Endless Sewage and Massive Unjustifiable Profits: Renationalise the Water Industry Now!

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Two weeks ago, a revenue collector from Thames Water rang me to remind me that I was overdue paying the first two instalments of my £500+ annual bill, and I spontaneously went into a rant about how it is not a water company, but an extortion scheme for providing profits to its shareholders while failing to provide the service for which it ostensibly exists — to provide us with clean water and to manage sewage.

Last week I received an automated call demanding payment, and I’ve now paid it, because there’s no solidarity movement of other Thames Water customers, in vast numbers, also refusing to pay, and I have no choice of supplier. This is a privatised monopoly, as well as an extortion racket — although I note that anyone wanting to tackle it through concerted customer action might take heart from the fact that Southern Water customers, who are “refusing to pay their wastewater bills in protest at sewage spills by the firm”, are meeting with some success in their campaign, as the BBC reported just two weeks ago. 

Like all the water companies, privatised by Margaret Thatcher in 1989, Thames Water makes vast profits while failing to do its job. In December, it announced six-monthly profits of almost £500m, and its CEO, Sarah Bentley, was paid a staggering £2m last year. Last month, responding to mounting criticism of the water companies’ profiteering, Bentley, along with the CEO of Yorkshire Water and the owner of South West Water, stated that they would be forgoing their bonuses this year, with Bentley explaining that it “just did not feel like the right thing to take performance-related pay this year.”

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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