Feargal Sharkey Tests River Don, which fails series of environmental tests

[Delbow]

5 hours ago, Tony said:

@Delbow I'm not defending anything, especially a series of state regulated monopolies. They are an absolute  shower and I would let them go bust just like I would have let the banks go bust in 2008.

 

I'm not at all ideological in terms of state vs private ownership, I am evidence based. Show me the hard evidence that the state can do it better and I will agree. 

 

 

So what I am asking you is to provide some, any, evidence that the UK state is capable of running the WaterCo's more efficiently and at lower cost and so far you've not been able to. There are so many people calling for a state takeover that I would expect this evidence to be overwhelming, but it seems not. Where is it?

 

The thing is, no-one can provide hard evidence that the UK state is capable of running a water company more efficiently than a private company until it is actually doing that, and it can't do that while the private companies are running it. My previous 'cultural inferiority' comment, while a bit of a gag, is relevant because this is what is implied every time someone claims that the British state can't do something that other states already do. I've no doubt that it would take a state enterprise a while to get going and that it wouldn't be hugely effective to begin with, because expertise from the British state was lost when the water was privatised - but the only way to get that back is to take water back into public hands. Also, a publicly owned water company doesn't have to run it for less than the private companies (or at least not less than what they were previously charging, the new price hikes to cover the water companies' greed and incompetence are another matter) - it just needs to spend revenue on improving infrastructure, something the private companies are seemingly unable to do because their first priority is their shareholders. And their second and third priority by the looks of it.

 

In a different thread I recently pointed out that TfL is now self-financing and therefore meets your criterion of a well-run public sector body. But it's not a water company, so you could if you wanted claim that it doesn't count, and that it doesn't show that public bodies are capable of running things well.

Edited November 9 by Delbow

[Gormenghast]

58 minutes ago, Delbow said:

 because expertise from the British state was lost when the water was privatised - but the only way to get that back is to take water back into public hands. 

 

Perhaps the question here is to ask  how well was it doing in the government's hands before it was privatised. Was it really successful or not? Did the government dump sewage into the rivers? Was it safe to swim in coastal waters?

 

Was the government's 'expertise'  making it more  successful than it is in private ownership?

[Delbow]

3 hours ago, Gormenghast said:

 

Perhaps the question here is to ask  how well was it doing in the government's hands before it was privatised. Was it really successful or not? Did the government dump sewage into the rivers? Was it safe to swim in coastal waters?

 

Was the government's 'expertise'  making it more  successful than it is in private ownership?

 

I honestly have no idea. But since that was 40 or so years ago, I don't think it would tell us much about how things would be now and in the future, because a lot has changed in that time. 

[Tony]

14 hours ago, Delbow said:

 

The thing is, no-one can provide hard evidence that the UK state is capable of running a water company more efficiently than a private company until it is actually doing that, and it can't do that while the private companies are running it. My previous 'cultural inferiority' comment, while a bit of a gag, is relevant because this is what is implied every time someone claims that the British state can't do something that other states already do. I've no doubt that it would take a state enterprise a while to get going and that it wouldn't be hugely effective to begin with, because expertise from the British state was lost when the water was privatised - but the only way to get that back is to take water back into public hands. Also, a publicly owned water company doesn't have to run it for less than the private companies (or at least not less than what they were previously charging, the new price hikes to cover the water companies' greed and incompetence are another matter) - it just needs to spend revenue on improving infrastructure, something the private companies are seemingly unable to do because their first priority is their shareholders. And their second and third priority by the looks of it.

 

In a different thread I recently pointed out that TfL is now self-financing and therefore meets your criterion of a well-run public sector body. But it's not a water company, so you could if you wanted claim that it doesn't count, and that it doesn't show that public bodies are capable of running things well.

 

I hear you but (being polite ) that's just ideological claptrap. It still doesn't have to be owned by the government. It can be not-for-profit limited company, a charity, a community interest company or something else dreamed up by Parliament. Why the obsession with letting the government run something when none of us can point at a single thing that the government runs well.

 

The problem isn't ownership, it is bad / wrong regulation. Bad / wrong regulation is the fault of the government - the very same outfit that some people want to run the WaterCo's.

 

We wouldn't trust the government to run the bath, for chrissake don't ask them to run the ruddy water works!!

 

Come on, hand on heart try telling me me that I'm wrong. We need to think differently, not ideologically. 

[Delbow]

2 hours ago, Tony said:

 

I hear you but (being polite ) that's just ideological claptrap. It still doesn't have to be owned by the government. It can be not-for-profit limited company, a charity, a community interest company or something else dreamed up by Parliament. Why the obsession with letting the government run something when none of us can point at a single thing that the government runs well.

 

The problem isn't ownership, it is bad / wrong regulation. Bad / wrong regulation is the fault of the government - the very same outfit that some people want to run the WaterCo's.

 

We wouldn't trust the government to run the bath, for chrissake don't ask them to run the ruddy water works!!

 

Come on, hand on heart try telling me me that I'm wrong. We need to think differently, not ideologically. 

 

A CIC or similar would suit me fine. My main priority is that billions of pounds is invested into cleaning up our water system for the good of all, not given to shareholders. I think it's important that it's under public control though - I agree that the regulation is very poor, but that's the problem of ceding control and then having to spend time and money trying to get it back. In arms length government bodies, the government has a hand in senior appointments, so something like that may well work. Looking back, it was a good thing for Londoners that the Mayor and Home Secretary were able to get rid of Cressida Dick, for example.

[Tony]

5 minutes ago, Delbow said:

 

A CIC or similar would suit me fine. My main priority is that billions of pounds is invested into cleaning up our water system for the good of all, not given to shareholders. I think it's important that it's under public control though - I agree that the regulation is very poor, but that's the problem of ceding control and then having to spend time and money trying to get it back. In arms length government bodies, the government has a hand in senior appointments, so something like that may well work. Looking back, it was a good thing for Londoners that the Mayor and Home Secretary were able to get rid of Cressida Dick, for example.

 

Again that's a seductive idea but I'd say that quangos are the reason for the mess. The Environment Agency is the quango that overseas water and IIRC before that the National Rivers Authority and before that the various state owned water boards. Take government out of the equation, they only screw things up and change their minds when political priorities change from year to year. At least the WaterCo's only have shareholders, profit and regulations to answer to.

 

[Delbow]

1 hour ago, Tony said:

 

Again that's a seductive idea but I'd say that quangos are the reason for the mess. The Environment Agency is the quango that overseas water and IIRC before that the National Rivers Authority and before that the various state owned water boards. Take government out of the equation, they only screw things up and change their minds when political priorities change from year to year. At least the WaterCo's only have shareholders, profit and regulations to answer to.

 

 

The EA doesn't regulate the water companies, it's Ofwat. The EA will report on pollution but they don't have the powers to make the water companies act differently, and nor does Ofwat it seems. So we've got the government involved in a couple of ways, but neither gives us, the public, nearly enough control over the private companies.

[Tony]

38 minutes ago, Delbow said:

 

The EA doesn't regulate the water companies, it's Ofwat. The EA will report on pollution but they don't have the powers to make the water companies act differently, and nor does Ofwat it seems. So we've got the government involved in a couple of ways, but neither gives us, the public, nearly enough control over the private companies.

 

We seem to agree that whatever the government has done, however it has sliced, diced, fried and dried it, they have made an absolute clustermess of it. Logic alone tells us that we'd be daft to give them another go. the less control they have, the better. They need to create good legislation / regulation and let the WaterCo's get on with it.  I'm personally relaxed about profit since profits generate taxes, pensions and investments but I'm not ideologically against a no-profit.

[Gormenghast]

16 hours ago, Delbow said:

 

I honestly have no idea. But since that was 40 or so years ago, I don't think it would tell us much about how things would be now and in the future, because a lot has changed in that time. 

 

So you'd be happy to turn water companies  over to an organisation, and you've no idea how good they would be at running them?

 

Are you a member of the government?

[Delbow]

4 hours ago, Gormenghast said:

 

So you'd be happy to turn water companies  over to an organisation, and you've no idea how good they would be at running them?

 

That's exactly what the Tory government did in 1989, while also ensuring future governments didn't have sufficient control over the privatised companies if it turned out really badly - which it has. 

 

The reality is that if the private companies were replaced with whatever form of non-profit organisation, it would largely be the same engineers and specialists working in them - they'd need the work and TUPE would likely apply. So the main difference would be that we would have cleaner rivers and seas because over time we would get the necessary investment in infrastructure.