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Tag: privatised water companies

  • Morning Star Editorial: Exposing Reform’s ‘corporate crackdown’ means promising a real one

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    See the original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/exposing-reforms-corporate-crackdown-means-promising-real-one

     Sinister: Zia Yusuf

    REFORM’S pledge to crack down on employers for hiring people without legal residence in Britain is a bid to get back on the front foot.

    The scandal over Nigel Farage’s wealthy sponsors refuses to go away, and together with a fresh face at Number 10 has cost Reform its top spot in opinion polls.

    Plan A, to reassert his greater popularity with the public than the mainstream parties via a staged showdown in Clacton, has gone badly wrong. Since nobody at Westminster would play ball he can triumph only over various unknowns and joke candidates, which will prove nothing.

    So Zia Yusuf has been deployed to announce Plan B. It too is meant to showcase Reform’s anti-Establishment credentials. Prison sentences for corporate bosses who hire illegal labour. Crippling fines, up to 10 per cent of global turnover.

    This is a sinister policy. But it isn’t stupid. The impunity of a boss class who routinely break the law is a source of genuine resentment.

    It is why contracts-for-cronies and Covid lockdown breaches by the Boris Johnson gang brought down that premiership.

    It is one reason the conduct of privatised water companies is so explosive.

    Excrement-strewn beaches, unsafe drinking water and the discharge of huge volumes of raw sewage into rivers are outrageous enough as it is — but the knowledge that the CEOs in charge receive salaries in the millions, that the flow of dividends to shareholders is as constant as that of filth into our waterways, is incendiary.

    Reform hopes to tap into hostility to corporate fat cats. It pretends to champion working-class Brits: “Corporate CEOs have been making a fortune by hiring illegal workers and undermining British youngsters. Reform will jail them and stop illegal working for good — we will stand up for British workers.”

    It will not, of course. Reform would repeal the Employment Rights Act, stripping millions of rights to sick and holiday pay. Farage says the minimum wage should be cut for young workers.

    …

    Morning Star Editorial continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/exposing-reforms-corporate-crackdown-means-promising-real-one

    Nigel Farage is scathing at the £250,000 cost to the taxpayer of his unnecessary and ridiculous Clacton-on-Sea election campaign that he caused to avoid scrutiny and acccountability for the £5MILLION 'gift' that he didn't declare.
    Nigel Farage is scathing at the £250,000 cost to the taxpayer of his unnecessary and ridiculous Clacton-on-Sea election campaign that he caused to avoid scrutiny and acccountability for the £5MILLION ‘gift’ from his filthy rich friend that he didn’t declare.
    Nigel Farage explains that he's called another byelection in Clacton-on-Sea because he should be able to secretly enrich himself without scrutiny and accountabilty and that the rules shouldn't apply to him.
    Nigel Farage explains that he’s called another byelection in Clacton-on-Sea because he should be able to secretly enrich himself without scrutiny and accountabilty and that the rules shouldn’t apply to him.
    Nigel Farage admits to being a whore willing to do anything for someone with a big fat wallet and asks whether drinking pints and smoking fags is not enough for the stupid plebs.
    Nigel Farage admits to being a whore willing to do anything for someone with a big fat wallet and asks whether drinking pints and smoking fags is not enough for the stupid plebs.

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

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

     A tanker from Thames Water

    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.”

    …

    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.

    …

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