Rowers in the Oxford-Cambridge boat race have caught E coli after taking part in the annual event on the River Thames.

Their illness can be directly attributed to the lowering of environmental standards by the UK’s Conservative government after Brexit, allowing profit-driven privatised firms like Thames Water to pump millions of gallons of raw sewage into the UK’s waterways.

And the irony is that the Tory government promoted Brexit by saying standards would rise, not fall:

The text of the tweet above makes the situation crystal clear: “World famous boat race between Oxford and Cambridge affected by raw sewage dumped into the River Thames after the Conservative party promised our environmental standards would not fall after Brexit.

“Yet it has been the Conservative party who have repeatedly voted to allow water companies to continue to dump raw sewage in our rivers and seas – shame on them, and on anyone who continues to vote for them.”

This Writer previously stated that the outcome of the race on Saturday (March 30, 2024) would not be as interesting as the after-effects of the participants being on the highly-polluted River Thames.

For clarity, I reported that

Levels of E coli found on the boat race course were nearly 10 times higher than levels found in bathing waters graded as “poor” by Environment Agency standards – the worst possible rating.

As a result, organisers have issued new safety guidance this year, including a warning to rowers not to enter the water and to cover any open wounds.

The emergency changes are the latest effect of the mass-pollution of the UK’s rivers and waterways by privatised water firms that have refused to modernise their systems, instead giving away the billions of pounds they have taken from service users to shareholders and executives as dividends and salary bonuses.

Sadly it seems the emergency safety guidance was not enough to save the rowers from being affected by “so much poo in the water”.

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