Economy Water Privatisation not working out for the UK.

[Limeade]

How much do the British public pay in service a d delivery fees. It's about half of my bill even though my water is managed by a public utility.

I expect a private company would charge even higher fees?

 

[650lb Sumo]

How much do the British public pay in service a d delivery fees. It's about half of my my bill even though my water is managed by a public utility.

I expect a private company would charge even higher fees?

Yes they probably would. Where do you live? If you live in the middle of a scorching desert for example I would expect your water to be dear.

 

[Limeade]

Yes they probably would. Where do you live? If you live in the middle of a scorching desert for example I would expect your water to be dear.

I live on the Atlantic coast in America by the Chesapeake Bay. I pay about $40 dollars in service and delivery fees before I even pay a dollar for usage.

Is that what you pay for infrastructure in the UK?

Not sure about your last point. I haven't looked if service and delivery fees are higher in a desert or not. Wouldn't it depend on the age of pipes, maintenance and the water company's debt?

 

[650lb Sumo]

I live on the Atlantic coast in America by the Chesapeake Bay. I pay about $40 dollars in service and delivery fees before I even pay a dollar for usage.

Is that what you pay for infrastructure in the UK?

Not sure about your last point. I haven't looked if service and delivery fees are higher in a desert or not. Wouldn't it depend on the age of pipes, maintenance and the water company's debt?

I don't have an old bill to check. When the next one comes I'll post again. But here are some general figures for England and Wales.

According to Water UK, the average household water bill in England and Wales is around £448 a year.

However, millions are set to pay less for water from April 2024. Water regulator Ofwat confirmed that a majority of water suppliers will be forced to return money to customers due to underperformance.

When it comes down to paying for water usage, water companies calculate your bills in two ways:

Fixed water rates: You pay a set amount for your domestic water and sewage service (which can either be included or billed separately). This is also known as ‘rateable billing’ when bills are based on the size of your home, where you live, and the local amenities.
Water meter: This way, you only pay for the units of water you use. Your domestic water readings are taken from a water meter and you are sent a bill for the amount you have used since your previous bill.

The average £448 water bill typically includes £215 for water costs and £233 for sewerage. This is the cost of maintaining and getting rid of sewage.

There's a small charge for disposing of rain water as well. People who live on farms and stuff sometimes don't pay for sewage or rainwater disposal, as they have a septic tank and the rainwater just goes into the beck.

How about the USA?

Water Prices by State 2023 - Wisevoter

In the United States, water prices vary greatly depending on the region and service provider. On a national average, residential customers pay around $54 per month for water and sewer services combined. In some parts of the country, such as California, residents may pay upwards of $84 per month...

wisevoter.com

On a national average, residential customers pay around $54 per month for water and sewer services combined.

This works out to £519 a year. They also have a map:

The bills do seem to be higher in the 'desert states' of the south west but the correlation isn't very strong. Obviously there are several factors at play in determining these prices.

Economists and a public policy expert at the University of Minnesota who looked into block pricing for water in the nation’s largest urban areas, including 11 Western cities, discovered a pattern they conclude is neither sustainable nor just: Many of the driest cities have the cheapest [sic] water prices. What’s more, for households across the West, the average price of water goes down as use goes up.

@Arkain2K has a thread about this kind of thing.

 

[Michaelangelo]

2) Huge profits sucked out of the public for the privilege of drinking, washing and using the toilet

Like how this is a privilege instead of a right

Sad state of affairs

 

[Busgosu]

Well, I'm not surprised: Every single privatisation done here in Spain was a MAJOR failure, I can only imagine the results being the same everywhere else in Europe... However, you can't say this, cause they will label you a commie.

 

[aries]

The idea of privatisation is competition.

What competition has Thames Water actually faced, though?

It's completely pointless.

Exactly. The only privatised industry in the UK that has been a relative success is the telecoms industry. That's because of the competition that BT faced from mobile service providers. Any other nationalised industry that got privatised got worse for consumers.Water, Energy and Rail.

 

[aries]

There's an interesting series on Netflix called "The Toys That Made Us"...and a good YouTube channeld called "Company Man." Watching the first series of the toy one, it covered lots of giant toy lines from the 80's. He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers...and went into a lot of what went wrong. First of all those companies were MASSIVE and hade global influence. But the thing that stuck out to me the most was the inability of the executives to anticipate market changes. Kinda like what Blockbuster did. They just thought theyd never fail, and stopped caring what kids actually thought, figuring they could tell them what they wanted. They also saturated their own markets. It's really bonehead stuff that makes you wonder what these people were thinking. Company Man reveals the same thing about all sorts of chains that failed, like how giant department store chains over-expanded, and then when they couldnt move their out-dated products they refused to liquidate them and just tried to change the looks of the stores while still selling 10 year-old junk.

It's all really fascinating how these corporations try to just get as big as possible, rake in as much profit as possible, lost touch with actual consumers, and inevitably collapse under some CEO who thinks trying to force people to buy worse sh*t is a great idea. Hell that's going on with the WWE right this second. Just like that one d*ckhead CEO whose practices eventually collapsed GE, Jack Welch.

You could extend that line of thinking to colonial empires. They all failed due to a mixture of arrogance and failure to evolve.

 

[aries]

I live on the Atlantic coast in America by the Chesapeake Bay. I pay about $40 dollars in service and delivery fees before I even pay a dollar for usage.

Is that what you pay for infrastructure in the UK?

Not sure about your last point. I haven't looked if service and delivery fees are higher in a desert or not. Wouldn't it depend on the age of pipes, maintenance and the water company's debt?

Your last sentence is highly relevant. Shareholders in British water companies have been raking in record dividends but virtually no money has been spent on infrastructure maintenance and we instead illegally pump our sewage into rivers and seas. A lot of these shareholders are foreign venture capitalists.

Now that it's all come out the water companies now claim they need far higher bills to upgrade the infrastructure. No question at all about getting some of those profits back from shareholders to pay for the lack of investment, it's all on the customers.

 

[Natural Order]

Privatization of natural resources. Damn humans, you dumb!

Funny how the people who were screaming for globalization and “one world” concepts are starting to see the serious problems in it now. Gross shit that many ignored.

 

[650lb Sumo]

Exactly. The only privatised industry in the UK that has been a relative success is the telecoms industry. That's because of the competition that BT faced from mobile service providers. Any other nationalised industry that got privatised got worse for consumers.Water, Energy and Rail.

They also tend to either get exported, where possible, or end up foreign-owned, where you can't physically relocate the thing. If you can't move an industry to the Third World you can also move the Third World to the industry, but we're getting close to the edge of the Overton Window there. Examples:

Shipbuilding: Big ships are mostly built in the Far East now. Most of the current CalMac ferries (Hebridean ferries) I believe were made in Germany and Poland, and most of the new ones (that fiasco is a thread in itself) are being made in Turkey by a company that appears to belong to the Turkish government, although I can't find a straight answer as to who owns it. The NorthLink (Aberdeen - Orkney - Shetland) ferries were made in Finland by a Korean company.
Steelmaking: same, and what little is left of British Steel is now Chinese-owned.
Nuclear Power: owned by the French Government
Ports:

The Port of Grimsby and Immingham belongs to ABP (Associated British Ports), part-owned by two Canadian pension schemes and Singapore’s Global Investment Council. Travel south and you arrive at the Port of Felixstowe – controlled ultimately by Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-Shing. London Gateway is owned by DP World following its purchase of P&O ten years ago. DP World’s majority owner is the government of Dubai. DP World and ABP collaborate at the Port of Southampton.

As I have mentioned before on here my local buses are run by the German government, and my local trains, and the ones south of them that I sometimes use, had their contracts terminated early and were renationalised due to poor performance.

 

[Deleted member 592570]

Yes. They tend to be quiet when real life examples show their ideology to be asinine.

Do people in the UK not have access to water or something? I've never had that issue during my many trips there over the years.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

Well, I'm not surprised: Every single privatisation done here in Spain was a MAJOR failure, I can only imagine the results being the same everywhere else in Europe... However, you can't say this, cause they will label you a commie.

- They tried to privatise or mail service!

@BlankaPresident can talk about it?

 

[FIMN]

Do people in the UK not have access to water or something? I've never had that issue during my many trips there over the years.

?

 

[Limeade]

Do people in the UK not have access to water or something? I've never had that issue during my many trips there over the years.

Although i do not live in the UK, I can relate to some of the anger.

For example, Brighton Beach in the south had over 45 instances of sewage discharge. That's pretty bad combined with increases fees and monthly bills.

You can likely find more examples.

Thank you.

 

[Madmick]

To let a person a person/company/board own your water supply, especially one from a different nation is to be cucked on a higher level than literally anything

One would assume that would be disallowed as a matter of national security. Stupefying that it isn't.

 

[Andy Capp]

Privatization of natural resources. Damn humans, you dumb!

Funny how the people who were screaming for globalization and “one world” concepts are starting to see the serious problems in it now. Gross shit that many ignored.

Margaret Thatcher was the most conservative PM of the UK in my lifetime IIRC. It's got nothing to do with "one world" and everything to do with conservatives going all in on corporate greed, especially in the 80's.

Privatizing water is idiotic but it's not just the UK.

Town loses to Nestle in bid to buy well to secure water supply

Centre Wellington Mayor Kelly Linton. (Township of Centre Wellington) The CBC is reporting more details about the purchase of the Middlebrook well by bottled water giant Nestle. They …

canadians.org

Nestle buys more groundwater as drought rages on in Southern Ontario

In the middle of a severe drought in southern Ontario, the bottled water giant Nestle is buying up more groundwater sources and now has permits from the Ontario government to remove a total of over…

canadians.org

It's fucking infuriating.

 

[Andy Capp]

- They tried to privatise or mail service!

@BlankaPresident can talk about it?

They did that here in Canada and now they're pretty much insolvent.

 

[Cajun]

The idea of privatisation is competition.

What competition has Thames Water actually faced, though?

It's completely pointless.

Good point... some things work well being privatized (phone service comes to mind) but when its something like water... how can there be competition.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

One would assume that would be disallowed as a matter of national security. Stupefying that it isn't.

- A private company holding the most important resource is quite absurde.