Why Britain’s Water Companies are Going Bankrupt
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The Oxford-Cambridge boat race was overshadowed by a warning about high e coli levels in the Thames, reflecting chronic underinvestment since water privatization in 1989. Thames Water is nearing bankruptcy, posing challenges for Sunak.
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0:00 Intro
1:03 Why did the UK Privatise Water?
3:28 When did it all go wrong?
7:42 Sponsor
Thatcher would have privatised air if she could have.
O'hare air has entered the chat
Well they tax it now with this carbon credit nonsense, do indirectly she did...
Already has, we leave it private companies not to pollute air
well wasn't BOAC privatised under her? technically done half the job.
The script goes thus. Buy national utilities using borrowed money printed for free by your mates. Lobby government to reduce the commitments you are forced to take on. Take out huge loans in the name of the companies. Sell to one of the other utilities providers (many providers were supposed to encourage competition and dissuade monopoly) .. slide towards monopoly. Move corporate headquarters outside the influence of the nation state government. Milk till dry.
Privatise an essential resource. Privatise into a monopoly. Allow the essential resource to be owned by foreign money. Allow the monopoly to borrow billions just to share dividends. Allow the monopolies to do whatever they want, because it's an essential resource. Rescue the monopolies, because it's an essential resource. Who would have guessed?
Because the public system was failing and needed massive investment, yet now apparently we have lots of money for the government to invest in it!?!!?
@@SaintGerbilUK The privatised water companies are DEEP into debt and have crumbling infrastructure. But they keep taking on debt to pay dividends and not fix anything, while polluting more and more. The longer it takes to nationalise them, the bigger the hole. Water is not an investment. We can't live with that, there can only be one provider, and it's limited. It's an essential resource. It's not an investment. It's a responsibility the government must take on. Ever been to Scotland?
Didn't the government impose standards? How on earth should it have been legal to borrow money and pay dividends with it???
@@parametr they fixed more than the previous public system. I'd suggest you watch the video that's literally why they were sold in the first place. Water is an investment and it needs more investment, there can be multiple providers much like electricity, telecoms and rail there are multiple companies running services on the same infrastructure if it works there why not here? The idea that it must be a monolithic structure is just false. Yes I grew up in Scotland, it was crap and cold.
@@scpatl4now exactly the right question, rather than the ill thought out knee jerk "must be nationalized" response from the socialists.
Thames water are absolutely dreadful, they took 4 years to resolve an issue where they kept billing me as a family of 4 when I lived on my own
Same here, 18 months to 'resolve' a billing issue which left me a historic debt to clear that was their fault!
To be fair they had to properly investigate that you're not actually 4 foxes in a trenchcoat
@@mrmg1235I hope you didn't pay!
Severn Trent are currently doing this to me.
Why doos than have anynhing to do wuth waner service? I'm an American our private water companie don't know or care how many people live here, only how much water they are selling.
Cause was 250+ MPs voting to allow raw sewage be dumped into our waterways for lets say "certain perks".
The same people happy to tax us more for their green agenda
Though (as I understand it) the situation wasn't quite that simple. If they didn't allow the sewage to be dumped into rivers, the sewers could overflow instead. Which I think we would all agree is even worse.
@@andybrice2711 which itself only became a problem because the private water companies keep skirting around the need to upgrade their water treatment.
@@boarfaceswinejaw4516 Well, yes. But I don't think we can necessarily condemn the MPs in that more recent vote. They had to choose between two bad options.
@andybrice2711 The problem wasn't a binary choice. Private firms in charge of public utilities will seek to pay their shareholders before they actually do what they're there to do. The government should have made water companies invest money in water-treatment and infrastructure over shareholder dividends, but that, as they say, is another matter entirely.
This needs criminal investigation. How is it even legal to pay dividends and CEOs bonuses on borrowed money while running the company to the ground? Madness. Should have never been privatised.
I'm suprised the bond holders didn't object!
Because they control the acces to a crucial resource. Of course they can do as they please and then wait for the government to bail them with tax payer money. (Edit: I'm not on their side. What they do is disgusting.)
@@Hardcore_Remixerbut they are a private company, their debts aren't our problem We should force majure buy the assets as they are a strategic necessity for the country, but the debts are all theirs. That is what private means, does it not?
@@markwelch3564 Yes. The problem is that they simply won't be able to pay their debt and will blame it on the government. They simply made sure the government and the people it (is supposed to) serve would come out losing. Bur yeah, they should simply be forced to sell their assets and denied any burrow.
@@markwelch3564 but they are though... These people running these companies know full well that the water system cannot fail or go bust, so they have deliberately loaded the companies up with debt to fundamentally steal taxpayers money when we inevitably bail them out when it fails. They know this, so they've criminally fucked us to pay shareholders.
Privatize the profits, socialize the risk.
That’s why the govt shouldn’t be involved in managing that risk or bailing them out, they should suffer the consequences of running a business badly
No part of infrastructure should be privatized
The privatization is not the problem, the problem is that the government granted it a MONOPOLY!
@@jacobmacdonagh4070 So cut off access to an essential service for millions of people?
@@jacobmacdonagh4070The consequences are people dying of water scarcety. Thats the problem with pirvatizing an essential recource. If Chanel goes bankrupt then we wont have that parfume, which is not as bad as water. It shouldnt be a private bussiness, water shouldnt need profit. Its ok that some things just cost money and thats it
I can't believe any sane man with human dignity will auction off water.
An insane woman
It was a Liz Truss but with more budget wiggle room and an army to wage a war
Tories aren't human. They know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.
Why is water any different than land?
@@jacobmacdonagh4070 because two days without water and you're dead
For 35 years, the cost of privatisation has led to £2bn a year out of investment or a total of £70,000,000,000 (£70bn) so it's clear, don't privatise a sector that shouldn't be for profit. Water isn't for sale just like healthcare isn't but seems to be.
My parents went to watch the boat race. They said one factor contributing to Oxford's loss was their having more preferred rowers off sick with ecoli.
Nah, Oxford’s been losing a lot recently. Cambridge is just better 😌
@@noelstar1456 probably - what I found surprising was that it is an occupational hazard for both teams.
I used to do rowing and one time I capsized and swallowed some water, and that night I was vomiting my guts out until morning. Rivers have only gotten much dirtier since then.
@@RealUlrichLelanddo youz pump raw sewage into your rivers in the UK?
i like the idea that the team with strongest immune system wins
So many of our problems track back to Thatcher
Similar situation in the US with Raegan. Seems like screwing over future generations was a trend in the 80s.
@@mylesbarrett2031 As old Ben would say, "From a certain point of view." Similar to how the saying goes one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. To you that time and those people are the problem but to another because of those individuals we live in a better place.
@@houseslippers7732 Yup, those investors and shareholders are now even richer. The people who rely on those water services definitely live in a worse place though, no matter what coloured glasses you look through.
So many of our problems can be traced to mass immigration and simply not being able to build infrastructure, pipes, treatment works, hospitals, schools, houses fast enough to cope with massive demand increases every year. 700k net last year alone, we cant build a new city every year.
thatcher the milk snatcher diabolical prime minister.
We have the same problem with electricity in Sweden, and suddenly we start to realize that the grid has not been invested into for decades, but profits are healthy, thank you very much.
That's very surprising to hear. I'm from Germany where Vattenfall ist the 4th largest electricity company and it's 100% owned by the swedish state. Germany had begun to buy back electricity grids from private companies such as Vattenfall though. In my opinion anything related to our basic needs (electricity, water, sewage, gas, trash&recycling,...) should never be privatized. Vattenfall is also known for lobbyism (=corruption) and has sued Germany for getting out of nuclear energy for which Vattenfall received billions as compensation. If the electricity/water/... sector is profitable, then it should be owned publicly to share the revenue between the people and if it's unprofitable and causing the companies to mismanage the grid infrastructure then it should be owned publicly to make sure it stays in working condition. In other words: it should never be private.
For my country (Singapore) we opened up electricity generation & selling but not transmission to competition by private companies around 5 yrs ago, & they handed out attractive deals to customers to attract them, but many of those companies have since gone bust & customers have seen their bills go up significantly when they return back to our remaining electricity companies. We also tendered out a desalination-cum-electricity power plant to a private company called HyFlux that was the country's darling, but I heard it underbid too aggressively to win the contract, and thus struggled to have enough money to maintain the plant (partially because it was tendered out around the same time the electricity market was opened up & prices went down).The gov't then repossessed the plant & portrayed the situation euphemistically by claiming that the plant had devalued so much that its valuation at repossession was negative, so thus the gov't was being benevolent by 'only' repossessing the plant & not also demanding compensation due to the plant's claimed negative valuation. Later I heard HyFlux's leader was being investigated for embezzlement, though before that some netizens were already calling her an embarrassment of her alma mater. Still I can imagine some of our ministers using the UK's situation to disparge the criticism that the UK might have of Singapore e.g. retaining capital punishment, detention without trial & contempt of court after the UK had repealed them. One of our ministers also argued that Richard Branson had "no right to lecture" against capital punishment for a drug mule with reportedly low IQ (whom my country argued was lying I think), given that the UK had started the Opium War. Additionally he claimed that no one in the UK wants to become a judge since contempt of court has been repealed there
I mean we have it in water, electricity, rail, post, oil, pretty much anything that would be a natural monopoly is in this country for the profit of a few. But those pesky immigrants contributing to society and all that dog whistling 🙄
Time to renationalise all water companies!
Lol look at everything the government owns and runs, it's worse 😂
Time to make them do what they're paid to do. If they can't, let them go bankrupt and nationalise them the day after. That way the taxpayer doesn't get landed with having to buy them out and take on their massive debts.
nah don't bother with the companies. Just the infrastrucuture they control and set up a completely new government owned company to deal with it. Should only cost £1
@@dondoodat agreed!
Actually what they need to to merge with each other for better coordination,Nationalisation won't do anything,water is still a limited resource with a price on it so whether private or public the companie needs to be for profit.
John snow is rolling in his grave
🐺😅
For those unaware, John Snow was a scientist who figured out that a water pump in Soho was the source of a bad cholera outbreak in London, thus bringing about germ theory and recognition that pathogens are the source of a lot of disease. There's a pub in his name near the pump location.
Bazalgette too
Yup, probably.
He didn't die though, didn't you watch season 8?
It's well known water companies have had 220 million cash injection to improve sewage systems but spent it on shareholders and bonuses.
In a word: GREED ! Privatisation means PROFIT for the Directors & shareholders, without a care for the consumer. (IMHO) No utility should be in private hands.
Greed by shareholders, CEOs & Tory chums.
Absolutely. When the priority to pay the shareholders takes precedence over the service a business is actually supposed to provide this same issue will continue to occur.
'Open Borders' Labour is your obvious solution... what could go wrong with having LIMITED RESOURCES for Public Services, and then letting in an UNLIMITED amount of Immigrants to sign up for these Benefits paid for by the BRITISH TAXPAYER? 🤣
And a regulatory body (Ofwat) that exists solely to help the private companies find loopholes, and not to serve the interests of the public.
@annoyboyPictures I thought they came to steal jobs, not take benefits. Make your mind up. Your tories have done nothing more than swap Europeans for Africans and Indians etc. Bur more so as we cannot move to Europe as we used to. People like you caused this sewage problem and our broken NHS by voting Tory over the last 45 years.
@@annoyboyPictures700k net new people last year alone. We cant build treatment works fast enough to cope so their turds end up in our rivers and seas.
Privatized water is the most dystopian thing I've ever heard.
Why? They have better services than public industries which are wasteful and don't use diminishing resources effectively. The only reason why the UK's water is going bankrupt is because they can't set their own prices based on supply and demand. "Unlike energy companies, water companies do not set their own prices. In England and Wales, price limits are set for them for five-year periods by the independent economic regulator, Ofwat."
@@Robert-hy3vvNo, the British government is wasteful. When they don't stick their finger in the pie, public industry is extremely efficient. Just look at British Rail just before Privatization. So efficient, companies promised they could run things cheaper and more efficient, and then quickly realized they couldn't. The only problem with BR, was lack of funding. We could have even had a version of HS2 operating right now if BR had been allowed to build it in the 90s. Government ruins everything, and I'm tired of them never getting the blame.
@@mattevans4377 As a rail worker, you're correct. Fortunately rail privatisation is soon over
@@Robert-hy3vv LOL, yes, like everything in the UK, our pritivisted services should be more expensive than nationalised services everywhere else in Europe, so 'they can invest', while in reality, shareholders can get richer and our services always get worse. After 40 years of this nonsense I'd thught you'd have learned by now to stop believing Tory rubbish
@@Robert-hy3vv The only reason? Not because they were paying shareholders with money they didn't have? If you took out the payments to shareholders, they'd be doing so much better. You know, like if it wasn't privatised.
According to standard capitalist arguments, dividends are supposed to be paid out of profits generated by the production or service revenue of a company, i.e., they are perfotmance-based. Why are companies allowed to pay dividends out of borrowings when customers then have to pay higher prices on the cost of the borrowed cash? That is not productive business it is an unregulated scam to put extra money in the pockets of executives and shareholders while doing nothing to enhance the business' performance, which latter was the argument for privatisation.
"That is not productive business it is an unregulated scam to put extra money in the pockets of executives and shareholders while doing nothing to enhance the business' performance" that's a nice summing up of neoliberalism
Yes, dividends are paid according company's performance, but this performance is measured by profit (or by increases/decreases to this profit) which the company makes. For example if company sells clean water for 0.5 pounds/litre, and then starts to charge 1 pound/litre for muddy water (while the consumption of water remains the same), then increased dividends are justified since company "performed better". HOWEVER, normally customers would change service provider at this point, but in this case they can't since the water company has a monopoly.
Not sure what capitalists you have listened to, but the function of companies is solely to provide dividend to shareholders. If the dividend comes from increased efficiency / increased performance it is simply a matter of luck. Dividend through borrowing and under investment is still dividend. It might even unlock a third source of dividend - bailout from the people. Unless nationalised or properly regulated the bailout will go straight into the pocket of shareholders. The bailouts will then continue until stopped because water isn't exactly an optional resource.
£100bn of upgrades still needed, £70bn of dividends paid out, £60bn of debt. Sounds suspiciously similar to a Ponzi scheme.
@@runeeskesen5920That‘s not the main function of companies. The main function is to make a profit with the service/goods they provide or manufacture. Not all companies are public. And not all public companies behave this way. Con Artist run companies do.
What's NOT going completely wrong in the UK lately? Geeze.
It still rains enough that Britain could hydro power all of Europe with capacity to spare to lead the inevitable titanium revolution.
The rich are doing better, to be fair.
Well let's see, we can't do water or sewers, we can't do roads, farming, hospitals, doctors appointments, jobs, houses, reasonable costs of living, anything being affordable, real wage growth, worthwhile pensions, military, manufacturing or politics... So.... 😂
Welcome to Tory country...
@@andrewpepper3145 We outsource everything to foreign private companies, we can't afford it, we raise tax to pay for the services, private companies see the raise in tax and raise their prices. This is the problem when you allow foreign investment to run essential services, the societal problems they cause from maximising profits is never seen by them.
You mean England's water crisis? No issues in Scotland where water isn't privatised.
And less of a crisis in wales, where most people are served by a non-profit
In UK, I feel like Scotland is almost always step ahead in right direction.
Yes you know why you keep seeing articles about pumping Scotlands water to London. It’s cheaper to do that than fix their own problems.
@@staticgrasshaha I was just going to write, loads of articles showing dŵr cymru giving Thames water millions of litres of water.
@@staticgrass The Scottish Publicly owned Water Company sent a subsidiary into England and it has bought pieces of England's privatised water industry. Yorkshire Water's Business Customers in 2019. Southern Water's Business Customers in 2016.
They've taken on tens of billions of pounds in debt to pay their shareholders £57 BILLION in dividends since the beginning of privatisation, and now either the taxpayer or their customers will need to bail them out. Welcome to capitalism where profits are privatised and losses are socialised.
Last I read they'd borrowed around £50bill to pay shareholders over £70bill
They wouldn't have any shareholders if they didn't pay dividends. Most people's pensions are invested in these companies.
@@N.i.c.k.H Yes, somewhere under that, I think you almost grasped it. It shouldn't be run for shareholder profits.
They should never be bailed out. The company failed its duty. The contract should therefore be null. The operation should be taken back and every singel penny the company has should be forced to be payed to the state. I would even go so far as to say that the shareholders that acted in bad faith should be forced to pay back.
@@Zyphera The company's only duty is to its shareholders whatever you think it "should" be. That's the law.
Rather hard to believe one of the G10 nations is going to have trouble in providing its citizens with water, you know the first human basic right...
explains why theyre trying to get rid of human rights
@@timquestionmark Something something sovereignty
Its not unsurprisingly
Need doesn't equal right but okay
@@mathyeuxsommet3119 No. Access to drinkable water is a right by law. It's why no cafe etc. can charge for water.
"Nationalisation will cost money" - fuck that. Seize it, leave the investors with nothing. To anyone who says that's extreme, the reply is "no, extreme would be illegally confiscating the private wealth accrued by the ex-investors".
Privatisation of these Obligate Monopoly Public Utilities was a flawed idea from the start. It's being allowed to continue by a government refusing to acknowledge it's primary philosophy has failed. And we're all going to be left to pay the price.
What is privatized is the administration of water, water is not sold. And the big problem with the United Kingdom is that it is excessively regulated. The privatization of water in Chile has been a complete success, it managed to reach the entire country and at low prices.
@@user-zf8nz2kh1m The difference is that while its operated by the private sector, that its also heavily regulated. And even more, the government has invested a lot of money in making sure that more poverty stricken areas of the country could get water access. Privatization is great for bringing in that initial rush of money, but it requires heavy regulation so that the companies wont run away with the profits, just as they did in the UK.
'Englands'....Scottish water is still nationalised!
usual stuff ... English problems are labelled british, Scottish problems are labelled Scottish.... you don't see them talking about "british drug deaths", "british hate crime bill". Meanwhile good things in Scotland are labelled british "British oil" etc... sick of this pish.
scottish and english water are very different, scotland has much better quality of water due to lochs whereas england has to pump alot of ground water like Ireland. Scotlands water is crazy cheap so apples and orange comparison.
@@geewoods6590 The largest draw on water in Ireland is for the Dublin region and it gets 80% of its water from the river Liffey - not from groundwater. A similarity between Ireland and England is in the failure to build a single new reservoir for decades. The government in Ireland struggled mightily to privatise water but failed in the face of massive civic disobedience.
@@mmaximk I worked for Irish water for over 3 years in drinking water, and was joining when they brought in the water tax. They didnt try to privatize it but actually just tried to group it as all the counties were doing their own thing and not communicating. You guys just got more council tax when everyone complained about the water tax. The funding was still the same. GDR was my main area and Ireland has way more boreholes than any other water system ive been on. The problem with this video is it specifies "new" reservoirs when it isnt in the water baording interest to build new ones but actually to reduce the total number and increase the capacity of existings as this has much better Opex in the long run. These SRs need regular cleaning and have systems that require maintenance so actually I think the government is doing a good job in Ireland, you are about 15 years behind UK as far as streamlining it but that was because of all the small county and people resisting good change.
And Wales is privatised
When are we going to actually run our country and not rent our people out to capitalists around the globe? The privatisation of basic needs is both a admission of weakness and an act of submission by a government.
An island nation that may or may not soon die of dehydration. "Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink..."
Not Scotland mate!
None of it is Fresh Water
Don't worry north of England companies sell water to south England and Scotland sells it to north England
Also currently experiencing unusually wet weather, but still in danger of running out of potable water.
If it doesn't rain for a week, there is a hosepipe ban. If it rains for a week, the rivers are overflowing with sewage. It's almost as if the private companies done zilch in the last 40 years to upgrade the infrastructure.
To be fair Macquarie group is not exactly liked even in Australia
Glug, glug, my lovely Scottish water is delicious.
Yeah but you have to live in Scotland
@@WillyJunior way better than england
I'm moving North
@@thesenate4110scotland is the nicest place in the world to live for about 3-4 weeks a year.. when it's not absolutely pishing it down, windy as fuck, freezing or covered in slushy snow or re-frozen slushy snow or only light for 6 hrs..... as long as there are no Neds in view.
@@thesenate4110 with Humza Youseff and his new bill? Nah...
It's almost like privatisation has removed long tem planning and development that work. Utilities are a public necessity, not a private profit necessity. Imagine the cost of creating the Victorian sewage network we still use. I wonder why it's never been replaced?
It sounds like there was no long term investment going on before which is why it required privatisation in the first place. In fact most of the Victorian water main that has been replaced has been done after privatisation.
Because no one privately is allowed to build new water infrastructure even if they wanted to
@@jacobmacdonagh4070 that's government creating the problem not the private sector.
@@SaintGerbilUK yes I agree
@@SaintGerbilUK i mean tha'ts just government not paying for it because it could be put off, always the same with politicians it would strain the budget make some things more expensive and take the budget away from more flashy stuff that would get them votes from next election. Politicians don't give a crap about problems that are gonna happen in 10 years as they aren't gonna be in office anymore, one of downsides of democracy i guess
In today's episode of the UK trying to be quirky and doing things different from others and getting screwed over it.
Still super glad that our former mayor, Christian Ude, flatly refused to have the fresh water system in Munich, my home city, privatized when there was a big push for it. We still have some of the best tap water in Europe to this day, mostly thanks to that.
Hey, if Brexit Britain is good for something, it's a lesson others can learn from about what *not* to do.
It's because my road has had a leak on it for 17 years that nobody has bothered to fix.
I find that very hard to believe.
@@mitchrils you be surprised how ineffective private company's can be
@@RoyalLegend1000 I work in the leakage department for a water company, there’s no way a water leak would be left for 17 years.
@@mitchrils we talking about the same guys who put the whole infrastructure to shit
@@mitchrilsand i worked at a zoo for 15 years that had a leak just outside of it by a public road, it existed before I started there and it still exists to this day. 😂 I hope you don't work for South West Water.
The mispronunciation of Macquarie is the funniest thing I've heard today! (It's ma-quarry for future reference)
nah its thinking that sky news and the bbc are on the right
1:29 Pínoché LOL Do they even try pronouncing words right?
In Australia, known as the Millionaire factory. Financial engineering at its worst.
This gave me a good laugh too... its pronounced 'millionaires factory' guys
No one cares mate 😂
Because some idiot privatised public services.
They took the CEO salary increases, insane bonuses & maxed out the shareholder dividends. Then they said they can't afford to fix the problems they caused, refused to put up the money they owe & instead (once again) stuck a bailout hand to the government.
The taxpayer is paying for it. We are being scammed to high heavens. Still wondering why we don’t try the corporations, executives and corrupt politicians for treason.
It's so sad that you give them a handout. They failed there duty and should have there contract broken. The operation should be taken back. All previous handouts should be payed back as they used the money in bad faith.
As an Australian, Macquarie Bank is one of the worst banks to sell your monopolised water utility to!! They literally own a huge chunk of our speed cameras, they were the reason for the deaths caused by a Dreamworld ride years ago, they operate like an unethical Private Equity fund putting profits above all ethics! Good Luck Londers!
>Dodgy bank buys water company >Dodgy bank gives water company lots of debt >Dodgy bank profits off the debt >?????? Seems like a satirical joke 😅
Thatcher was actual poison
But the gammons love her because muh falklands
She was half of Satan. The other half was Reagan. Together, they'd form what people call "Anti-Christ".
It really has been the best thing to happen to the UK in a long time. What happens is that the majority of British people are not intelligent people and they forget about the poverty that existed before Thatcher and now they have returned to believing that the State should solve their problems.
The story of how Scotland avoided it is fascinating. An informal postal referendum was organised by Strathclyde Regional Council and 97% voted against, the pressure so great U.K. govt had to drop the plans
0:13 had the video playing in the background and choked on my tea at this part
“Efficiency savings” are always medium and long term measures that are necessary for sustainable infrastructure. So companies show initial savings but then the system falls apart ten to twenty years later.
?Britain?????? Scottish 🏴 water is owned by its people
Sick of being associated with that place all the time.
It's owned by your government who's been caught stealing from you.
It does say that in the video
It's owned by the government not the people.
@@SaintGerbilUK people pay taxes which pay for the water company
You allow private companies to control your most important resource. Absolute madness.
The level of mismanagement needed to destroy a company that sells the very essential liquid of life itself. The one utility nobody can do without, without competition.
It's not mismanagement, it's being deliberately done. These companies know they can't be allowed to fail and behave as they please.
One problem, this is about water not about beer.
They were privatised because they were being mismanaged as state entities. They were not investing, they had no incentive to invest. They were privatised on a model where they make no money from selling water, that is sold at cost, they make money from building infrastructure, the government approves and funds that infrastructure, the companies themselves build as much as they can but its the government that approves it or not. That model was a massive improvement on every metric until the increasing demand from rapid population growth from mass immigration outpaced investment. Nationalising them won't solve the problem, we cant build infrastructure fast enough, increasing demand is the problem, reducing demand is the solution, closing the borders is a start.
@@quillo2747 And as TLDR explained, they ended up being run for profit, at the expanse of the public who is now burdenned with some of the highest energy bills in the world, highest train fares iun the world and a failing water supply system. YEah, it worked so well.... Privatizing monopolies and necessities to be run for profit instead of publicly owned has definitely made life cheaper and more reliable for brits. I mean, they pinky promised! Who would have predicted that a company would put its shareholders first and their trapped customers, forced to do business with them last?
@@quillo2747 absolute nonsense. They weren't not investing because they had no incentive to invest - they weren't investing because the government wasn't giving them any cash to make the required investments. Also the government is not funding the construction of the infrastructure - the whole point of privatising the system was that the state refused to finance the necessary investment and wanted to rely on private capital to do so instead. Agree with you about increasing demand though, that's also another signifcant problem that needs addressing.
as I understood shareholders took out loans to pay to themselves huge bonuses and now blackmailing government if wont give more money they will just go bankrupt and shareholders will walk away with money no problem, laughing in da face.
thats the point of neoliberalism. Profits for the shareholders, losses for the taxpayer
Assuming that gov is modestly smart, instead of folding, it should wait and buy those assets from debtors in inevitable fire sale...
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 While they wait, the water systems get worse and worse.
Anybody in Australia could have told you Macquarie Bank were mercenaries. But the UK decided to trust them to do right?!?! 🤷♀️
They arent the millionaires factory from being nice... Just ask the people of texas who nearly froze to death a few years ago...
Exactly, Macquarie Bank has a reputation for being unethical
Tories aren't exactly known for their morals, either
5:29 You're kidding, right? How tf is dumping raw sewage into public rivers not illegal? That utterly absurd for the 21st century!
It's legal because otherwise all that sewage would be backing up into peoples' houses and overflowing out of the crappers! Fully agree that it's utterly absurd for this to be the case in the 21st Century, but that's where we are.
Its a brilliant system that the water companies have made for themselves. No competition, no government involvement, the people who are meant to regulate them have a revolving door to senior positions in the water companies and then once theyve bled all the profits dry the government has no choice but to bail them out while getting all the blame!
Imagine being in a country where it is raining constantly and not having cheap and efficient water suppy
Macquarie is pronounced 'mack-quarry', and they also involved in dodgey ppp deals in Australia too.
The tories doing what they want when its not what the public want. nothings changed
Started failing in the late 90's who was in charge then...
I mean if it’s not what the public want then why do the majority of them keep voting for them
This is how governments have worked since the beginning of time
@@inoovator3756 I kind of disagree we used to have politicians who said "these are my values, vote for me if you agree", now politicians don't have values and adopt the whims of the day. It's one of the reasons you can't really tell Labour and the Tories apart.
@SaintGerbilUK private corporations were in charge then.
WTF? Not even US has private water supply... where's the competition?
US does in small portions.
@@houseslippers7732 They give contracts to private companies to for example build and operate a sewage plant, which is not the same thing as the full privatisation we have here.
And look how well that worked out in Flint, Michigan
@@katrinabryce Actually that happens all over EU, it happens in my country, it was actually imposed. So the treatment plant is private but all the distribution is city owned.
Thanks Thatcher! See you next tuesday!
... in HELL! And if hell doesn't exist, Thatcher and Reagan together could form it.
Reason is simple: Huge Exec Compensation + Huge Dividends to Shareholders + No Investment In Infrastructure!
Public services should always be nationalized… because services aren’t meant to “make profit.” Otherwise the police would leave you a bill whenever they show up. Public goods/services bring indirect investment through economic activity.
Privatized water is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of
6:09 I'll have you know that our former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has major connections with that Bank.
In short privatised, were not regulated properly, Australian MacGuarie refinanced to strip all assets and cash while not investing and now taxpayers will pay the price. Perfect model for all
5:33 And now I am starting to think of John Snow and Germ Theory. Sewage in the Thames did stick in memory.
Water should be nationalised, full stop. 0 profit. Sell water at cost + a percentage for investment and repairs. Incredibly obvious and simple. If the government can compulsory purchase your house for infrastructure, we can 100% commandeer the water companies and say "tough luck rich shareholders, we own this now".
imposing proportionate penalties would be sufficient deterant, they would surrender voluntarily.
Water is sold at cost. Water companies is make no proffit by selling water, they make money by investing in infrastructure, its the government that approves and funds that infrastructure. The increasing demand for drinking water and for sewage treatment from mass immigration, 700k net people last year alone, means we cant build pipes and treatment works fast enough to cope.
@@quillo2747You’re also ignoring how private water is just not a thing? Even America doesn’t have private water. You’re blaming everything BUT the water companies that actually run the water. Thames water is giving its ceo a bonus while the company is in massive debt. They’re giving hand outs to shareholders while claiming they need to raise bills. People like you are why we’re in this shit. Useful idiots who think they’re fighting something when they’re just tools
Why do all socialists start with theft before moving onto murder?
The idealization you do is only done by ignorant people. Nationalizing something in the end only means increasing public spending and worsening its quality. The problem with privatization in the UK is the overregulation of the State... Because in Chile privatization works perfectly.
You failed to mention Thames water also sold off billions in land to developers that were meant for infrastructure to also pay dividends. The water companies in general were sold off too cheaply based on their valuations at the time, so in general the public have been screwed many times over by government mismanagement
Well planned don't worry 😢😢
TIL we (Germany) are losing 5% water due to leakage. I'm shocked, hope this will get fixed asap, that's way more then it should be!
A load of perfectly timed chocolate bars in the themes for the boat race would have been a great way to highlight problem of water companies dumping raw sewage.
Is there anything that is going well or works in the UK? Lol
The Conservative party could get 0 seats in the next election...
Yes. That would be neo liberalism
They still make decent crime dramas.
The rich got obscenely richer, thank you very much!
No. The UK is basically a corpse being looted by its political class
Water Companies Universities Healthcare system
prisons trains
All crumbling because they can't cope with the increased demand from mass immigration, 700k net last year alone. We cant build hospitals or treatment works fast enough. The universities are making a killing from foreign students tho.
Thanks, Thatcher.
I used to work for Thames Water as supply chain analyst. They hire the cheapest contractors most of the time They dont even give employee discount.
Were there any water suppliers that did make an effort?
Privatisation was meant to yield benefits for the local population, as it aimed to enhance water and sewage systems through investments, all the while ensuring the contentment of shareholders. However, in reality, only the shareholders have found satisfaction, while water bills have been on a steady incline, debts have mounted, and the essential investments required for maintenance and improvement of the systems have been sorely lacking. Thames Water stands as a prime example of an organisation mired in chaos and disorder. It is now audaciously requesting a bailout and seeking empathy from the UK government. Why do politicians and companies keep getting away with their lies without any accountability and the general public has to pay for their actions?!
American here, I don't know what you mean by the UK and Chili are tte only nations to privatize their water. American Water a private company manages water for my city. Ours is also private.
Water and sewer service is locally controlled in the US. That means that local government regulates the companies. So voters have an easy way to express their disapproval if the service is poor. In Texas there are many tiny private water companies, and some are horrible. But, thanks to our legislature, if a local government wants to take them over, they have to pay what the private utility says they are worth. Cronyism is not a problem limited to the UK.
the corporations want ‘water wars’. mr nestle told you all that access to the most basic of resources is in no way to be considered a ‘human right’. get up to speed people !
I wonder what the easy solution to sewage dumping is, could it be nationalisation?
But that kinda is quite expensive for the country. Don’t know if we got the funds to handle it to a good standard.
@@revilokid unfortunately the only way to nationalize within the markets is to allow it to fail, which the government can't. What is needed is a forced takeover, but that's potentially economically damaging. What the government needs to do is heavily heavily fine thames water for leaking sewage, which forces them to fix thier act or undergo liquidiation at which point the govt could probably buy it for cheap. But even then that'd be very painful during the process.
@@TheMajorpickle01 yeah but I mean when the government has the company. To keep it to a high/acceptable standard I don’t think it has the funds/resources to realistically achieve it.
There's no easy solution, long term. The problem can essentially be fixed in two ways, the sewer system itself can be replaced to separate rainwater and sewage more effectively, that's the reason sewage dumping tends to occur when it rains. Or you can expand water treatment plants so they have much more spare capacity. Likely we'll need to do both, but the latter is less disruptive (though more expensive) since replacing sewer systems will involve a lot of streets being dug up and roads being closed all across the country.
It would help if we weren't adding 700k people a year to our population via mass immigration. We cant build sewers and treatment works fast enough to cope.
*England's water companies.
At the beginning when he says “throw your Cox in the water” for anyone who doesn’t know a Cox is the name for the leader of the boat
Glad to ese you again hosting the videos Ben.
Thatcher was the devil.
Half of Satan. The other half was Reagan. Too bad it took people over 40 years to start to get the hint.
She truly has been the best thing to happen to the UK in a long time. What happens is that the majority of British people are not intelligent people and they forget about the poverty that existed before Thatcher and now they have returned to believing that the State should solve their problems.
Seems that Joe Lycett really can make a change and bring things to the publics attention
Greed! - Shareholders are too interested in filling their pockets than investing in infrastructure.
Looking at it from the outside this is so mindbogglingly strange. How could anyone think that this would work? I think the best would be to let them declare bankruptcy and then nationalise the companies again. The UK is alone in this for a very good reason.
The problem is that nothing about the water market in the UK is private, it’s the same with our rail. Just because it’s not nationalised, doesn’t mean it’s private, it’s just a crony mixed economy where private companies trade on a public system. The fact is you are not allowed to compete with providers, they have a govt granted monopoly, and selling off all the water provision contracts in one go overnight is gonna create monopolies because the market didn’t grow organically, it went from nationalisation to not overnight. Don’t forget nationalisation is the biggest monopoly there is. The water itself is not private so there is no incentive to look after it and no way to compete on the same area as a competitor is not allowed to build new water infrastructure or trade on water rights as the govt still own the water. Nothing about it is a private market so if course it won’t operate efficiently
Did you not watch the video? The profits were most definitely private. A monopoly existing doesn't make something not private. Please google what a private company is.
means of production should never be privatized
It’s utterly nuts that water has become a for profit resource.
They still pay out to shareholders. Weird.
One of the cleanest water supply systems? I’ve been in England recently. There is chlorine in your water. You do realise in many other places you can actually drink tab water and they still don’t need that
Unless you drink water from a lab there is chlorine in ALL drinking water?
@@izaakbrummitt1992 I was talking about chlorinating, as in adding chlorine to it, significantly enough that it smells like pool water. And no many other countries don’t do that, because they don’t need to. In Germany for example this is only done in case of an temporary environmental issue, like flooding, in which case it’s worth an environmental warning across cellular broadcast, and honestly the one time I saw that, it subjectively at least still didn’t smell as chlorinated, as „normal“ water in England does. Looking it up online, at the very least Switzerland and Netherlands don’t regularly chlorinate their tab water either, because it is actually clean. I’m sure with chlorination England may reach similar „cleanliness“ in terms of bacteria present, but it doesn’t really count, does it.
@@autarchprinceps fair enough, I’ve lived in Germany and England. Some of the water in both areas I’ve lived have been foul. Best tap water I’ve ever drank was in Scotland.
Chlorine kills bad things like cryptosporidum bacteria. Water abstracted from reservoirs and rivers requires treatment, filters and either chlorine or UV but uv is very expensive. Unless you only take from boreholes where just a filter will do as thers no risk of bacteria.
@@quillo2747 And yet other countries have cleaner water without the need to add chlorine in the water regularly. Again I get it, chlorine is preferable to getting diseases from the water, obviously, but many other highly developed countries have neither, so clearly the UK is doing something wrong here. And no, water costs as a result aren't a big concern either. They're a drop in the bucket in comparison to other house related costs. Most are for the treatment after leaving your house anyway, not for getting the clean water to your house.
TLDR you seem to have an issue with spam comments
Any medium channel now had these semi nude bots posting the minute the vid drops
Me who hasn't seen anything:
I saw a programme recently saying that way before 1989. in the 18th or maybe 17th century when they built the London sewerage system they, the constructors had a choice of 2 water systems. one was all the water was filtered into the same pipes, and the second thing was that the water system was supposed to use 2 sets of pipes & not just one. This would of filtered the water into dirty water & clean water elements. iirc.
So massive financial mismanagement and paying shareholders and CEOs with money by the water companies don’t have. And the taxpayer will have to effectively pick up the pieces. This is the same as a number of essential services that are showing signs of chronic underinvestment in the U.K.
If we can just make public food and water, then there is hope for a future
Wtf those public food mean ??
@@mathyeuxsommet3119 nationalised
@@Srindal4657 You want to Nations all food production and distribution ? To do what exactly ? If so I beg you to understand economics above some basic superficial level.
@@mathyeuxsommet3119 to support people we've invested heavily in from education. So that we don't waste more money
@@mathyeuxsommet3119 I think he means he wants communism where the government rations out food
1:42 - isn't Czechia also democratic? And I think many if not all water providers are private.
The Czech Republic has its waters mostly in the ownership of the local authority(towns), in other words, it is national ownership.
I would argue that water privatisation is not only abhorrent, it is a violation of international law. Access to water and sanitation are UN recognised human rights. If a government makes it so you can be denied drinking water if you have no money, it is a violation of that right.
How can they pay billions in dividends and then go bankrupt? Who made laws permissible to it?
What’s the point of privatising anything which can’t have competition. It’s a Monopoly.
The point is that the government doesn't have to pay for it. It makes them look good until the consequences start happening.
The tories sold it off and screwed it up. there you go, save you ten minutes.
It started failing in the late 90's, who was in charge then?
SaintGerbilUK The private companies that now owned the utility, that’s who, Thatcher left a lot of lasting damage through her policies.
@@juancarlosalonso5664 I guess we should have left it in public hands which would not have invested at all. As said in the video.
@@SaintGerbilUK the government would have only invested the bare minimum in maintenance sure, but at least it wouldn't have been bled dry and taken to it's breaking point by investors who couldn't care less about the public. Also noticed you dodged replying to me... guess it was just easier to deflect what he/she said than come up with an actual argument other than "yeah but government-run wouldn't be perfect either!".
@@SaintGerbilUK sorry i don't follow, the water companies are privately run?
There needs to be an investigation into McQuarrie for their term of office in Thames Water. They have plenty of UK assets to fine!
Ah, privatization. Ideal if your goal is to make an important public service perform much worse while becoming more expensive.
Britains water isn't private. ENGLANDS is. Scottish water is PUBLIC and we have none of these problems.
Scotland is a little shit that lives subsidized by England. London alone has almost twice as many inhabitants as all of Scotland. Furthermore, water never belongs to the people, it always belongs to the State, only its administration is privatized.
Scotland is part of britain you melt
@@GG-hi5if I know... He said Britains water is private, no it isn't. Only Englands is...
@@thevis5465 /cope
Can you not just accept that Scotland isn't always included when someone says Britain? I get that you despise being a part of the United Kingdom but I think you're reading into the word Britain a bit too much here dude.
How’s it legal to take out a loan and give the money to shareholders?
It's probably an bureaucratic mess to do some companies might need that if they to keep a steady flow of investment,long term It's almost always a bad idea.
They also avoid tax with debt repayments reducing it!
Because they aren't directly transferring the money across the balance sheet, so it would be near impossible to legislate around. Loan comes in, end of next quarter raise dividends out of operational cash, no one knows better
@@DanielHowarth00 You could create a law requiring Government approval for loans in water industry.
you could also ban dividends or severely limit it if company is in debt, sure it would make it harder to get investments maybe but it would also make original investors not fk around and actually make sure they manage the company properly instead of just siphoning money from their monopoly
Another really bad aspect of water privatisation: OFWAT insist that all water companies work in the same 5 year time cycles so that they can (simplistically) compare performances. No future investment is agreed before the deadline date. This has an enormous affect on contractors who actually do the investment work we all need. The water monopolies effectively operate a moratorium of investment in the 18 months leading to the end of the 5 year cycle in order to maximise their negotiation position for the next round of talks with OFWAT. They certainly do not invest in anything that would over-run the next review date - and most projects take at least 2 years to be completed. So water specialists find they have no work for two years, followed possibly by a 3 year "feast". But meanwhile the engineers and specialist workers have gone elsewhere. It also means in practice that foreign companies, with a better spread of work, have an advantage.
They sacked the people that fixed the pipes, did not invest in replacing the old pipes just turned down the water pressure, then paid the fine. Cheaper to pay the fine then fix the problem. Time they paid every penny back. Plus a couple of billion on top to fix the problems they started.
Public resources should be nationally owned and privately managed, following the PPP model, where private companies can get a license to manage the service, but if they screw up, they can be replaced.
The very idea of a private company (and therefore private and/or foreign interests) owning critical infrastructure like power and water has always puzzled me. Thatcher will always have a mixed legacy, having made some difficult and necessary albeit painful decisions. However, this will have to be chalked up as one of her more terrible decisions
Thers an argument for nationalising water and power to a degree, mainly so it doesn't end up being owned by foreign nations. But thers far more cases of nationalised industries collapsing than private. Take south Africa, they were the most prosperous cou try in Africa, they nationalised energy, now they have rolling blackouts. The government cant fill in potholes, why do you think they could manage the nations energy supply?