Waterloo

This is a last minute change of plan blog.

Normally I have these in draft for some weeks before they are released. This week I was planning on doing one about the environment in preparation for COP26, but I haven’t quite finished it. I will try and release it before the end of the year. Instead, I wrote this one the night before I released it. Its also about the environment, but also about our version of capitalism.

The subject which crossed my field of vision at the start of the week was the passage of a new environmental bill through Parliament and a social media uproar that occurred.

One trick the House of Lords can play when legislation passes between them and the Commons is to suggest an amendment that, if rejected, will make the Government look bad.

In his rubber boots, a descendent of the original iron duke, the current Duke of Wellington introduced such an amendment to the bill. When dealing with water and shit, who better is there to set up a modern day Waterloo (water and loo, water in the loo, get it?)

The Iron Duke - The 1st Duke of Wellington

Welly's amendment said that water companies shouldn't pump raw shit into rivers and the sea. Who could disagree with this?

Tory MPs could, and they voted against it. The trap was set and the trap triggered.

Such a text book error, they should have known that he'd win the war, Waterloo, promise to love you for ever more, Waterloo couldn't escape if I wanted to, Waterloo, knowing my fate is to be with you, wa, wa, wa, wa, Waterloo.

There was a huge social media backlash. As is normal with social media it was extreme and hostile and included all the standard death threats hate and misogyny.

As is normal with social media, hatred was aimed at right wing Tory MPs just because they are hate figures of the extreme left anyway.

As is normal with everything nowadays, its Brexit's fault, none of this would have happened had we been in the heavenly EU (nothing bad happened to the UK between 1971 and 2020, but if it did it was the Governments fault, not the untouchable EU).

MPs reacted very badly, especially because an MP has recently been stabbed to death.

Tory MPs hit back at the criticism:

This blog isn’t about the social media backlash or MPs being upset by it. I think it’s clear that my sympathy with MPs is low.

Sarah Everard gets raped and killed by a policeman and women get told by the Met that they need to take more care, even though the police only manage to deliver a 1% conviction rate for rape.

1 MP gets killed and they now each get personal police protection when meeting the public!

And if you don't like the toxic nature of Social Media who is it that we've elected to sort these things out?

There are far more deserving victims of the viciousness of social media than MPs, teenagers and young people for a start rather than than grown up, overpaid adults, who themselves call each other scum at party conferences for newspaper headlines and votes.

Back to the point. The uproar was in effect saying - why won't Tory MPs vote to stop shit being pumped into rivers? But as I said, this blog isn't about MPs or this Bill,

It left me thinking.... why on earth do we need laws to stop water companies pumping raw sewage into our rivers? Why are we still even doing this in 2021?!

Well, this was the footage which appeared on TV this week which has stoked anger around this issue:

Water is essential for life and for good health. If there is ever anything that should be provided to all, free of charge by the state, surely its water?

Rewind to the 1980's and I can recall the start of Thatcher's privatisation of state owned companies.

Although I was young at the start I recall it being received positively in the world I existed in. It was felt that it was something that British industry needed. That British industry has become lazy and too controlled by unions and that privatisation would free the companies to pursue profit and become lean, fit, efficient companies supplying their product to customers for a profit, but customers who can choose to go elsewhere if the company is shit. That's the beauty of capitalism, the invisible hand of the market.

I can remember TV adverts and posters on bus stop saying "If you see Sid, tell him". That was British Gas that was being sold off, the advertising campaign became iconic. Sid was a symbol for the ordinary British person as seen in the advert. A postman. A man in the pub. A woman down the market.

British Telecom, British Airways, the water companies, the electricity generators and networks, all got sold off. (My dad worked for the public electricity company, the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), and later I worked for the privatised overseas part of that business, International Power PLC (IP), a company with a proud legacy of burning as much coal as could be burnt by Australia. IP is now owned by the French company Engie, I don't think its owned by Sid anymore.)

Many left wing people today turn Thatcher into a villain for this drive towards capitalism, but I believe that those privatisations were well intended and were not the version of wealth extraction capitalism we have today.

Thatcher aimed these privatisations at normal working and middle class British people. Her vision at the time was for these shares to be bought by normal people, not the wealthy 1%, and whilst buying some shares would've cost a few hundred pounds, so would have been a bit of dig into peoples savings at the time, I would imagine that most people who did this and then just held the shares would have gained from them.

I think the UK was right to take this path in 1980s. These privatisations weren’t part of the greed capitalism we have today, They were trying to put the value in the British public sector into the hands and ownership of British people. I can see how this could be positive if this was the version of capitalism that we still had in place today.

In 1989 the water and sewage public sector bodies were privatised. I remember the normal line being trotted out "we have Victorian drainage systems which need replacing and which leak, and these companies will be able to invest in better infrastructure, reduce leaks and drive costs down". Similar to what they say about our rail system. So privatisation would leave us with the best water and sewage companies in the world. Excellent. What's not to like. But that was 1989, the proof is in the pudding. In 1989 we couldn’t fast forward 30 years to see all the amazing benefits of privatisation.

So fast forward 30 years and where are we?

Lets ignore the fiercely pro-business and pro-privatisation FT:

The water companies use an industry body called Water U.K. to speak as one and it says this:

It’s easy to forget how bad things were, so it’s worth reminding ourselves.

After decades of underinvestment by successive governments water quality was poor, rivers were polluted, and our beaches were badly affected by sewage. Quite simply, the water industry was not high up the list of priorities for Ministers when its funding came out of the same pot as the money for schools, hospitals and police officers.

But since privatisation, investment of nearly £160 billion has seen a strong and steady improvement in the industry, with customers now enjoying access to world-class drinking water. In addition, leakage is down by a third since the mid-1990s, two thirds of beaches are now classed as excellent compared with less than a third 25 years ago, and wildlife has returned to rivers that had been biologically dead since the Industrial Revolution.

At around £1 a day, average bills are broadly the same as 20 years ago once inflation is taken into account, and according to Ofwat they are around £120 less than they would have been without privatisation and tough independent regulation. Customer satisfaction levels for water and sewerage services are around 90%, and there are high levels of trust in water companies.

These successes have taken a lot of determination. We don’t want to see things start going backwards – indeed, we want to go even further.

Source: Water UK website: https://www.water.org.uk/blog-post/thirty-years-on-what-has-water-privatisation-achieved/

For companies that specialise in pumping out shit, I think we need to praise them for doing the same with their PR. They've clearly had a lot of practice.

I don’t even know where to start.

“Water quality was poor”.

It makes it sound like a scene from Charles Dickens with us all standing round cholera infested street pumps. I can recall sticking my mouth directly under taps in the 1970's, whether in my home or in public places, because in the 70's public water fountains were still a thing.

“The water industry was not high up the list of priorities”

Our bills now go to cover salary costs and after that money is left for investment, that's true whether in public or private ownership, but in private ownership there is also money to pay dividends, which in public ownership could have been used to build schools.

"Decades of under investment"

No mention of the fact that the Thatcher Government stopped the water authorities from borrowing money cheaply so that they could invest which in effect strengthened and then made the case for privatisation. The classic run it into the ground strategy currently being pursued in the NHS.

"Investment of nearly £160 billion"

No mention is made of the money extracted. GMB figures show CEOs of the nine privatised water companies took £68 million in salary, bonuses, pension and other benefits in the last six years. Was the civil service really taking out more? If not, thats extra money for schools rather than money going to already well off people.

"Average bills are broadly the same as 20 years ago"

Its an interesting presentation. A report by the National Audit Office in 2015 said:

"The average annual household bill for water and sewerage was £396 in 2014-15. This is a 40% increase in real terms since privatisation in 1989."

At least we've invested in infrastructure:

"Leakage is down by a third"

The Environment Agency say that sewage was dumped into rivers on 400,000 occasions in 2020. I can't recall 2020 being having 400,000 heavy rainstorms that may have caused sewage to back up into the pipes?

It also goes down if you stop reporting it, or move to a system of self reporting by companies who's only measure is profit.

An extract from the above article:

...the company had a history of criminal activity for its “previous and persistent pollution of the environment”. It had 168 previous offences and cautions but had ignored these and not altered its behaviour. “There is no evidence the company took any notice of the penalties imposed or the remarks of the courts. Its offending simply continued,” he said.

Going back to Water UK:

“We don’t want to see things going backwards”

How? How can we move backwards from criminal organisations illegally dumping shit in a river?

Today we have water companies who discharge tons of raw, untreated sewage into rivers each year.

Is this progress?

Via our water bills we have water companies who have taken money from everyone, including the poorest in society, and redistributed it to the wealthiest, to the tune of £57 billion.

Is this progress?

Are we honestly saying that we couldn’t have done it better? That putting £57 billion into wealthy peoples pockets is the price for shit in the sea? Has this really been 30 years of progress?

Couldn’t £57 billion could have been used to develop infrastructure to treat raw sewage and stop it going into rivers?

If I, as a water consumer, don’t like raw shit on British beach’s, I can change to a better water supplier right? Nope. It’s a monopoly. That best kind of market for wealth extractors. That one that was never intended to exist in a market economy and reserved for a dystopian board game that highlighted how perverted it was.

All of this has happened within the EU.

So how did the amendment to the Environment Bill pan out? Like this:

• Amendment to stop raw sewage going into rivers proposed.

• MPs reject it.

• Outcry.

• MPs become furious about the public uproar about it saying its mis-reporting and that the amendment was uncosted and would cost Billions (they costed it within hours).

• U-turn, and MPs introduce an amendment putting legal duty on water companies to reduce sewage discharges into rivers.

• Its difficult to understand why they got so upset in the first place when the public backlash has clearly prompted a rethink.

I wonder if we'd have been able to influence European legislation as much?