That’s what happens when you fail to maintain things for 30+ years, syphon off all the money for shareholders, and then cry poverty when the government decides that just flushing everyone’s shit into the river isn’t an acceptable way to deal with it.
Tighten the rules further and nationalise any company that can’t keep up. Should never have been privatised in the first place. I, a fairly normal person, cannot pick and choose which company provides my water like I can with electricity, gas and internet. So what’s the point of having a company run it?
But the realist in me knows it won’t be allowed to happen.
I know that the government will have to service a £15bn debt through borrowing, which will raise interest rates, mortgages, rents and require cuts to public services to pay for. That is on top of the investment needed over the next few years to stop sewage leaking into rivers and leaks of millions of litres a day.
In addition I know that pension funds and large investors will lose substantial sums of money and will look to divest from similar risks, which could lead to more utility companies becoming insolvent. A snowball effect.
Finally, I know that international investment in the UK will be seen as more risky.
What the government will be doing now is weighing up those risks against the cost of raising bills by the 59% that the water companies and industry bodies are asking for. If the worst should happen, will taxpayers be better off with a couple of hundred extra £ on their water bills to pay, or potentially a lot worse off with a rapid nationalisation of multiple firms.
Service the debt by selling assets of the C suite that got them into this mess. Charge corporations real taxes and levy fines and penalties that are realistic to the damaged caused. Essential services should never be private because this is exactly what happens. And the end user is penalized, and a couple hundred extra € will continue to increase until noone can pay their bills, and then the business will go insolvent anyway, and people will be left without water service anyway.
We need to stop subsidizing corporate failures, so they can privatize the profit.
“No rational investor is going to put their money into water right now.”
Because they shouldn’t be making big profits out of it.
Hand the franchise back and at least if it is being run on a not-for-profit basis then we’ll know that they aren’t taking the piss because public confidence has been eroded by all the piss-taking.
And yet, here am I, contemplating a 280 mile round trip tomorrow to initiate my daughter into the utter delight that is a Sheffield fishcake butty. If you know, you know. Sheffield fishcakes make other fishcake weep at their inadequacy.
We just got back home. We set off a bit after 09:00, got to Sheffield just after 12:00, had our fishcake butties, drove around some of my old student haunts, drove out to Ladybower Reservoir so my daughter could see a little of how beautiful the peak district is, then bombed home.
Her verdict on a 6 hour round trip to eat a fishcake butty: “Worth it.”
My advice: go lots of salt and vinegar. Then add some more vinegar.
Then it shouldn’t survive. It’s not clawing the funds back from Macquarie shareholders, who got paid the funds that should have been used on infrastructure repairs is it?
Correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding is that equal pay needs to be for the same job. In this case the argument seems to be that the jobs are not the same, but that they are similar, it seems to be a grey area.
The article states that just over half the warehouse staff were male and that over a quarter of shop front staff were male, so it doesn’t appear to be a case of “they’re getting paid more because they’re men”.
Presumably any of the women in the shop front could have asked for a transfer to the warehouse?
It’s very similar to the asda equal pay case, which has already gone through the supreme court so the precedent has been set.
The Birmingham dinner lady case started all this off, which was a disgraceful cash grab. Their representation successfully equated that dinner ladies who work a few hours a day term time only had an equal job to bin men who work all hours (they do gritting as well) with refuge. It’s a large part of why the council went bust as it meant selling off revenue generating assets such as the nec.
The care worker equality case for Birmingham I agree with btw, that’s very similar conditions and hours.
“The Equal Pay Act requires that men and women in the same workplace receive equal pay for work that is substantially equal, even if the jobs are not identical. The job content, not the job title, determines if the jobs are substantially equal” - this is the problem right here, the legislation needs refining.
Interesting. I think it’s also worth noting that in this case that the warehouse job roles were not male dominated as bin men are. Usually equal pay is to ensure that men and women are paid equally for equal work but the warehouse employees were close to 50/50 men and women.
Would be interesting to see the arguments made, as I suspect the staffs’ council pushed that the number of men at the warehouse skewed the wages? Seems really off to me either way.
My favourite local Chinese takeaway has stickers on the menu saying the prices aren’t accurate, presumably because they got a big batch printed and don’t fancy binning them. As they don’t have an online presence, you have to order by phone or in person, so you never know how much it’s going to cost. Despite this, they are always run off their feet as the food is a level above the competitions - the salt and pepper siu mai are divine.
I mean I get that prices have gone up, but it's not difficult or costly these days to print out correct pricing for accurate up to date, in store menus, should someone call in for an order, remind them over the phone prices have changed, and tell them what each item will cost when they order it, anything other is shady as fuck, no matter how good the food is, it would probably annoy me to the point of going elsewhere. Probably. Unless they sold huge old school new york take out egg rolls as big as half your arm, if they did that I'd turn my pockets inside out until lint fell out.
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