pretend Labour Labour Party Neo-liberalism
Post comments:0 Comments

Zarah Sultana speaks on main stage at Forwards Festival

https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/zarah-sultana-speaks-on-main-stage-at-forwards-festival

Zarah Sultana made a surprise appearance on the main stage at Forwards, delivering a passionate speech to the crowd before introducing Nia Archives.

The MP for Coventry South resigned from the Labour Party in July in order to co-found a new grassroots party with fellow independent MPs including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Earlier on Sunday, Sultana had taken part in a panel discussion called The Movement Forward: Pissed off with Politics on the Information Stage at the festival on the Downs.

On the main stage, Sultana said: “A lot of people are fed up. I am too. Fed up with being told that this is just how things are. Fed up with being asked to settle for less. Fed up with the idea that the best we can do is manage decline, implement austerity, blame migrants, Muslims and trans people, enable genocide in Gaza, and have fascism growling at the door.

“But here’s the truth: politics is not only what happens in parliament or on the news. Politics is us. It’s here. It’s all of you.

“It’s people deciding they won’t accept the world as it is. It’s people daring to imagine the world as it should be.

“Every great change we’ve ever seen, from rights at work, to votes for women, to the NHS didn’t come from the top down.

“It came because ordinary people stood up and said: we aren’t going to take this anymore.

“And when people come together with that conviction, something powerful happens: hope.

“Not the shallow kind that tells us to just wait and see, but the deep kind that comes when we believe we can build something new, and we start doing it.”

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Article continues at https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/zarah-sultana-speaks-on-main-stage-at-forwards-festival