Right so here’s a conundrum for you, see if you can work out the connection. On the 1st February it was reported that the Tories were going to strip public money from water companies if they didn’t stop sewage spills from happening. The next day it was reported that water bills are going to soar by the highest they ever have in 20 years.
Is there a link perhaps? What’s the craic Damo?
Well, As I spoke about the other week, the Tory Sewage Party, dumpers extraordinaire of our watercourses as they are since they binned EU water cleanliness regulations, have pushed back cleaning up our waterways of the sewage they’ve already allowed to be dumped until 2063 and set a measly target of 2038 to reduce phosphates, the mineral deposits left by human waste, by just 20%, which strip oxygen from the water, not good for life. They’ve not taken the public outcry over filthy water courses seriously, the fact that every stretch of coastline, every lake and river has been polluted as a result of allowing our privatised water companies to stink up the UK with effluence, strangely enough has not proven popular vote winning stuff, so now a bit of rowing back has happened. On the 1st February, the Tories accepted an amendment to the new UK Infrastructure Bank Bill – the creation of a new UK bank essentially, state owned in fact, at least until the Tories decide it’s worth enough to sell like they do everything else presumably. The purpose of it however is to help the UK achieve net zero by 2050, yet another distant date it has set itself and not being funny, when they set such far off dates, it just makes you feel like it’s a can being kicked down the road, a target to miss, when none of the current lot are still MP’s to be held accountable over it. Anyway, where the government previously wrote blank cheques to these water companies, a Lib Dem amendment has been accepted that unless they make active moves towards the cessation of sewage spills, that limitless public money tap, will get turned down. Now, of course stripping public money from these companies will be popular especially amongst those of you who will be thinking by now having watched this far, ‘why the hell are we giving them public money anyway, they’re privatised, they’re supposed to be self sufficient businesses are they not?’ And I’d agree with that, any other business that can’t cover its own costs collapses, but of course being our water supply, the government can’t let it collapse. The argument to renationalise water so money made goes into the infrastructure, goes into cleaning up and not to shareholders has never been stronger has it really?
Anyway, the public pursestrings might get cut to the water companies thanks to the Lib Dems, but if the government needs to step in and prevent a water company failing do you really think they wouldn’t? Does this amendment really hold water? Have the Lib Dems thought this through or are they just enabling the Tories again by providing a distraction? The amendment means there’s no blank cheque, that’s not the same as saying no money at all.
Anyway, Lib Dem distraction aside, the next day it got announced that our water bills are going up by 7.5%, the biggest rise in nearly 20 years from April. Isn’t it amazing how a 7.5% pay rise for example would enable Putin, or drive inflation according to the Tories, but water companies just deciding to hike our bills by that doesn’t elicit so much as a whimper from Westminster? We still have to find this money on increasingly overstretched personal budgets though. How are many people going to pay for this and why the hell should we when our waterways are dirtier than ever before? Now there are some social tariffs for water in place, but that’s a postcode lottery, yet isn’t it funny how these two pieces of news got released so close to each other? A hike like this requires government approval, government approval when since privatisation these water companies have sucked up almost £72bn in public funding, have left us with more expensive water, something none of us can live without, are hiking those prices to previously unseen levels and have left our rivers and seas dirtier than they ever have been before. Last year sewage was dumped in our water for a total of 2.7m hours. It’s difficult to think of a bigger, more blatant example of the failure of privatisation than water, but here we are and this is absolutely going to be an election issue going forwards as we’re paying through the nose for them to keep dumping s**t in our rivers, getting right up our noses! We’re screwed financially, environmentally, ecologically and especially governmentally as pointless amendments get laid down which the government gets around by allowing the water companies to hike their prices, rewarding them in effect for the 2 billion litres of sewage they dump every single day. It can’t be ignored that another hit in the pocket, so we aren’t spending as much on the high street, is yet another knock on effect to the economy as the country enters recession too, hindering growth yet again. The Tories are absolutely catastrophic on every front in government and even when it comes to something as essential as water, they carry on regardless. This mugging by Tory government and privatised water companies has to stop because we are being mugged here. Renationalise water now, give it back to us, end the theft and end the pollution.