Looks like I had my sewers replaced just in time!

[Mottie]

Took 6 weeks including a whole road closure and cost Thames water around £80k. What chance would we had of getting them replaced now? Can’t even get them back out to finish off a 5m strip of asphalt. Perhaps they are not paying the contractors?

Thames Water in urgent funding talks amid fears of collapse

Whatever happens to firm, which serves a quarter of the UK population, water supplies will continue as normal.

www.bbc.co.uk

Still, at least the lazy fecking CEO has chucked in the towel.

Thames Water boss quits after sewage spills

Sarah Bentley steps down weeks after giving up her bonus over the company's poor performance.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Deleted member 294929]

Thames Water boss quits after sewage spills

Sarah Bentley steps down weeks after giving up her bonus over the company's poor performance.

www.bbc.co.uk

What a piece of shît and a waste of waste of time.

 

[Mottie]

Thames Water boss quits after sewage spills

Sarah Bentley steps down weeks after giving up her bonus over the company's poor performance.

www.bbc.co.uk

She's a waste of time.

She never replied to the emails I sent her. Mind you, I read that she gave up her bonus because of sewage leaks. Then again, she doubled her salary to make up for it!

 

[Mottie]

Gas, water, electricity and railways should be nationalised. Just take them back and tell those foreign owners to do one.

 

[Deleted member 294929]

Amazing. Far to many people are paid huge amounts of money for failure.

Knowing this I retract my last comment above and edited it.

 

[motorbiking]

Utility deregulation is global now. So hard to put that cat back in the bag.

Public transport even when nationalised is usually outsourced.

I recall Thames water outsourced both purchasing and supply of professional services to the same company. They wondered why it went wrong.

 

[diy_fun_uk]

She never replied to the emails I sent her. Mind you, I read that she gave up her bonus because of sewage leaks. Then again, she doubled her salary to make up for it!

I watched a YT vid yesterday re Post Office top dogs getting hauled over the coals by a government select committee. Whilst you can debate whether or not it makes any difference, it was nevertheless good to see them squirm in their seats over awarding themselves bonuses.

 

[gas112]

Gas, water, electricity and railways should be nationalised. Just take them back and tell those foreign owners to do one.

Totally agree at my age I could do with getting paid to be finished by 12 every day

 

[gant]

A snapshot of what's being replicated across the country.

MAPPED: The sewage pumped into rivers near you

Use this map tool to see the hotspots for sewage spillages around Greater Manchester and the rest of the UK

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk

What we need is to increase the population of the country so we can fill our concourses quicker with turds.

 

[festive]

So apparently there is £14bn debt, who is lending this money?

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

I recall Thames water outsourced both purchasing and supply of professional services to the same company. They wondered why it went wrong.

If true then that's more likely to be deliberate fraud than a silly mistake.

Hopefully there will be investigations into where all the vast amount of money they've been paid has gone. They get money per household, and every year there are more houses built, so their income rises. They've invested next to nothing but have somehow ended up with vast debts. I get a stink from the whole thing.

 

[securespark]

Ha, ha!

Trying to raise the cash!

They've had millions over the decades, but chosen to pay the fat cats and shareholders instead of updating the systems they inherited.

 

[diy_fun_uk]

I'm not sure if what I'm about to type is anti-capitalist / anti democratic society or not, however as I've said in other threads along the lines of this one, I 100% believe rail and utilities should never be in private (and as a consequence foreign) hands. To me it's almost irrelevant if it means paying a bit more tax and I also don't subscribe to the argument 'look what a mess they were in back in the 70s/80s!' That may indeed be true, however in 2023 and beyond, I'd assert there's absolutely no reason why nationalised organisations can't be run more efficiently and effectively than private ones.

Or let me put it another way, they could certainly be run to a degree of incompetency no worse than when in private hands.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

It's sad how some people get entrenched in silly capitalist vs communist principles.

In my view it's quite simple - if there's genuine free competition then the free market will deliver the best results. If there's an absolute monopoly then it should be state-owned, because any private company will just maximise their profits by fleecing the public.

The fact that Ofgem, Ofwat and Ofcom need to exist proves that competition does not exist in the utility markets. Even within power and telecoms, the various brand names all use the one set of cables, and have to pay the one company that owns them all, it's all a charade and is just a monopoly in disguise.

I doubt that even the Thatcher government thought it was a good idea, it was just a way of getting some cash by flogging the state's assets off. They knew they'd all be retired by the time the massive issues became obvious.

Privatised water companies are every bit as stupid as state-owned supermarkets would be. Horses for courses.

 

[wobs]

Not helped by defunding the EA resulting in water companies self monitoring their sewer discharges.