Tag Archives: water

Water Bills set for biggest rise in 20 years – and it isn’t even clean

Enjoy the sight: this archive image shows probably the cleanest water you’ll see all year – but the price you’ll pay for this universal necessity that Margaret Thatcher privatised in the 1980s is set to rise by the highest amount in 20 years, in April.

I think it’s uncontroversial to point out that Clive Lewis was one of the Labour MPs singled out for racist abuse by right-wing factionalists who remain party apparatchiks in the Keir Starmer regime.

Rather than waste time fighting his unreasonable and dictatorial leader, Mr Lewis has concentrated on doing his job.

In the following Twitter thread, he raises awareness of the fact that the UK is the only country with a privatised water system, that it doesn’t work, and that – despite this – our bills are set to rise by the largest margin in 20 years, in April.

How about you? Do you want water to be privately-owned?

Or do you want it to be clean?

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

How is the cost of living crisis affecting people near you? Now you can find out

Food: have you cut back on your supply because of the cost of living crisis?

I was having a look around the TUC (Trades Union Congress) website while I was putting together the article on key workers leaving public services due to low pay – and found this.

It’s a snapshot summary of how the cost of living crisis is affecting people – by UK constituency.

I live in Brecon and Radnorshire, where:

One in eight people have missed meals or gone without food.
Two in five people have cut back on food spending.
And a whopping half of the population have cut back on the amount of hot water, heating or electricity we use.

I can confirm that I myself have done one of the above; both I and Mrs Mike have taken advantage of the unseasonally warm (climate change?) autumn to leave the central heating off altogether – so far.

But never mind me; how about you?

Check the situation where you live by visiting the link directly below.

Source: HOW IS THE COST OF LIVING AFFECTING PEOPLE IN YOUR LOCAL AREA?

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Would Sally-Ann Hart have taken a swim at the beach she was booed on?

Sally-Ann Hart: covering her posterior during the sewage crisis?

Here’s another great analysis from Maximilien Robespierre – this time on the way Tories who were elected to Parliament in 2019 are trying to cover their rear ends after voting to allow water companies to pollute our rivers, seas and beaches:

So: she said she voted for an amendment to Labour’s motion, that demanded investment in the sewerage infrastructure that would end the discharge of raw sewage into the environment.

But the amendment was changed to remove a requirement for water companies (in England) to take every reasonable step to ensure untreated sewage is not released from storm overflows. Also removed was the requirement to show improvements in the sewerage systems.

So her claim that she voted to demand improvements seems to be untrue. But, like many of her fellows in the Tory 2019 Parliamentary intake, she’s trying to put people off voting to remove her from her seat by pretending to be on their side.

She says an “ambitious” plan will be unveiled on September 1, to clean up the system. Will it be as ambitious as the plan she has already supported – that allowed water companies to stink up our beaches with possibly disease-ridden crap?

This Writer agrees with Maximilien Robespierre: Ms Hart should have been challenged to take a swim in the water she voted to despoil – to prove she had defended it, or demonstrate conclusively that she had not.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Is this the reason our rivers and beaches are overflowing with sewage? [VIDEO]

Tory Britain: “one of the most effluent nations in the world” as Dr Louise Raw put it when she tweeted this image.

An informative video clip from the Express? Will wonders never cease?

The big question is why nothing is being done about this.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Raw sewage released into UK waterways increases by 2,553% over five years

Rivers of Sh*t: the amount of harmful crap being pumped into our rivers and seas has multiplied by 2,553 per cent.

A friend on the social media asked how private water companies could have pumped raw sewage into our seas and rivers for more than nine million hours since 2016 when that’s the equivalent of 1,076 years.

The answer, in fact, is quite simple: each company has many outflows into the UK’s waterways, and they have been pumping away industrially.

The amount of raw sewage going into our rivers and seas has increased by 2,553 per cent over the last five years.

No wonder the information had to be dragged out of the Environment Agency by the Labour Party, via the Freedom of Information Act!

I’m reminded of the advertising campaign for the movie Jaws 2, containing what may be horror’s greatest tagline:

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.”

Sadly, nobody has thought it was safe to go in the water since the government voted to allow the water companies to pump all their crap – literally – into UK waterways.

Who knew the threat wouldn’t come from a dangerous creature but from an industry that’s supposed to keep us safe?

Source: ‘It’s filthy and it stinks’: Huge increase in raw sewage released into waterways and sea, data reveals

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Water privatisation was a Tory rip-off from the start. What does that say about the other share offers?

This Site used to discuss the economy with Jonathan Portes back in the early days, so I tend to trust his observations – especially where he had a direct hand in matters.

So his observations on the water privatisation “rip-off” of 1989, in The Guardian, are very interesting.

He says the Thatcher government was not interested in providing value for money to taxpayers or water consumers; all the effort was put into making a “successful” sale – in which the demand for shares was high.

This was an ideological objective: water privatisation was extremely unpopular, with every poll showing that a substantial majority of people were opposed to the policy – so shares were sold well below their value in order to provide an average gain of 40 per cent to investors on their first day of trading. That’s how taxpayers lost out.

Consumers lost out because the political requirement that shareholders must profit hugely meant there was no support for tighter regulations to restrain future bills and/or require investment in infrastructure improvements.

As a result, over the following two decades the privatised water companies paid more than £57bn in dividends, at the same time as running up large amounts of debt, the interest on which is effectively paid by customers.

So water consumers are subsidising the water companies’ profits by paying off their debts for them, while also pay through the nose for the poor service they receive – because Thatcher wanted to pretend that privatising water was a good idea. How perverse!

Professor Portes goes on to say that the head of the Centre for Policy Studies, Robert Colville, provided the most illuminating political reason for privatisation when he said the “single greatest justification for privatisation is competition for capital”.

He meant that, as a public service, water would always be in competition with other priorities, from HS2 to hospitals, and the result would be underinvestment.

But we have seen that the current operating model, in which companies face public sector levels of competition and risk, and get private sector levels of profits and return, is simply not acceptable.

Prof Portes says keeping water in the hands of private companies may not be a bad idea because “governments, especially but not only Conservative ones, pursue stupid, self-defeating policies for short-term political reasons, so it’s worth consumers massively overpaying the private sector to secure the level of investment that is required, even if the public sector could, in theory, do it more cheaply”.

He suggests that the government should renegotiate its relationship with these firms, pointing out that they are contractors delivering a public service and should be treated as such: forced to bid competitively for the right to operate.

From This Writer’s point of view, it looks like a lose-lose situation.

If we accept the claim about government decisions – and I think that is reasonable in the light of the Tories’ huge failures in recent years – then the water firms can’t go back under public control.

But treating them as government outsourcing firms would create a situation where they ended up claiming they could carry out the work required – infrastructure improvements, value-for-money for customers – with less money than they need to avoid bankruptcy, meaning they would eventually go to the wall. Does nobody remember what happened to Carillion?

Is there another alternative?

Perhaps there is. What’s wrong with saying that the profit motive has failed and demanding that water be run by autonomous, non-profit-making organisations, for the benefit of the consumer?

And…

If this is the case with water, isn’t it also the case with the privatised energy firms? With the railways? With all the other Tory privatisations? Why shouldn’t they go non-profit too?

Source: I worked on the privatisation of England’s water in 1989. It was an organised rip-off

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

FOOD drives double-digit inflation figure as Tory UK plummets into recession

Inflation has hit double figures for the first time in 40 years – and this time the driver is not energy bills but the cost of staple food products.

It has soared to 10.1 per cent due to a 12 per cent increase in the cost of what most people consider staples: bread, cereal, eggs, milk and cheese. The increase in these items’ prices was three times that of their nearest rival.

The UK is currently in a “calm before the storm” moment as we await a rise of around 80 per cent in the energy price cap in October.

A drought now sweeping Europe is expected to make matters even worse, affecting trade and crop yields to push food prices up even further.

Ultimately, inflation is expected to peak at 13 per cent or more, meaning people will no longer have money to spend in the economy because their earnings will not cover the amount they will be asked to spend on necessities: housing (mortgage or rent), food, water, and power.

Without that spending, the economy will contract, and a recession lasting more than a year is currently being predicted in which many people are likely to lose their jobs – compounding the crisis even further.

These are all outcomes that the UK’s Conservative government has created.

The rise in food prices is a consequence of Brexit and increased border controls that the Tories fuelled.

The energy crisis has happened because the Tories pandered to donors from the fossil fuel industry rather than investing in green energy, generated within this country. Energy is also a natural monopoly that should never have been privatised by Margaret Thatcher.

And the water crisis is a consequence of privatising that natural monopoly. Instead of investing in improving infrastructure, greedy executives have maximised their profits with large dividend payouts, bolstered by the sale of reservoirs to foreign firms.

Both the privatised energy and water systems are majority-owned by businesses based abroad, many of them wholly-owned by foreign governments.

Or so it seems to This Writer.

Worse is the fact that the Tories are determined to deny that they did anything wrong.

And they’re absolutely refusing to accept the urgent need to re-nationalise these privatised utilities that have failed us all so badly; they are cash cows for Tory donors and the party likes their cash.

Sadly, it’s a myopic, short-term view. The economy will collapse because of it.

Source: Double-digit inflation marks another grim milestone as recession looms

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Polio is back – because privatised water firms were allowed to dump untreated sewage?

Rivers of Sh*t: Boris Johnson couldn’t be bothered to think about the details of his Brexit, and now the UK is suffering shortages of materials including those used to clean sewage. So partially-cleaned and harmful crap is going directly into our rivers – including faeces containing the polio virus, that could paralyse people who have not been vaccinated against it.

It’s true – a disease that we thought we had eradicated is back, due to Tory short-sightedness:

Here‘s a government press release on what has happened:

So it’s in the sewage and, because some people have decided not to vaccinate their children (based on a falsehood, as I understand it), there’s a risk that someone may catch polio and be paralysed.

And there are concerns that it may spread – or may have spread already. Well, with untreated sewage going directly into the rivers, it’s entirely possible, isn’t it?

Another brilliant Tory idea to cope with the consequences of their brilliant Brexit causes trouble.

ADDITIONAL: This is worrying:

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Sign the petition to make water companies pay YOU if they dump untreated sewage

State-approved sewage: but if the water companies are dumping untreated sewage, then they’re not fulfilling their contract with their clients – the public – and they owe us a refund.

Here’s a very good point:

That is the object of a new petition on the UK Parliament website: as water companies aren’t treating sewage – despite being contractually obliged to do so – then they owe their clients a hefty refund.

This is something that seems to have passed by the Tory government when it offered the privatised water companies a free pass from treating sewage on the grounds that they couldn’t get the chemicals from the European Union.

But the logic is clear. If they’re not buying and using the chemicals, then they don’t need the half of our water bills that is supposed to pay for it.

And the UK’s Tory government should make sure we get our money back. Right?

If you agree, sign the petition.

You can find it here: Require Water Companies to Refund Customers When They Dump Sewage – Petitions

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Whitstable’s people are refusing to pay water bills over sewage crisis – will you?

Protest: people in Whitstable demonstrated against Southern Water’s pollution of the coastline in October.

How wonderful to see the exercise of people power!

Residents of Whitstable, in Kent, are refusing to pay their water bills until the local privatised water company stops discharging sewage into the sea.

It seems they have a very good reason to withhold their cash, as Kent Online has reported claims that people had become ill after swimming in nearby coastal waters.

Local councillor Ashley Clark explained his reasons for holding back the cash in a letter to the company dumping the sewage, Southern Water. He wrote:

Others have reported their own reasons for withholding payment.

Water companies cannot cut off residents’ water supply if they do not receive payment – they are legally prohibited from doing so, although they can take payment defaulters to court for payment.

But they may find the courts unsympathetic at the moment, because water firms are legally required not to dump untreated sewage in the UK’s waterways and on the coasts. People are justified in their anger – and they’re not saying they’ll never pay their bills.

It seems a good tactic – possibly the best, as it hits the water firms where they are most likely to pay attention: the bank account.

So the operative question is this: are you willing to do the same?

Source: Whitstable residents refuse to pay Southern Water bills until discharging sewage into sea ends

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Vox Political

politics for the people

Tag Archives: water

Water Bills set for biggest rise in 20 years – and it isn’t even clean

Like this:

How is the cost of living crisis affecting people near you? Now you can find out

Like this:

Would Sally-Ann Hart have taken a swim at the beach she was booed on?

Like this:

Is this the reason our rivers and beaches are overflowing with sewage? [VIDEO]

Like this:

Raw sewage released into UK waterways increases by 2,553% over five years

Like this:

Water privatisation was a Tory rip-off from the start. What does that say about the other share offers?

Like this:

FOOD drives double-digit inflation figure as Tory UK plummets into recession

Like this:

Polio is back – because privatised water firms were allowed to dump untreated sewage?

Like this:

Sign the petition to make water companies pay YOU if they dump untreated sewage

Like this:

Whitstable’s people are refusing to pay water bills over sewage crisis – will you?

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: