Is Thames Water about to collapse?

[andysays]

We're not on a meter and the fuckers put our water rates up to £64 a month this financial year which was quite a big price hike.
I mean that is a lot of money a month for them to discharge sewage into our local river.

As cupid_stunt says, that seems incredibly high.

Our water rates (also Thames, no meter, two people in a one bedroom flat) are £33.20 per month, so unless you're paying off a substantial existing debt, it sounds like they've miscalculated somehow.

Maybe offer to shit straight in the river yourselves and see if you can get a reduction...

 

[quiet guy]

Is it right that the CEO of a water company was paid £1.6 million.
I mean it is a water company for goodness sake, it can't require the most innovative thinking.
Just seems ridiculous to me.

You think that's bad, Liv Garfield the CEO of Severn Trent is on a £3.2million package.

 

[weltweit]

You think that's bad, Liv Garfield the CEO of Severn Trent is on a £3.2million package.

Mind boggling.

Is this just a big circle jerk of directors on salary review bodies bidding each other onto higher and higher packets?

 

[quiet guy]

Yes and then there's the parachute payments when they start and the golden handshake deals when they leave.

 

[MickiQ]

Mind boggling.

Is this just a big circle jerk of directors on salary review bodies bidding each other onto higher and higher packets?

Pretty much yes director salary in big megacorps is set by a compensation committee which is made of people from outside but the people from outside are usually directors of other megacorps.
Then we have the executive vs non-executive director scam. Executive board members are those that are actually in charge such as the CEO, CFO etc whereas non-executive directors are there to provide oversight which amongst other things involves voting to accept the pay recommendations of the compensation committee. All this has to be listed in the shareholder reports so if you look at the board of any big company you'll see that the directors all usually hold positions on several boards. Generally executive on the company they work for and non-executive on three or four others. Nice work if you can get it.

 

[weltweit]

There have been a few links to BBC Articles - think this one is new

Water should be a simple business - why isn't it?​

Water should be a simple business - why isn't it?

What has gone so badly wrong in the water industry?

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[gosub]

 

[Epona]

And now they've been fined 3.3m for dumping sewage (the incident took place in 2017, seems to take a long time to hold these fuckers to account)

Thames Water fined £3.3m over river sewage

The firm pumped millions of litres of sewage into rivers, turning them black and killing fish.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[SpookyFrank]

If you do the maths on it, a 10% chance at a million quid fine, if it saves you ten million quid spent on proper infrastructure, that's a bargain.

And there will absolutely be people on six figure salaries making exactly those calculations. It shouldn't be a matter of fines, it should be a matter of paying punters back for a service they took payment for but didn't provide. When that renders then insolvent overnight, their (our) assets can just be taken back under public control without compensation. And that would still be massive let off for these thieving cunts.

 

[two sheds]

Part of the insurance payments people like this make are donations to political parties, bargain

 

[pbsmooth]

The trouble is this is exactly what will happen. Nationalisation is pointless under our current political system, The water companies have something like £50Bn plus in debt. Nationalisation would just result in that being added to the public debt. The public then forks out squillions to fix all the leaks only for a future Conservative majority government to flog them off again debt free.
Until the system is fixed to prevent Conservative majority governments then this is just an expensive merry go round.

exactly - nationalisation is too expensive let alone any sort of maintenance or repairs. they are leaking 25% of the water they pump ffs!
clearly there was bugger all regulation, so they'll have to try and make up for lost time on that one. the PE fund managers should be in jail.

 

[brogdale]

exactly - nationalisation is too expensive let alone any sort of maintenance or repairs. they are leaking 25% of the water they pump ffs!
clearly there was bugger all regulation, so they'll have to try and make up for lost time on that one. the PE fund managers should be in jail.

trouble is, they run the jails.

 

[andysays]

trouble is, they run the jails.

there's a joke in there somewhere about jails with 25% leaks, but someone else will have to fine tune it a bit...

 

[pbsmooth]

there's a joke in there somewhere about jails with 25% leaks, but someone else will have to fine tune it a bit...

that was Group 4, wasn't it?

 

[Jimmy Don't]

there's a joke in there somewhere about jails with 25% leaks, but someone else will have to fine tune it a bit...

This one could run and run....

 

[gosub]

there's a joke in there somewhere about jails with 25% leaks, but someone else will have to fine tune it a bit...

Just as long as its not the immigration holding centres -they'd sink

 

[Ming]

I know there's no real consequences for the cunts other than looking uncomfortable for a bit (and being paid 7-8 figures for doing so) but i do love watching them squirm for a while. Darren Jones is particularly good at this (08:30 onwards).

 

[quiet guy]

It's all too cosy the merry-go-round that these utter fucks operate in. Too lack an oversight regime from parliament and too toothless a regulator.

 

[brogdale]

It's all too cosy the merry-go-round that these utter fucks operate in. Too lack an oversight regime from parliament and too toothless a regulator.

It is, but that's precisely how neoliberal financialised capital and their asset managers see the role of the state. Unfortunately we're also governed by actors that agree that their role if to 'de-risk' the privatisation of our infrastructure; none of this is any accident.

 

[Ming]

It is, but that's precisely how neoliberal financialised capital and their asset managers see the role of the state. Unfortunately we're also governed by actors that agree that their role if to 'de-risk' the privatisation of our infrastructure; none of this is any accident.

It's fun to look at their LinkedIn profiles. I like to see where the demons come from.

 

[brogdale]

It's fun to look at their LinkedIn profiles. I like to see where the demons come from.

You might be interested in this recently published books that gets 'under the bonnet' of how much of this is stitched up; I found it instructional.

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2985-our-lives-in-their-portfolios-why-asset-managers-own-the-world

 

[Ming]

You might be interested in this recently published books that gets 'under the bonnet' of how much of this is stitched up; I found it instructional.

Our Lives in Their Portfolios

Definitely! Thanks for the recommendation. I used to subscribe to Corporate Watch in Oxford. Always found this stuff interesting. I used to work in finance (accountancy) many years ago.

 

[brogdale]

Definitely! Thanks for the recommendation. I used to subscribe to Corporate Watch in Oxford. Always found this stuff interesting. I used to work in finance (accountancy) many years ago.

Sounds as though Christophers' book should be right up your street, then...but you might not learn as much from it as I did (no background in finance!).

 

[bluescreen]

You might be interested in this recently published books that gets 'under the bonnet' of how much of this is stitched up; I found it instructional.

Our Lives in Their Portfolios

Yes, excellent book! Reading it now. It got a great write up in the FT of all places, by Philip Augar

Our Lives in Their Portfolios — owners in the shadows
It is hard not share Brett Christophers’ rage in this polemic against the greed and short-termism of the asset management industry

paywall busted:

https://archive.ph/17HZV

 

[Ming]

Sounds as though Christophers' book should be right up your street, then...but you might not learn as much from it as I did (no background in finance!).

I wasn't a high flier. Just did the Foundation course for the accountancy profession but i maintained an interest and did a few contracts. Some of my mates take the piss a bit but i think it's a really interesting area.

This is a great book...

Accountants' Truth

Accounting is the language of business, increasingly standardized across the world through powerful global corporations: a technical skill used to reach the correct, unquestionable answer. Yet, as recent corporate scandals have shown, a whole range of financial professionals (auditors, bankers...

books.google.ca

 

[not-bono-ever]

will no one think of the shareholders ?

 

[not-bono-ever]

if you stand back and think about it, its pretty fucked that the most basic human need for existance is a source of pure profit. This isnt an original thought I know, but I have very few of them these days. I might delve into anarchy again to get me thinking

 

[Storm Fox]

One to watch might be South West Water, owned by Pennon Group who are proud as Punch about their sector-leading dividends at 10.9%. The head honcho was sufficiently embarrassed about dumping sewage in the sea to forgo her almost £500k bonus and word is that the water will run out during the summer, in Cornwall at least. There's a Devon MP calling for investigation of their affairs and a couple of enquiries ongoing about sewage dumps. Someone in Head Office is certainly crunching the numbers to calculate the point at which it is more advantageous to throw in the towel.

Woohoo, I just got my dividend from my one Pennon share. Apparently, they were up to some kind of no-good to everyone got the choice of a small amount of money or one share. I chose the share as then, if I felt like it, I could go to the AGM and ask awkward questions. Well, my one share has earnt me £6.36. Thinking of the number of shares they have, how much could have be invested in not pumping shit into rivers.

Seeing the best way to assuage my guilt is to donate it to a good cause; a Tenner will be going to the server fund by the end of the week. (I have limited Internet access at the moment hence not doing it right now)

 

[Puddy_Tat]

i'm about to get a water meter whether i like it or not

apparently they have the legal powers to do this so they can make more profit while losing loads of water in leaks and pumping shit in to rivers and beaches in areas where there are 'real concerns about the lack of water'

hmm

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Fuckers have not been able to supply water to Guildford or Godalming since Saturday night and still no sign of when they will be able to. They claim it’s cos of too much rain recently, said that with a straight face.

Last financial year they had revenue of £2b and from that they made a profit of £1b. Either they charged twice as much as was needed or there was a potential £1b of much needed investment that wasn’t made.

Cunts.