Water Privatisation Has Failed Britain

[Chris-htng]

Nationalise. Every. Key. National. Service. 🎉

[tomalexander]

When I lived in Oxfordshire, I opted to receive emails when Thames Water dumped (treated but not enough to remove all the nasties) waste water into the rivers, as the Cherwell was good to swim in, and was horrified how often they dumped water and justified it on rain. It rains in the UK, everyone knows that, so it’s an infrastructure problem, not an excuse to dump waste water. Would love to see Thames Water nationalised.

[cal]

Man, Thatcher sure knew how to screw us over!

[ClayScarlett]

0:08 *England and Wales, not the UK.

In Scotland, water is a public utility managed by the government. In NI, we have a government owned company.

[annebeckett-morris]

I still cannot get my head around how they can charge for rain water coming down your drainpipe!

[ProffyChaos]

That strange gap in Severn Trent is for South Staffs water. There you pay South Staffs for the water but you pay Severn Trent for drainage 🤷.

[annettewilkinson]

There is some competition for business users. I am only really familiar with the situation in Scotland where the water company is in public ownership. For business customers there is a wholesale/retail split where Scottish Water is the "wholesaler" and own the network and treat water and wastewater. There are a number of companies that provide retail services and customers can go with whichever company they like. I think the situation is similar in England.

[katrinabryce]

The Tories didn't have rail renationalisation in their manifesto, but they still ended up renationalising 4 of the rail operators. If they continue as they are at the moment, only Greater Anglia and the open access operators (Lumo & Hull Trains) would remain in private ownership. Heathrow Express I'm less sure about, because while it is officially an open access operator, it is basically a division of Great Western Railway that gets its funding from a different budget to the rest of their services.

[chords]

I decided to leave Thames Water in the end. I now get my water from Yorkshire Water. My sewage is out sourced to Scotland, which considering that I live in Luton is a great deal. And if you are now wondering what the hell I am talking about and how can that make any sense, then, you have now understood why privatising water companies was the stupidest idea since the Captain of the Titanic said “ let’s see how fast this baby can go “.

[tobykeating]

I think it’s only England and wales with private water companies Northern Ireland and Scotland are both still nationalised

[Obez]

I wish we were more like the French in this respect we are so pacified we just take whatever is given to us

[cpuuk]

Please, show me any Privatisation that has benefitted the population at large? All the bills are MUCH higher, and the service much LOWER. What I can show you are Privatisations that have made rich people richer, because that's all of them.

[wen]

It's wild how the water companies can just destroy the rivers and this isn't a crime against humanity. Because the damage can't be undone, every subsequent generation will have a lower quality of water and biodiversity than the one before.

[Srindal]

Im not sure nationalisation is a solution. Maybe we just need better monopoly laws and maintaining business at a small scale.