Campaign to re-nationalise water companies

If only...

Is it possible to claw back some of the money paid out in dividends and bonus's?

I’m not convinced either way if nationalisation would cost the tax payer or not. There are a lot of unanswered questions and the water infrastructure would need updated. Nonetheless, I’ve signed the petition because its sickening that bonuses are continuing to be paid to people who mismanage the companies.

Join We Own It who campaign for public ownership of Rail, mail and Water. I have been involved for years and joined them on protests for the NHS. It is absurd that we are paying higher bills to pay for the investment in cleaning up after these companies have polluted yet they  pay bonuses? 

I’ve watched the program, the life of the little girl meant nothing to the water company, the head of the Environment Agency was also employed by the water company, they implemented a policy of self regulation and no investment.
Companies from China and Australia owned the water companies and just siphoned the money off, any fines were in the low millions, they had made billions. Nothing has unfortunately changed. 
I have signed the petition.

The money accrued from the original sale was all used by the government of that time, as a country we continually spend more than the income from taxes so this was a short term fix to a long term problem. The money going into the water companies now is largely spent on staff plus capital replacement costs, plus contentiously shareholder dividends and it would seem director bonuses. 

None of the privatised utilities, the railways, energy suppliers etc were ever truly viable as private companies and the government knew this, but like all governments in democracies their primary driver is to get re elected, and these policies appealed to voters then because they saw cash into their banks, and partly why that party was elected three times in succession.

It cannot be unraveled now without taking on war-time scale debt, which could collapse the economy, cause rampant inflation and civil unrest on a scale not experienced in any of our lives. 

AnA

I signed it, thanks for the link.

I never understood the reasoning behind selling off our water companies, it's been a massive failure, ours is a not for profit organisation and they're terrible, so whats happening to the money?

Fergal Sharkey it possible to avoid any cost of renationalization. 

I saw it and agree completely about the shocking negligence and underinvestment. Im less sure about re nationalisation though as the shareholders, many of whom are pension funds we rely on would need fully compensating. These utilities should not have been denationalised but we cant turn the clock back

I'm looking forward to watching this documentary! It's really shocking to hear about how frequently these sorts of pollution incidents happen.

I do a lot of drainage design at work and it's actually really interesting (I think so anyway )! Almost all new development has to have a surface water (rain water) drainage system which seeks to prevent surface water entering the foul water (sewage) drainage system. 

A lot of the time it's the surface water entering the foul water drainage systems which overwhelms the system and leads to sewage being dumped in rivers. So the requirement for new development to have carefully designed drainage systems which prevent this is promising, at least. 

A lot does need to be done to improve the existing situation, as well as the initiatives for new developments, though.

I haven't seen it but I will. I have signed a lot of petitions previously and supported campaigns about the water companies disgraceful pollution of the water ways, all the effort to clean them up and they are in a worse state than ever.