blandy

Yep, I agree with that. It’s an interesting contrast to look at who has been allowed to own critical national infrastructure like water and power and compare that to Tories doing their nut and blocking forrins from owning the Daily Telegraph, their in house loo roll of choice. Many if not all the water companies have set up matrixes of companies that shuffle funds between them, such that the declared dividends to shareholders are only a part of the money going out (and, to be fair, in). And the government and Ofwat have, unsurprisingly, been behind one or more steps behind in terms of stopping it.

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I **** hate that song, and indeed just about everything they’ve ever done. But that one the most.

Yeah, it is a kind of blackmail - like I said "who blinks first" at the moment. But it is a reason to consider that if the government is forced (they really don't want to, for all kinds of reasons) to take over a failed private utility company, and as you say "The old shareholders get **** all" that (in this case) BT workers and Uni workers will suffer as their pension schemes will lose a ton of money from their pensions....and in the course of time, the government will have to act to help them. I'm not proposing a course of action, just pointing out that the utter mess, whichever way it's dealt with, will have wider consequences than it might appear at first. It should never have been privatised, but once it has been, you kind of can't get the egg yolks back out of the omelette without hurting all kinds of innocent people, whichever way you try - taxpayers, BT workers, Lecturers, Hedge funds, employees of the water company, creditors owed money for work they did for the company...customers... These companies, knowing they can basically just throw in the towel and walk away, leaving us all to pick up the pieces, it's quite wrong.

It's nit picking, but isn't 6 fewer than whether you add in an extra row or not

17 + 6 = 23

I recall the re profiling was done because there were so many complaints about lack of legroom after the Witton lane was turned into a 2 tier stand. The asbestos was found on the first rebuild, wasn't it? oh, and your maths stinks . But you're right about blocking the view from the corner of the Holte!

Duplicate File Finder It’s free and finds duplicate files and photos

Water chat moved here

Kind of. But it’s an everybody loses scenario. I believe BT workers and Uni workers pension funds are significant shareholders. So those people suffer too. All the contractors and creditors who are owed money, they get shafted to the tune of close to 2 billion quid. And the public, we get shafted, because the work to stop the pollution and leaks and repair sewers and the like. That still needs doing and paying for. So now the taxpayer has to pay for it. Taxpayers in Brum and Manchester have to pay to fix London’s water. It’s the worst option, but potentially the final option if all others fall through. Other options include the government giving (via OFWAT) some wider leeway for the company to sort shit out - more time over which to spread the costs and then the shareholders pump more money in. But that lets the company fail to meet standards when other companies are not given that permission. like I posted earlier it’s kind of a who blinks first, bluff calling stage at the moment.

I posted this on the old VT front page in 2002

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That’s where the government needs to enact law. Clearly from reading that, the shareholders are calling a bluff along the lines you outline. But that needn’t be the end of the matter. Let’s assume that the current law requires that company to provide a level of service to customers and to meet certain standards or else punishment. If the punishment is worse than the hit to shareholder returns, then the choice is different to that they’ve made as detailed in the letter. One current problem across services that have been privatised is that it’s private profit when things go well, then the public has to pick up the pieces if it goes pear shaped. That should not be the case. It’s happened with trains and buses and energy…and banks, too, though they were not once nationally owned (in living memory at least). Leaving the EU hasn’t brought all that about and membership didn’t stop the Tories doing Tory things. But them having done it, I’m certain that reverting to 1970’s public ownership isn’t the answer.

Of course. I totally agree. That is in the past and the shareholder gains and dividends have left. They’re not in play any more. For me the questions is what happens, or should happen from this point on. My priority would be stop the pollution, stop the profiteering, build the necessary pipes, reservoirs, purification plants, sewers and fix the crumbling dams and stuff. Absolutely none of that is solved by a change of legal ownership. New owners (guvmint) might do a better job, though there’s no guarantee that given the general **** state of everything, water will be a spending priority. So how do you most effectively address the problems in the short to medium term? You basically force the companies to do what they should do anyway, and as discussed above. Yes privatisation was wrong, but we are where we are.

Except it doesn't all go out of the window. If the keys are handed back the shareholders and pension funds and logistics get **** over. If "the keys are handed back" then that's because the shareholders (and therefore the actual owners) either own shares which have already plummeted in value, because the Company is bust, or they have authorised the board to hand the keys back, via an EGM and vote and they voluntarily take the loss of their shares. If the company is bust, and unable to get the shareholders to stump up money to rescue it, or to allow a new share issue (thus devaluing existing shares), then the Gov't would have to intervene to ensure the taps keep flowing with water, but that's a case different from "nationalising all water companies". It's simplistic in the extreme if anyone were to think that "nationalising it" fixes everything. Yes, it shouldn't ever have been privatised, but no, a government deciding to reverse that model with water would have huge adverse consequences, as well as creating some opportunities to run it all differently. But stuff would still need fixing, people would still see bills rise, pollution would still need stopping and reservoirs building.

Of course, nationalisation isn't impossible, I agree. What I'm getting at is there isn't a simple solution (not that you claim there is, I'm just speaking generally). It's kind of on these lines. If the ownership is changed tomorrow, or after an election, there's some things. Like you say, the Gov't in nationalising water either pays the current share price for each company, or they hit pension funds, Councils who have ownership of shares, individuals who do in the pocket. Some might just be venture capitalists and hedge funds and elicit little sympathy, but others will be Decent and necessary share owners. Then there's the actual issues - pollution and discharges and leaks and insufficient reservoirs. As the new owner, suddenly the Gov't (or the taxpayer, realistically) has to pay to fix those things. So bills go up. Then there's the actual people working for the water industry - clerks generating bills and answering phones, maintenance people and contractors - they're all going to be exactly the same folks. And maybe you bin off the senior management and directors and execs...and replace them with, who? There would be a leadership vacuum for a while and that would lead to chaos for a period. Is Grant Shapps or Suella or Angela Eagles or Angela Rayner or whoever going to run it any better? and then they get reshuffled and the next politician comes in and has to learn the ropes from scratch. And there's the huge amount of time it would take Parliament to pass a bill to nationalise all the water companies. There's other stuff more urgent. I guess I'm saying there's no magic bullet fix. Now if a water company (privately owned) goes bust, then it's a little different, like with the train companies. At that point the government pretty much has to intervene to keep people's water flowing. And then you'd have one or two nationalised, in all but name, and the others still private. Neither one thing or the other. So, to me it seems like legally binding requirements for infrastructure fettlement, limits on pollution, with severe penalties, enforced, strict monitoring, via properly staffed and resourced environment agency, and OFWAT and so on is a more pragmatic solution.

It's not a solution. It's an idea, and it has some merits, of course. But also some drawbacks. It would have been better never to have privatised it, absolutely, but now it is, it's not a simple reverse situation, unfortunately.

Another alternative is (the threat of) a windfall tax - "if you invest in infrastucture, that's fine and good, if you pay out dividends above a threshold, then we'll tax the **** out of you". That's a simplification, but it's entirely possible to incentivise investment and de-incentivise profiteering and excessive dividends and executive pay etc. The share price of oil and energy companies seems to have survived windfall taxes.

The other reason, though profit is big enough, is a kind of “small state” ideology - an Englishman should be free to conduct his affairs without government interference. Oh and also because they’re words removed.

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Posts removed. This is not a thread for individual player merits or who you'd like to see in the Euros squad etc. Please start a thread, or use a relevant existing thread for those discussions. Thanks.

The EU would and did take nations to court if they broke the regulations and EU laws on water pollution. After we joined the EU we had to clean up seas and rivers. The UK current government (via the regulator, OFWAT and the Environmental agency, which have been weakened by the same government) basically doesn't take polluters to court, and free from EU law, there's no comeback for their laxity/blind eye turning.

It’s brilliant, isn’t it. It’s going to lead to all kinds of implosion. They’re even doing it to their in-house newspaper, the Torygraph.

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It makes everything better. Nothing fishy about it at all!