Northumbrian Water made a total profit of £206 million in the financial year ending 31st March 2024.
They paid out £61 million in dividends.
Their fine for polluting Northumberland’s rivers and beaches — probably the most beautiful coastline in all of Britain, and officially recognised as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) — was just £17 million.
And the fine doesn’t even appear to my eyes to be for that financial year alone, it appears to be for all the years of spillage (correct me if I’ve misunderstood!).
I’m not sure if they’ve received any previous fines for this, but if not, that works out as a £1.9 million fine for each year since we started measuring all outflows.
Ofwat are a fucking joke. Just like Ofgem, they care more about keeping the private foreign ownership happy than they do about actually regulating these companies for the good of UK citizens and for the wider environment.
If I ran a garage and was dumping brake fluid, oils, and other detritus into streets, drains, rivers, etc I rightly wouldn’t receive little slaps on the wrist. I’d be in prison.
Last week, the treatment of Palestinian prisoners ignited a furious public row, as far right demonstrators – including members of Israel’s parliament – violently tried to prevent the arrest of soldiers accused of sexually abusing a prisoner from Gaza at the Sde Teiman military base. Some of those protesting were followers of Israel’s hardline security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, the man in overall charge of the prison service. Mr Ben Gvir has frequently boasted that under his watch, conditions for Palestinian detainees have deteriorated sharply.
Such an shining example of Western values and democracy in the Middle East. Let’s send them more bombs and F-35s for self-defense against children huddling in schools and hospitals!
I feel the same about exploiting things that can’t say no. This is why I’m vehemently against animal slavery and sports. Especially horse racing and dressage.
I’m talking out of my ass, but it could mean that the natural conclusion of democracy is mob rule, where nothing matters besides the sentiment of “the mob”, a large group of like-minded people. Here he was falsely accused of theft but because enough people believed the lie, he was taken to jail based solely on sentiment.
Or not. This is my take on his “democracy manifest” comment.
That’s a good take, but I think it is more likely a sarcastic comment. A comment that Australia should be a democratic government with rights but now it’s a police state that no longer resembles democracy (in his angry opinion)
There is a recent New Zealand Today episode that interviews him. IIRC, he was involved in a number of low level scams at the time, and was arrested while dining on a stolen credit card. Man was just a natural showman, who wasnt going to go down quietly.
I would argue it just means that the Democracy that was created as the Australian government is (among other things) what led to his wrongful arrest while eating out and being manhandled on camera. -He just said it in an extraordinarily eloquent way. You could also draw some additional inferences based on his behavior, tone, and choice of words, but I can’t really confirm any 100%.
bbc.co.uk
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