20+ yrs ago I worked for Anglian Water, 5 years ago I had to call customer services, during the call I told the AW staff member which pages to look at to solve my find the answers I needed, this included telling him the codes for those pages. They hadn't updated the software in 15+ years other than superficially. The same flaws were still apparent to me during that call as they had been all those years earlier. The situation at Thames therefore is no surprise. I'll be surprised if there isn't the same issue in several more water companies.
I imagine that the CIO was begging the board for money to fix the systems, much as the COO was begging for money to overhaul and replace the physical infrastructure, but shareholders were put first. I see this as a problem of regulation. Ofwat has failed, and if the cause of their failure is that they were not given adequate powers, then it is the Conservative government that privatised and deregulated the water industry that is the root cause. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's Labour governments may be equally culpable if they did not fix the problem.
@tlangdon12 execs wouldn't be interested in begging for money to fix the issues as they were often given shares as part of their salary and/bonus meaning they would benefit from the company making higher profits and paying out higher dividends. Simply from the angle of security of an essential for life water shouldn't be in the hands of share holders or investors of any kind. The risk to operations is too high. As with Thames Water if they do fail how will a quarter of the population receive water. The answer is unclear.
@@tlangdon12I agree with the latter part of your comment (from 'Conservative..' onwards). I think company execs only superficially care about their responsibilities (that's what they have staff for) (passing the buck is a neo-liberal pass-time) (OK, a human pass-time but where ignorance is rewarded by wealth neo-libs are right at the top of the score board).
@@kevbrown2532 My hat off to you sir. Simply put: strategic industry (water, energy, health, education, etc) should not be in private hands (farming is possibly the odd one out - look at the Communist Party's cock-up in Russia during it's early post revolution days as an example why. Besides, if someone wants to live that very intensive lifestyle they should be encouraged). Or so I believe.
Nope. The population of London has grown by 30% and suddenly the infrastructure cannot cope. Who knew? Well everyone, it is a direct consequence of policy.
@@user-xu5vl5th9n which means the water bills revenue has climbed by 30%... And it's not like that demographic trend wasn't entirely predictable and measurable...
The only solution is nationalisation. Morally, the shareholders shouldn't get a penny, they've collectively already siphoned out over 3x the original privatisation valuation (of all water companies, not just Thames Water, but the trend is the same). Legally, it may be hard to nationalise them without some form of compensation until they financially collapse, but as you say we can't afford to risk allowing them to physically fail in the meantime.
I saw you on Sky talking about the Inheritance Tax/farmers. You did REALLY well in the face of nonsense arguements and name calling. Real journalism is dead. I had listened to your analysis of the inheritance debacle earlier and you were the only source i could find that actually explained it. Labour need to sort their comms out! But Well Done you 💪🙌👌
He hasn't really got it in IHT. I have done a video on this on my own channel. Murphy is half right but IHT does not solve the problem. What isn't sold to the likes of Blackrock will be transferred to trusts. IHT has never worked.
Dehydrated water is what we need, it's easier to store and cheaper to transport, we could ship it to all the places that have water shortages at very little cost.
@@robinhood4640 I know you jest, but when I was young a company here in US Murica was selling a gag 'survival' gift of 'Dehydrated Water'. It was an empty can with with directions on the back that read, "Open can. Add water."
I totally agree with you Richard. And it’s scary! I’ll go further than you and suggest that, not just water but food and the ability to keep warm are on the horizon. Can we avert this? Mmmmm? The degree of course-altering that is needed I find mind-boggling.
The proposed Abingdon reservoir by thames water keeps getting bigger despite demand being smaller. It appears that ofwat allows bigger bills to customers for larger infrastructure projects no matter what the right size may actually be. We are being saddled with a watery white Elephant to fund the financiers for the next hundred years all paid for with customer bills. Return thames water to public ownership and let's get real with the solutions.
Utilities are, necessarily, a monopoly in terms of supply. How many water pipes, gas pipes, and electric cables do you want in your house? Power generation is not a monopoly (currently 22 suppliers) but distribution has to be. As does water capture and storage. What is killing the environment is TOO MANY PEOPLE. Almost every modern ill is down to there being too many of us. Nature has an answer to that- but it is brutal.
@@pipster1891 Capitalism is working as intended. Create a surplus (profit) for those who control capital/resources. The number of billionaires rises every year in the UK.
Is this any surprise when our culture has apparently forgotten there can be motives that don't relate to profit (the need to drink & wash freely for example). I'm a civil engineer, and I don't know anyone in the technical side infrastructure doesn't get sick of decisions made on the basis of yearly financial budgets and reports. But the reality is that bare minimum maintenance and upgrades have kept profits rolling in, at the cost of the long term health of our systems.
Wasn’t there a problem last summer in the country with water pipes??? And authorities had to bring bottled water daily… L remember I could not order my bottles from Supermarket for about a month for the shortages. But London will not survive. What was it like BEFORE the digital age??? There must be water wells and pumps in every neighbourhood put by the local Council for emergency events. This is real serious….
Don’t worry, the English government will just take it from Scotland. We’ve got plenty just as we have plenty of wind power which is going to England as well. We pay the highest for power in Scotland when we produce 120% through wind power. Pity we didn’t get our independence.
Excellent post. It's all about profiteering and not providing sufficient services for demand. No panic here, certainly not at the moment because the UK has more than enough rainfall to support its population. Spain in area is twice the size of the UK, its population is 45 million, two thirds of that of the UK, but has an average rainfall of under that of the UK. Lack of maintenance is the charge which can certainly be levelled at Thames Water, in addition to financial chicanery.
One of the most stupid things we do with water is use vast quantities of it to dilute human waste, it fits into our "modern" lifestyle to flush away the nastiness and forget about it thinking it's some sort of technological marvel. In reality it would be cheaper in the long term, and a better use of resources, to use composting or desiccating toilets and have a collection system in place to collect the resulting waste for further processing and use as fertiliser. We already do this to some extent with sewage sludge, but that's a vastly more complex and costly process than direct composting.
@@detritiv0re144 Los Angeles in the USA gets mos of it's water from the Mono Valley, 315 miles away, via a canal system througha desert. No bother then for London steal water from Scotland where evaporation losses will be much less than they are in California.
Sky News is shite on the whole but at least they give people like Richard an outing, unlike Establishment mouthpiece BBC News, which is even more shyte and you're forced to pay for it, unlike Sky News. And so around and around the media circus goes.
The government should let it go bust then buy all the infrastructure and equipment from the receiver. Let the financiers sing for their money . They knew full well that they were financing fraud. That aside, the points you make here, both domestic and international, have to be addressed - and urgently.
The problem is privatisation by for profit companies who focus on profits and remunerating senior management too much. The Stare Premier of NSW blamed privatisation (that the government approved) was to blame for the recent 7-day power outage in Broken Hill.....Blackrock etc....need to go. The government MUST take control of essential services.
We are in an era of managed decline, they will know, but choose to kick the can down the road knowing they can freely leave the country to join they money, safety offshore.
@@petermach8635 What financial cost? The water companies are mostly bankrupt, having siphoned off 3x their privatisation valuation in dividends in barely 30 years. There's no moral case to pay them a penny for the infrastructure they've left to rot whilst piling on debt to pay for more dividends.
Yes but @@DevAnubis ....... Nationalisation would see the state taking over responsibility for a bankrupt, derelict but vital public utility and it would be the state that had to assume responsibility for maintaining that utility ... but with the state's finances in such a pickle, even if the assets were expropriated without compensation where would that huge investment come from ?
@@petermach8635 Water bills over the past 30 years have paid out in dividends far more than was needed to maintain and upgrade. Ergo, water bills will in the long term be able go also cover the repair, upgrade and maintenance for the next 30 years, by not paying out those dividends and instead operating a non-profit state enterprise. Borrowing against future water bill revenue isn't a net burden on the tax budget in any way shape or form. It's guaranteed stable predictable revenue to pay back a long term investment. At a rate far more reasonable than 300% over 30 years. Well functioning state operated industries should be self-perpetuating by their activity without relying on general taxation. Call water fees a tax if you like but you get something for them. Exceptions to that of course are non-productive industries like healthcare (it avoids the cost of ill-health, but doesn't generate any revenue itself), education, defence, justice and law enforcement, emergency services. But again those all provide societal value but it's easier to completely socialise their funding rather than attempt to bill based on perceived individual benefit. Hell, if we wanted to we could just socialise water too, scrap water bills, raise National Insurance by a tiny percentage, and most people would be financially slightly better off.
The only issue is the hardware really. If it’s running after 35 years it’s unlikely to have a software issue. However the hardware may be another issue. If it’s running on a mainframe and the supplier is content to keep on building the same kit then there’s no issue. I was told about 10 years ago that the local council I used to work at had only just removed the system I wrote for recording the incoming post and I had left there about 20 years previously so I was quite proud of that. That chap told me that it was still working fine.
Pretending natural monopolies are not natural monopolies is stupid. What Keynesian economics does is build on this basic reality to leverage the super powers of a sovereign state in the service of a universally higher standard of living for all, to provide solid foundations for the economy, and to increase stability for both individuals and the nation. Water, electric, gas, and digital should all be nationalized economic assets, publicly owned and operated utilities run to provide a high quality of service to the people - not for profit
Scottish Water's Subsidiary Business Stream was sent into England and took over Southern Waters & Yorkshire Waters Business Customers in 2016 & 2019 respectively.
It is not the English that are consuming more water than available- it is all the non-English living in England (i.e. population has been allowed to increase beyond the ability of resources.)
@@Tensquaremetreworkshop if birth rates were not declining, due to most young people being in precarious employment, if the are employed at all. And unable to provide the basic necessities of life, food shelter etc for themselves. Then how can they start a family? Then the indigenous population would grow to the same population as it is today with immigration. And the demand for water would increase anyway. We need immigration to keep our population stable and to provide labor to address the demographic crisis created by neo con tory and tory lite economic insanity. Your enemy is not some immigrant running away from an Anglo American resource war, to the detriment of his countrymen who need his/her labor and skills. It's the bankers and asset fund managers who run government by lobby power ie money and shape the laws and infrastructure of the land to gratify their own greed at the cost of all else. Send all the immigrants hame and the economy and all public services will collapse. We see the effect of Brexshit and immigrants leaving the 'hostile environment' on the NHS everyday.
Look at when Thames water were aloud to build up massive debts. The debt was increasing under the Tories but they went much worse under Blair’s Labour. The debt pile is a failing of the regulator pure and simple. It seems that every one of the regulators are failing.
Oh THE BORN OF THE river THE fountain, THE river, THE sea, There IS there a lot OF water, as men and women AND Even when I sing THE rise OF THE rain brings us farder another kinds of water, like THE cool waterproof resistence of every sign ready signed OF OUR RIGHTS.
There's a lot of software in use today that contains a lot of code that's 40+ years old. The banking system, nuclear deterrents, passport tracking systems, flight systems, the list goes on. Old =/= obsolete
I lived in the Lea Valley in north London for most of my life. Along the river Lea there was a large reservoir. At the time there were worries of a water shortage in London but at the same time this reservoir was sold off to a property developer, drained and a housing estate was being built on it when I left London as I couldn't afford the house prices (now living in Norfolk).
Whoever has to deal with water in London will end up in a mess, because London is a mess. Over the relatively recent years, London has had too many restaurants, too many immigrants, too many changes to infrastructure, too many stupid people not knowing how use toilets, too many buildings , too many large lorries destroying the roads, Victorian pipe system(brilliant as it is), constant rapid changes, investors demanding more dividends (university pension funds take note). So there will never be a solution , just a bad compromise. Good news is property is unlikely to get rising damp in London as the water table as gone right down.
The water catchment areas in Scotland are enormous. Huge reservoirs in our highland areas that feed the lowlands & major populated areas. If global warming has anything to do with it our reservoirs will be flooded!!!! What’s your price?? I jest. Water is a natural resource and should be available to everyone without cost. We cannot exist without it ❤
There is plenty of water in the UK. It’s just available in greater quantities in the west of the country. Sadly, most of people live in the east particularly the south east which doesn’t have plenty of water
It's deliberate. How do you think these executives can award themselves massive salaries and off shore eye-watering profits? It's not stupidity. It's working perfectly for them. They absolutely do not care about citizens. The people at the top of these organisations are malignantly greedy.
We can always eat and drink money under the free market - ha, ha. Billionaires can go and live in bunkers under disused farms in NZ, which many are arranging.
Good morning Richard. I think we need to separate the appalling mismanagement of Thames Water from the issue of a lack of water in arid areas of the world. There have been projects to reverse climate change by changing agricultural land use. To capture water when it does fall. Allan Savory has dedicated his life to changing farming practices to help reverse droughts. I know either content creators or UA-cam does not like those commenting adding links to comments but water can be managed by humans to create better outcomes than you are predicting.
@@petermach8635 Yes, I would have thought that the miss management of Thames Water could occupy 5 to 10 minutes and I would not be surprised if Thames Water is not an outlier, and it turns out the other water companies are in a poor financial shape.
You might be broke now and that okay but imagine your kids living in a life where they have to struggle because of your life choices when you could actually do something about it. The biggest gift you can give your kids after showing them love and being in their lives is financial Cover and that is why My advice to everyone is this : if you want to grow big this year especially in your finances. Be willing to make investments. Saving is great but investing puts you on a pedestal where you wouldnt have to worry about savings as you do now. Thanks to larysa Caba, my portolio is doing really great and im proud of the decisions i made last year.
I feel one Of the greatest challenges that we first timers face in the ma rket is that we end up losing all we have,making it difficult to find ourselves back to our feet. My biggest advice is to always seek the services of a professional just like I did when I ventured into it for the first time. Big thanks to Larysa Caba. I now make huge profits by weekly through her services while still learning to stand on my own.
I know Larysa Caba. she trades for everyone I meet. I met her twice at a meeting in Germany and after her lectures from Ella I had to personally ask her to be my financial advisor. she is definitely good.?
I have never seen a trader as open and transparent as Larysa Caba with her clients. The way she decides to make a profit for her clients. she allows you to express your fears and she still rests your fears and that is my respect. I don't normally comment on videos, but this word should be included. she is really cool.
This is just more and more and more and more proof why privatisation should not be allowed for our utilities countries across the world. Do not source out their utilities to private companies, and this country needs to do exactly the same in a crisis, you could be paralysed utilities back in house, owned by the British, not by shareholders across the world and mainly American shareholders or Saudi Arabia, this is just more proof of what Maggie Thatcher Hannah, selling of the assets 40 years later shows it doesn’t work
The USA has serious water problems, on the whole it relies on ground water, ie water from wells and underground sources as opposed to the UK where in general our water is supplied from surface reservoirs, those US sources are running dry, and unlike our open reservoirs that are topped the moment it rains, their sources take years, decades, centuries to replenish. Which has those Sunbelt Mega cities growth slowing, no water, and increasingly no electricity to power all the air conditioning to make these cities habitable. Oh, and their soil is screwed!
Key national infrastructure should not be in private hands. The idea that these private companies will invest in infrastructure is moronic when a private business solely exists to generate a profit for their (international) shareholders, which appear to actually receive little benefit. Our rivers are full of waste and the business has been asset stripped and run by a skeleton crew for too long, a pattern across water companies in the UK. Let them fail and buy them back for what they were sold for, pennies on the pound. Or simply take ownership, as now this is clearly in the public's interest to do so to protect lives, business and the environment.
Having taken back control how much do you think our Government would spend on water infrastructure? I suggest a lot less than what is currently invested. Revenues from water rates would be redirected by Government to those areas it deems more important like train drivers wages, NHS, Civil Service pensions etc.
@@frankhayes1135 Do you have any evidence to back up your suggestion or is it just supposition? Outside of Chile, the UK is the only nation in the world with privatised water. Literally every other nation has figured it out. Are you saying we, as the UK, one of the largest economies in the world with some of the greatest minds would not be able to figure this out? The current model isn't working and is putting a basic human requirement for life in the hands of a very few who personally profit of it.
@@gair333 Yes I am - I see no evidence of it. Your statement that only Chile and UK have privatised water utilities is simply grossly wrong. You also misread my support of private water companies (or critical utilities fullstop) - I don't. I do however understand that Government will do no better - they have form. A Government faced with unprecedented budget problems will NOT invest in water infrastructure - quite the opposite - it will bleed it dry for the priority of the moment.
It's odd, that in a recent interview, Trump's former trade negotiator was waxing lyrical about possible trade deals with the US and how it would be great if the UK would be nearer to the current incoming administration than Europe (22 miles and 1.5 h away) from Dover. It was interesting to hear of the shared values of Thatcher, Regan and the neoliberal dream, where everything was on the table and up for negotiation. Everything you describe here is a direct result of neoliberalism as there were no halcyon days just a series of "cheap as chips" sell offs with no benefits other than to the new owners and shareholders who ran the company into the ground; so here comes Trump and his chums who will want a deal on their terms.
@MrSloika That's the problem, with the "I'm alright Jack" mentality, all the influencers can see is a profit for them, and it matters not who gets caught in the cross fire. Moreover, I have direct knowledge of the way the yanks do business and it usually involves importing their BS methods in to the company they have bought, regardless of local regulations and agreements.
@@MrSloika Yanks, was the generic term we used when "inspector gadget" and his crew came over from Seattle to look us over. In the end, the company shed labour took every on through agencies except for charge hands and foremen, so no yanks will be for ever sceptics as the Australians say.
If this whole story was true why then were billions of pounds invested into the tideway project to carry water from Acton in the west to Beckton in the East?
Desalination requires huge amounts of energy which will put the price of water beyond the average Joe's budget. Better organisation of ressources is all that is required but short term profit over long term planning is the curent business model.
This is really an excellent item and absolutely on the button. think i'll stay in dorset with wessex water where, apart from the occasional beach pollution, we're not badly off.
London population has grown by 30%. Like housing, it is hard to plan for that kind of population growth driven by immigration. Fail to plan, plan to fail.
I find dancing words at the bottom of the screen really distracting. UA-cam has a really good system which allows people to choose whether they want subtitles or not.
There's an abundance of water in western Scotland and west Wales, it's merely a question of moving the water. And it's probably needed more for agriculture in East Angular than that London. And the Persians knew how to move and store water in areas that are too hot for water to remain on the surface.
In the UK we have Mrs Thatcher to thank for this approaching disaster, may she rot in hell. And if you think we have a problem with the small boats just wait until the glaciers that feed most the great rivers disappear.
There is so much pro active work, reasonably straight forward methods to understand, to build up a stronger more robust and stable watershed hydrological cycle. I've been deeply interested for this for many years and I find it very notable how disinterested most people are in such things. There are sciences that require specialist equipment and facilities to demonstrate, emphasise or understand much about. There is great deal of other stuff that can be demonstrated and emphasised in quite straightforward ways, it can be observed and confirmed by in theory anyone with the plain sight and senses. The extent to which most people, of all walks of life, of otherwise very high intellect even... Are utterly disinterested in some of the most essentially basic observations of the larger environment around... We live in a incredibly left brain dominant society, even very clever people are essentially only acting on half their minds and suppressing the other. The dysfunctional result is pretty evident.
True but the sale of several Welsh water bottling firms to foreign corporates and an English millionaire, including water hoarding Nestlé, should make you ponder. Thankfully one of those companies has been bought back into Welsh hands. Lloniannau.
@@goodlookinouthomie1757 Unfortunately, with 16 million customers, Thames Water is by far the biggest. The next largest is probably the North West England area (United Utilities), with around 6 -7 million customers
@@paultaylor7082 this only concerns those 16 mill' you mentioned, the other 54 mill' in the rest of the country couldn't give a shit about their problems. Just like that minority don't give a shit about the rest of us.
"I'm Alright Jack" ============== The human condition means that most ordinary people won't change their habits of a lifetime until such time that their experiential circumstances change or are impacted for the worse. The trigger point for change is pain, and lots of it.
Capitalism works until it oversteps the boundaries,when shareholders are sacrosanct against rationality and practicality then it becomes really dangerous especially when the very basic human needs are profitised.
3:19 “I have no idea whether London will have to literally be evacuated…” I’m looking forward to the compilation of occasions when Richard says “I have no idea…“/“I don’t know,” as he says in nearly every video. (Most of the time it’s not an inability to predict, as it is here, but, rather, the sheer irrationality of the situation that prevents one’s knowing.)
This is the pattern that UK politicians/businessmen have learned from their American counterparts. Deliberately hobble a public asset. Loudly proclaim, 'SEE! GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WORK!". Sell off said asset to an oligarch for pennies on the dollars.
Where is that map image showing apparently a lake drying up? Put a title with it please. Where are the results for all the “We know” statements you made in the video please.
A couple of comments: The Middle east has never had much water - Saudi Arabia for instance supplies most of its drinking water via desalination plants dotted along its coastline. They did at one time use large quantities of ground water but this is declining as you suggest the resource is declining. Nearly all waste water/sewage water is recycled for irrigation purposes. With earth warming (as we are constantly told) the atmosphere now holds more water which is copiously dropped on land as we witness regularly and more recently in Spain. What IS happening, which for some countries is problematic, is that rainfall patterns have shifted such that borderline countries (Sudan and Ethiopia being tedious examples) have been tipped over to the inhospitable zone. Even Brazil is now seeing changing rainfall patterns. Can't disagree with your economic arguments - particularly Thames Water, but if anyone believes for one second that the new Labour Government (or any Government) would suddenly find 100s £billions to invest in our water and sewage systems they ignore facts and recent history when the industry was State owned. I would suggest that given the pressures on Government finances, much LESS would be invested into our water infrastructure than presently. You are good at economics Richard - What is the true economic value of water? Is it sold/managed too cheaply. How much would we pay for a bottle if we had none? It seems we are prepared to pay upwards of £1 a small bottle from the local shop and yet not a £1 per cubic meter from our taps! - Very strange. One final consideration you fail to mention is of course the impact of over population - or more accurately increasing massive centres of population like London, California etc.
Richard, you are being melodramatic. Remember Railtrack? The private company that was in charge of the rail tracks. It, too, puts profits before safety. It was worse than Thames Water. It contracted out its technical responsibility to such an extent it had no idea how badly the tracks were being maintained. This led to the Southern and Labrooke Road rail crashes. In the end, Railtrack had to be taken back into Public ownership. The same will happen to Thames Water.
But there’s still the outdated infrastructure and maintenance backlog. If TW goes back to public ownership who will pay for that? Oh yes.. us. And how much private finance will be involved even when public? And who will benefit? The usual suspects I suppose, but not the taxpayers.
Not until more multi billionaires fill their offshore accounts. They will wait until it collapses entirely. They do not care at all about the citizens.
TW is a lesson to those who think that privatisation can solve all capital expenditure issues. It will be a very long time before the idea of privatising an utility providing an essential service will ever take off again. And yes we, the tax payer, voted for politicians who sold that bad idea. So it is only fair for us, the voting tax payer to pick up the FULL tab.
You blame greedy corporations for London's water issues. They were only able to overburden the company with debt because the stupid governments dropped interest rates to near zero. This enabled companies to issue vast amounts of cheaply funded debt. It was the actions of governments that created this situation. When the UK utility companies were originally privatised, anyone could buy some shares in them. There was a limit to how many shares anyone could own. Over time the shares were all bought up and monopolised. It was the British people that sold control of their utilities for a quick profit. Instead of blaming themselves, they blame the buyers. Once again, this was only possible because of the stupidity of governments keeping interest rates far too low for far too long.
We have councils in NZ that look after water. Now you would think that would mean it all goes well given that councils are not meant to be “profit driven”. However what councils here have done is squandered millions and billions of dollars of rate payers money over decades in not keeping up with maintenance. Wellington our capital is the most worse off. But to be fair the more “conservative” and rural you go the less complaining there is about water. They have not been all bad. Which makes our capital and political capital look all the worse. A few years ago the our dams in Auckland were at record lows and climate wonks were claiming they will never get filled again. Well you know what happened next, we got the downpours and they got filled in no time. Funny business water and just because it’s getting “hotter” it doesn’t mean it’s going to be dry.
Interesting. I gather from your presentation, London is failing in its infrastructure. That may stem the population rise it has seen over recent times. Given the mayor has recently suggested that a poster doesn't represent Londoners, perhaps that final 36% will eventually move. The mayor will then have an issue with water supply with double the replacement population. Pure mismangement. Still, having been all over the world, I'll cite a case of some success. Around 20 years ago, I was in The Gambia and have been many times. The then president had been donated two enormous GEC diesel generators. These were paraded around the nation. When installed, they provided electricity to many outlying villages, towns and communities. It enabled electric pumps to be introduced to the manually operated wells. No software needed, just an on-off button. This, in turn provided a better sewage system rather than open ditches. London has a future. Oh, diesel generators. Never mind.
Overbuild renewables (needed anyway due to intermittency to reliably have enough) and then at times of excess energy divert that into intermittent desalination. Newer desalination tech is being trialled to run intermittently for this use case already. I expect millions, of not billions, of people are going to die due to climate change but techniques such as this can help.
Take it back in public ownership , fuck the share holders . Sick of all this bollocks . If we can afford £3 billion a year to keep Zalenskii in the life style he has become accustomed to we can afford to run the water companies .
Could be that there is not enough water for the people. Or, too many people for the water. A Victorian system being asked to work for a much larger number of people. Ownership does not change that basic fact.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. The population of the world is expanding past the ability of the environment to keep up. Concentrating more people in a space and allowing that population density to expand outward is a bad idea. The planners invented the green belt for a reason and it should not be built on, but this inept government will do so.
I'd like to see you try without bankrupting the country almost instantly. Use less water is by far the cheapest and most effective solution and can be implemented immediately with no effort from anyone, including central government.
20+ yrs ago I worked for Anglian Water, 5 years ago I had to call customer services, during the call I told the AW staff member which pages to look at to solve my find the answers I needed, this included telling him the codes for those pages. They hadn't updated the software in 15+ years other than superficially. The same flaws were still apparent to me during that call as they had been all those years earlier.
The situation at Thames therefore is no surprise. I'll be surprised if there isn't the same issue in several more water companies.
I imagine that the CIO was begging the board for money to fix the systems, much as the COO was begging for money to overhaul and replace the physical infrastructure, but shareholders were put first. I see this as a problem of regulation. Ofwat has failed, and if the cause of their failure is that they were not given adequate powers, then it is the Conservative government that privatised and deregulated the water industry that is the root cause. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's Labour governments may be equally culpable if they did not fix the problem.
@tlangdon12 execs wouldn't be interested in begging for money to fix the issues as they were often given shares as part of their salary and/bonus meaning they would benefit from the company making higher profits and paying out higher dividends.
Simply from the angle of security of an essential for life water shouldn't be in the hands of share holders or investors of any kind. The risk to operations is too high. As with Thames Water if they do fail how will a quarter of the population receive water. The answer is unclear.
@@tlangdon12I agree with the latter part of your comment (from 'Conservative..' onwards). I think company execs only superficially care about their responsibilities (that's what they have staff for) (passing the buck is a neo-liberal pass-time) (OK, a human pass-time but where ignorance is rewarded by wealth neo-libs are right at the top of the score board).
@@kevbrown2532 My hat off to you sir. Simply put: strategic industry (water, energy, health, education, etc) should not be in private hands (farming is possibly the odd one out - look at the Communist Party's cock-up in Russia during it's early post revolution days as an example why. Besides, if someone wants to live that very intensive lifestyle they should be encouraged). Or so I believe.
Ah. The wonderful, all-serving profit motive. Aka greed and stupidity.
England will just colonise Wales harder for water
Nope. The population of London has grown by 30% and suddenly the infrastructure cannot cope. Who knew? Well everyone, it is a direct consequence of policy.
@@user-xu5vl5th9n which means the water bills revenue has climbed by 30%...
And it's not like that demographic trend wasn't entirely predictable and measurable...
The only solution is nationalisation.
Morally, the shareholders shouldn't get a penny, they've collectively already siphoned out over 3x the original privatisation valuation (of all water companies, not just Thames Water, but the trend is the same).
Legally, it may be hard to nationalise them without some form of compensation until they financially collapse, but as you say we can't afford to risk allowing them to physically fail in the meantime.
I saw you on Sky talking about the Inheritance Tax/farmers. You did REALLY well in the face of nonsense arguements and name calling. Real journalism is dead. I had listened to your analysis of the inheritance debacle earlier and you were the only source i could find that actually explained it. Labour need to sort their comms out! But Well Done you 💪🙌👌
Labour need to be less clumsy and take an interest in the detail
@@gwynsea8162 I''ll hold your coat for you if you like....
Yeah. Prof Tim Wilson on your tube made really childish comments about Richard. Made me cross
He hasn't really got it in IHT. I have done a video on this on my own channel. Murphy is half right but IHT does not solve the problem. What isn't sold to the likes of Blackrock will be transferred to trusts. IHT has never worked.
@@UnderaPiscesMoon-nr5gz Tim Wilson has odd views he's a Tory Brexiteer at heart
Let them drink Perrier!
Said Keir Starmer.
I'm an Evian man myself....
Dehydrated water is what we need, it's easier to store and cheaper to transport, we could ship it to all the places that have water shortages at very little cost.
@@robinhood4640 I know you jest, but when I was young a company here in US Murica was selling a gag 'survival' gift of 'Dehydrated Water'. It was an empty can with with directions on the back that read, "Open can. Add water."
@@robinhood4640😂
Can’t beat Nature, Nature will shrug us humans off.
I totally agree with you Richard. And it’s scary! I’ll go further than you and suggest that, not just water but food and the ability to keep warm are on the horizon. Can we avert this? Mmmmm? The degree of course-altering that is needed I find mind-boggling.
The proposed Abingdon reservoir by thames water keeps getting bigger despite demand being smaller. It appears that ofwat allows bigger bills to customers for larger infrastructure projects no matter what the right size may actually be. We are being saddled with a watery white Elephant to fund the financiers for the next hundred years all paid for with customer bills. Return thames water to public ownership and let's get real with the solutions.
Monopolisation of the utilities is killing the economy and the environment
Capitalism.
Utilities are, necessarily, a monopoly in terms of supply. How many water pipes, gas pipes, and electric cables do you want in your house? Power generation is not a monopoly (currently 22 suppliers) but distribution has to be. As does water capture and storage. What is killing the environment is TOO MANY PEOPLE. Almost every modern ill is down to there being too many of us. Nature has an answer to that- but it is brutal.
@@pipster1891 Capitalism is working as intended. Create a surplus (profit) for those who control capital/resources. The number of billionaires rises every year in the UK.
@@pipster1891Rampant Capitalism.
Thanks Richard you cheered me right up there
Is this any surprise when our culture has apparently forgotten there can be motives that don't relate to profit (the need to drink & wash freely for example).
I'm a civil engineer, and I don't know anyone in the technical side infrastructure doesn't get sick of decisions made on the basis of yearly financial budgets and reports. But the reality is that bare minimum maintenance and upgrades have kept profits rolling in, at the cost of the long term health of our systems.
Wasn’t there a problem last summer in the country with water pipes??? And authorities had to bring bottled water daily… L remember I could not order my bottles from Supermarket for about a month for the shortages. But London will not survive. What was it like BEFORE the digital age??? There must be water wells and pumps in every neighbourhood put by the local Council for emergency events. This is real serious….
Arrest all the receivers of dividends since privatization until its fixed .
If you get a pension now, or will get a pension in the future ...... join the queue for the Gulag.
That would be difficult because most of them are foreign.
Don’t worry, the English government will just take it from Scotland. We’ve got plenty just as we have plenty of wind power which is going to England as well. We pay the highest for power in Scotland when we produce 120% through wind power. Pity we didn’t get our independence.
Wind is more expensive so of course it costs more.
Excellent post. It's all about profiteering and not providing sufficient services for demand. No panic here, certainly not at the moment because the UK has more than enough rainfall to support its population. Spain in area is twice the size of the UK, its population is 45 million, two thirds of that of the UK, but has an average rainfall of under that of the UK. Lack of maintenance is the charge which can certainly be levelled at Thames Water, in addition to financial chicanery.
One of the most stupid things we do with water is use vast quantities of it to dilute human waste, it fits into our "modern" lifestyle to flush away the nastiness and forget about it thinking it's some sort of technological marvel. In reality it would be cheaper in the long term, and a better use of resources, to use composting or desiccating toilets and have a collection system in place to collect the resulting waste for further processing and use as fertiliser. We already do this to some extent with sewage sludge, but that's a vastly more complex and costly process than direct composting.
It's an artificial crisis designed to gouge customers
Yup
Of course Scotland has an abundance of fresh water.. I wonder where London will look? 😒
They can look somewhere else as this is not Scotland's problem to fix.
Have fun getting the water from Scotland to London.
@@detritiv0re144 Los Angeles in the USA gets mos of it's water from the Mono Valley, 315 miles away, via a canal system througha desert. No bother then for London steal water from Scotland where evaporation losses will be much less than they are in California.
Great to see you out and about on Sky News yesterday, pity they cut you short. Don't think they liked the lesson in economics.
Sky News is shite on the whole but at least they give people like Richard an outing, unlike Establishment mouthpiece BBC News, which is even more shyte and you're forced to pay for it, unlike Sky News.
And so around and around the media circus goes.
The government should let it go bust then buy all the infrastructure and equipment from the receiver. Let the financiers sing for their money . They knew full well that they were financing fraud.
That aside, the points you make here, both domestic and international, have to be addressed - and urgently.
The problem is privatisation by for profit companies who focus on profits and remunerating senior management too much. The Stare Premier of NSW blamed privatisation (that the government approved) was to blame for the recent 7-day power outage in Broken Hill.....Blackrock etc....need to go. The government MUST take control of essential services.
We are in an era of managed decline, they will know, but choose to kick the can down the road knowing they can freely leave the country to join they money, safety offshore.
Nationalisation theyll avoid at all ideological cost!
Yes.
Not only the ideological cost, the financial cost too would break the kitty.
@@petermach8635 What financial cost? The water companies are mostly bankrupt, having siphoned off 3x their privatisation valuation in dividends in barely 30 years.
There's no moral case to pay them a penny for the infrastructure they've left to rot whilst piling on debt to pay for more dividends.
Yes but @@DevAnubis ....... Nationalisation would see the state taking over responsibility for a bankrupt, derelict but vital public utility and it would be the state that had to assume responsibility for maintaining that utility ... but with the state's finances in such a pickle, even if the assets were expropriated without compensation where would that huge investment come from ?
@@petermach8635 Water bills over the past 30 years have paid out in dividends far more than was needed to maintain and upgrade.
Ergo, water bills will in the long term be able go also cover the repair, upgrade and maintenance for the next 30 years, by not paying out those dividends and instead operating a non-profit state enterprise. Borrowing against future water bill revenue isn't a net burden on the tax budget in any way shape or form. It's guaranteed stable predictable revenue to pay back a long term investment. At a rate far more reasonable than 300% over 30 years.
Well functioning state operated industries should be self-perpetuating by their activity without relying on general taxation. Call water fees a tax if you like but you get something for them.
Exceptions to that of course are non-productive industries like healthcare (it avoids the cost of ill-health, but doesn't generate any revenue itself), education, defence, justice and law enforcement, emergency services. But again those all provide societal value but it's easier to completely socialise their funding rather than attempt to bill based on perceived individual benefit.
Hell, if we wanted to we could just socialise water too, scrap water bills, raise National Insurance by a tiny percentage, and most people would be financially slightly better off.
I guarantee the computer software from 1989 is far more reliable than modern software. It's had 35 years of testing and bug fixing.
I guess it must have Y2k proof
My thoughts exactly, thank you.
The only issue is the hardware really. If it’s running after 35 years it’s unlikely to have a software issue.
However the hardware may be another issue. If it’s running on a mainframe and the supplier is content to keep on building the same kit then there’s no issue.
I was told about 10 years ago that the local council I used to work at had only just removed the system I wrote for recording the incoming post and I had left there about 20 years previously so I was quite proud of that. That chap told me that it was still working fine.
You think they fixed bugs? 🤣🤣🤣
Maintenance and new equipment costs money. If you spend money, you make less profit
Lesson: making a profit is an occasional luxury when all costs have been covered. Otherwise, it's a loss.
The profit motive has no place in essential services. None whatsoever.
Exactly, and failure to do this, the wilful avoidance in stealing the money for self interest, SHOULD MEAN ARRESTS & PROSECUTION & JAIL TIME
Pretending natural monopolies are not natural monopolies is stupid. What Keynesian economics does is build on this basic reality to leverage the super powers of a sovereign state in the service of a universally higher standard of living for all, to provide solid foundations for the economy, and to increase stability for both individuals and the nation.
Water, electric, gas, and digital should all be nationalized economic assets, publicly owned and operated utilities run to provide a high quality of service to the people - not for profit
Water will not run out though access to clean water and waste water collection including sewage treatment and processing could.
So when the water runs out what happens is many people die in just a few days. Mostly poor people. It’ll be horrible.
When the English out of water, they will do to Scotland what they did to Wales.
Scottish Water's Subsidiary Business Stream was sent into England and took over Southern Waters & Yorkshire Waters Business Customers in 2016 & 2019 respectively.
And the Scots will roll over and let the English do it to them...
It is not the English that are consuming more water than available- it is all the non-English living in England (i.e. population has been allowed to increase beyond the ability of resources.)
@@Tensquaremetreworkshop if birth rates were not declining, due to most young people being in precarious employment, if the are employed at all. And unable to provide the basic necessities of life, food shelter etc for themselves. Then how can they start a family? Then the indigenous population would grow to the same population as it is today with immigration. And the demand for water would increase anyway. We need immigration to keep our population stable and to provide labor to address the demographic crisis created by neo con tory and tory lite economic insanity. Your enemy is not some immigrant running away from an Anglo American resource war, to the detriment of his countrymen who need his/her labor and skills. It's the bankers and asset fund managers who run government by lobby power ie money and shape the laws and infrastructure of the land to gratify their own greed at the cost of all else. Send all the immigrants hame and the economy and all public services will collapse. We see the effect of Brexshit and immigrants leaving the 'hostile environment' on the NHS everyday.
The English are a rapidly shrinking demographic here. Don't blame us for water scarcity.
Living in the West of Scotland be assured the water will never run out .
Look at when Thames water were aloud to build up massive debts. The debt was increasing under the Tories but they went much worse under Blair’s Labour. The debt pile is a failing of the regulator pure and simple. It seems that every one of the regulators are failing.
Oh THE BORN OF THE river THE fountain, THE river,
THE sea,
There IS there a lot OF water,
as men and women
AND Even when I sing
THE rise OF THE rain
brings us farder
another kinds of water,
like THE cool waterproof resistence
of every sign
ready signed
OF OUR RIGHTS.
There's a lot of software in use today that contains a lot of code that's 40+ years old.
The banking system, nuclear deterrents, passport tracking systems, flight systems, the list goes on.
Old =/= obsolete
Should be nationalised along with railways
If this vid is true then it is not a case of "should" but "must".
Public utilities are 'natural monopolies'. As such public utilities must be under public ownership or heavily regulated if they are privately owned.
I don't know, what is England going to do when their water runs out.
I lived in the Lea Valley in north London for most of my life. Along the river Lea there was a large reservoir. At the time there were worries of a water shortage in London but at the same time this reservoir was sold off to a property developer, drained and a housing estate was being built on it when I left London as I couldn't afford the house prices (now living in Norfolk).
Whoever has to deal with water in London will end up in a mess, because London is a mess. Over the relatively recent years, London has had too many restaurants, too many immigrants, too many changes to infrastructure, too many stupid people not knowing how use toilets, too many buildings , too many large lorries destroying the roads, Victorian pipe system(brilliant as it is), constant rapid changes, investors demanding more dividends (university pension funds take note). So there will never be a solution , just a bad compromise. Good news is property is unlikely to get rising damp in London as the water table as gone right down.
The water catchment areas in Scotland are enormous. Huge reservoirs in our highland areas that feed the lowlands & major populated areas. If global warming has anything to do with it our reservoirs will be flooded!!!! What’s your price?? I jest. Water is a natural resource and should be available to everyone without cost. We cannot exist without it ❤
The original water companies of the 19th century were a decent model for the provision of water.
They were in the 19th century, but we use a heck of a lot more treated water these days, plus the population has gone up by one third.
@@skasteve6528People also waste it greatly.
There is plenty of water in the UK. It’s just available in greater quantities in the west of the country.
Sadly, most of people live in the east particularly the south east which doesn’t have plenty of water
So maddeningly true. And so obvious to so many. The level of tragic stupidity is as frustrating as the kindergarten economics🤯
It's deliberate. How do you think these executives can award themselves massive salaries and off shore eye-watering profits? It's not stupidity. It's working perfectly for them. They absolutely do not care about citizens. The people at the top of these organisations are malignantly greedy.
They have been saying this for decades
It’s not going to happen
We can always eat and drink money under the free market - ha, ha. Billionaires can go and live in bunkers under disused farms in NZ, which many are arranging.
Good morning Richard.
I think we need to separate the appalling mismanagement of Thames Water from the issue of a lack of water in arid areas of the world.
There have been projects to reverse climate change by changing agricultural land use. To capture water when it does fall. Allan Savory has dedicated his life to changing farming practices to help reverse droughts.
I know either content creators or UA-cam does not like those commenting adding links to comments but water can be managed by humans to create better outcomes than you are predicting.
Conflating the two problems probably wasn't a good idea.
@@petermach8635 Yes, I would have thought that the miss management of Thames Water could occupy 5 to 10 minutes and I would not be surprised if Thames Water is not an outlier, and it turns out the other water companies are in a poor financial shape.
Water is already a tradeable (stock market) commodity, some countries have that as policy now as well, I will link to the article re that tomorrow.
You might be broke now and that okay but imagine your kids living in a life where they have to struggle because of your life choices when you could actually do something about it. The biggest gift you can give your kids after showing them love and being in their lives is financial Cover and that is why My advice to everyone is this : if you want to grow big this year especially in your finances. Be willing to make investments. Saving is great but investing puts you on a pedestal where you wouldnt have to worry about savings as you do now. Thanks to larysa Caba, my portolio is doing really great and im proud of the decisions i made last year.
Making over 48k monthly is all because of her.
I feel one Of the greatest challenges that we first timers face in the ma rket is that we end up losing all we have,making it difficult to find ourselves back to our feet. My biggest advice is to always seek the services of a professional just like I did when I ventured into it for the first time. Big thanks to Larysa Caba. I now make huge profits by weekly through her services while still learning to stand on my own.
I know Larysa Caba. she trades for everyone I meet. I met her twice at a meeting in Germany and after her lectures from Ella I had to personally ask her to be my financial advisor. she is definitely good.?
I have never seen a trader as open and transparent as Larysa Caba with her clients. The way she decides to make a profit for her clients. she allows you to express your fears and she still rests your fears and that is my respect. I don't normally comment on videos, but this word should be included. she is really cool.
I just looked up her name online. she is licensed with credible certificates and has an amazing track record. Thank you for the message.
The customer will pay as usual.
This is just more and more and more and more proof why privatisation should not be allowed for our utilities countries across the world. Do not source out their utilities to private companies, and this country needs to do exactly the same in a crisis, you could be paralysed utilities back in house, owned by the British, not by shareholders across the world and mainly American shareholders or Saudi Arabia, this is just more proof of what Maggie Thatcher Hannah, selling of the assets 40 years later shows it doesn’t work
The USA has serious water problems, on the whole it relies on ground water, ie water from wells and underground sources as opposed to the UK where in general our water is supplied from surface reservoirs, those US sources are running dry, and unlike our open reservoirs that are topped the moment it rains, their sources take years, decades, centuries to replenish. Which has those Sunbelt Mega cities growth slowing, no water, and increasingly no electricity to power all the air conditioning to make these cities habitable.
Oh, and their soil is screwed!
The plan is to pipe water from the Great Lakes to the American Southwest. Apparently the Canadians have no say in the matter.
Key national infrastructure should not be in private hands. The idea that these private companies will invest in infrastructure is moronic when a private business solely exists to generate a profit for their (international) shareholders, which appear to actually receive little benefit. Our rivers are full of waste and the business has been asset stripped and run by a skeleton crew for too long, a pattern across water companies in the UK.
Let them fail and buy them back for what they were sold for, pennies on the pound. Or simply take ownership, as now this is clearly in the public's interest to do so to protect lives, business and the environment.
Having taken back control how much do you think our Government would spend on water infrastructure? I suggest a lot less than what is currently invested. Revenues from water rates would be redirected by Government to those areas it deems more important like train drivers wages, NHS, Civil Service pensions etc.
@@frankhayes1135 Do you have any evidence to back up your suggestion or is it just supposition? Outside of Chile, the UK is the only nation in the world with privatised water. Literally every other nation has figured it out. Are you saying we, as the UK, one of the largest economies in the world with some of the greatest minds would not be able to figure this out?
The current model isn't working and is putting a basic human requirement for life in the hands of a very few who personally profit of it.
@@gair333 *England
@@gair333 Yes I am - I see no evidence of it. Your statement that only Chile and UK have privatised water utilities is simply grossly wrong. You also misread my support of private water companies (or critical utilities fullstop) - I don't. I do however understand that Government will do no better - they have form. A Government faced with unprecedented budget problems will NOT invest in water infrastructure - quite the opposite - it will bleed it dry for the priority of the moment.
ALL SERVICES SHOULD BE COST RECOVERY. NOT FOR PROFIT. EXCEPTING PROFIT FOR MAINTENANCE AND IMPROVEMENT ONLY.
It's odd, that in a recent interview, Trump's former trade negotiator was waxing lyrical about possible trade deals with the US and how it would be great if the UK would be nearer to the current incoming administration than Europe (22 miles and 1.5 h away) from Dover.
It was interesting to hear of the shared values of Thatcher, Regan and the neoliberal dream, where everything was on the table and up for negotiation.
Everything you describe here is a direct result of neoliberalism as there were no halcyon days just a series of "cheap as chips" sell offs with no benefits other than to the new owners and shareholders who ran the company into the ground; so here comes Trump and his chums who will want a deal on their terms.
There are many influential people in the UK who are receptive to the American way of doing 'business'.
@MrSloika
That's the problem, with the "I'm alright Jack" mentality, all the influencers can see is a profit for them, and it matters not who gets caught in the cross fire.
Moreover, I have direct knowledge of the way the yanks do business and it usually involves importing their BS methods in to the company they have bought, regardless of local regulations and agreements.
@@philwoodfordjjj8928 There are no 'Yanks'. As for how American 'businessmen' do business, the mafia had a phrase for it, 'Bust-out'.
@@MrSloika
Yanks, was the generic term we used when "inspector gadget" and his crew came over from Seattle to look us over.
In the end, the company shed labour took every on through agencies except for charge hands and foremen, so no yanks will be for ever sceptics as the Australians say.
If this whole story was true why then were billions of pounds invested into the tideway project to carry water from Acton in the west to Beckton in the East?
💚
Desalination is the choice as only about 4 per cent of fresh water is available for our needs.
We are drowning up here in bonnie Scotland😅😅😅😅😅😅
Desalination requires huge amounts of energy which will put the price of water beyond the average Joe's budget. Better organisation of ressources is all that is required but short term profit over long term planning is the curent business model.
This is really an excellent item and absolutely on the button. think i'll stay in dorset with wessex water where, apart from the occasional beach pollution, we're not badly off.
London population has grown by 30%. Like housing, it is hard to plan for that kind of population growth driven by immigration. Fail to plan, plan to fail.
I find dancing words at the bottom of the screen really distracting. UA-cam has a really good system which allows people to choose whether they want subtitles or not.
There's an abundance of water in western Scotland and west Wales, it's merely a question of moving the water. And it's probably needed more for agriculture in East Angular than that London.
And the Persians knew how to move and store water in areas that are too hot for water to remain on the surface.
Cardiff the wettest place now.
@@janetmalcolm6191 Wettest city, but wettest place is Capel Curig
No.
@@shugieshugied2269Don't mind who is wettest if they want water they are welcome to take some! Getting beyond here in Wales now.
I'd advocate the Grand Contour Canal, even if it is a century late.
ASK THE TORIES , IT WAS MEANT TO BE CHEAPER AND CLEANER
In the UK we have Mrs Thatcher to thank for this approaching disaster, may she rot in hell. And if you think we have a problem with the small boats just wait until the glaciers that feed most the great rivers disappear.
*in England.
Maggie "Taxpayer Money" Thatcher
@ScottishRoss27 Unfortunately England as usual has dragged Scotland into its cock ups for which I offer an apology.
@@MartinCarty
Westminster tried to privatise our water but were stopped via 1994 Scottish Water Referendum.
@ScottishRoss27 we'll done
What a crock.
There is so much pro active work, reasonably straight forward methods to understand, to build up a stronger more robust and stable watershed hydrological cycle.
I've been deeply interested for this for many years and I find it very notable how disinterested most people are in such things.
There are sciences that require specialist equipment and facilities to demonstrate, emphasise or understand much about.
There is great deal of other stuff that can be demonstrated and emphasised in quite straightforward ways, it can be observed and confirmed by in theory anyone with the plain sight and senses.
The extent to which most people, of all walks of life, of otherwise very high intellect even... Are utterly disinterested in some of the most essentially basic observations of the larger environment around...
We live in a incredibly left brain dominant society, even very clever people are essentially only acting on half their minds and suppressing the other. The dysfunctional result is pretty evident.
Make more champagne!
As a Welshman ...a lack of water is news to me
True but the sale of several Welsh water bottling firms to foreign corporates and an English millionaire, including water hoarding Nestlé, should make you ponder. Thankfully one of those companies has been bought back into Welsh hands. Lloniannau.
As is usually the case, tis is a London problem.
@@goodlookinouthomie1757 Unfortunately, with 16 million customers, Thames Water is by far the biggest. The next largest is probably the North West England area (United Utilities), with around 6 -7 million customers
@@paultaylor7082 this only concerns those 16 mill' you mentioned, the other 54 mill' in the rest of the country couldn't give a shit about their problems. Just like that minority don't give a shit about the rest of us.
Shouldn't be a shock considering the English like displacing Welsh villages for resevoirs so that there is enough water.
Privatization. Again.
No, I am not a socialist, or a communist, I am just an honest realist. I am a serial whistle blower.
Thatcherism.
"I'm Alright Jack"
==============
The human condition means that most
ordinary people won't change their habits
of a lifetime until such time that their
experiential circumstances change or are
impacted for the worse.
The trigger point for change is pain, and lots of it.
Just get a London branch party in power in Scotland,and hey presto the water will flow from Scotland to England
Capitalism works until it oversteps the boundaries,when shareholders are sacrosanct against rationality and practicality then it becomes really dangerous especially when the very basic human needs are profitised.
My piss is boiling!
you will be able to drink it then
Stick a tea bag in it then.
3:19 “I have no idea whether London will have to literally be evacuated…”
I’m looking forward to the compilation of occasions when Richard says “I have no idea…“/“I don’t know,” as he says in nearly every video. (Most of the time it’s not an inability to predict, as it is here, but, rather, the sheer irrationality of the situation that prevents one’s knowing.)
They're probably going to hold out until it's critical and then privitise the supply somehow !!! 😂😂😂
This is the pattern that UK politicians/businessmen have learned from their American counterparts. Deliberately hobble a public asset. Loudly proclaim, 'SEE! GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WORK!". Sell off said asset to an oligarch for pennies on the dollars.
Where is that map image showing apparently a lake drying up? Put a title with it please. Where are the results for all the “We know” statements you made in the video please.
A couple of comments: The Middle east has never had much water - Saudi Arabia for instance supplies most of its drinking water via desalination plants dotted along its coastline. They did at one time use large quantities of ground water but this is declining as you suggest the resource is declining. Nearly all waste water/sewage water is recycled for irrigation purposes. With earth warming (as we are constantly told) the atmosphere now holds more water which is copiously dropped on land as we witness regularly and more recently in Spain. What IS happening, which for some countries is problematic, is that rainfall patterns have shifted such that borderline countries (Sudan and Ethiopia being tedious examples) have been tipped over to the inhospitable zone. Even Brazil is now seeing changing rainfall patterns. Can't disagree with your economic arguments - particularly Thames Water, but if anyone believes for one second that the new Labour Government (or any Government) would suddenly find 100s £billions to invest in our water and sewage systems they ignore facts and recent history when the industry was State owned. I would suggest that given the pressures on Government finances, much LESS would be invested into our water infrastructure than presently. You are good at economics Richard - What is the true economic value of water? Is it sold/managed too cheaply. How much would we pay for a bottle if we had none? It seems we are prepared to pay upwards of £1 a small bottle from the local shop and yet not a £1 per cubic meter from our taps! - Very strange. One final consideration you fail to mention is of course the impact of over population - or more accurately increasing massive centres of population like London, California etc.
If Thames water fails then it will be nationalised. Next question? 🤷♂️
Who will foot the bill? Not the poor taxpayer, yet again, the same as when the banks went bust in 2007/8? I wouldn't bet against it.
the solution is to have no economy and/or a small world population
Richard, you are being melodramatic.
Remember Railtrack? The private company that was in charge of the rail tracks. It, too, puts profits before safety.
It was worse than Thames Water. It contracted out its technical responsibility to such an extent it had no idea how badly the tracks were being maintained.
This led to the Southern and Labrooke Road rail crashes.
In the end, Railtrack had to be taken back into Public ownership.
The same will happen to Thames Water.
But there’s still the outdated infrastructure and maintenance backlog. If TW goes back to public ownership who will pay for that? Oh yes.. us. And how much private finance will be involved even when public? And who will benefit? The usual suspects I suppose, but not the taxpayers.
Not until more multi billionaires fill their offshore accounts. They will wait until it collapses entirely. They do not care at all about the citizens.
TW is a lesson to those who think that privatisation can solve all capital expenditure issues.
It will be a very long time before the idea of privatising an utility providing an essential service will ever take off again.
And yes we, the tax payer, voted for politicians who sold that bad idea.
So it is only fair for us, the voting tax payer to pick up the FULL tab.
You blame greedy corporations for London's water issues. They were only able to overburden the company with debt because the stupid governments dropped interest rates to near zero. This enabled companies to issue vast amounts of cheaply funded debt. It was the actions of governments that created this situation. When the UK utility companies were originally privatised, anyone could buy some shares in them. There was a limit to how many shares anyone could own. Over time the shares were all bought up and monopolised. It was the British people that sold control of their utilities for a quick profit. Instead of blaming themselves, they blame the buyers. Once again, this was only possible because of the stupidity of governments keeping interest rates far too low for far too long.
In an abundance of water , the fool is thirsty .
Gun ownership for a quick exit
Plenty of water in the Thames get your buckets ready 😂no doubt you’ll rob it from the north eventually
There were plans to tap Loch Lomomd by building a cannal to Manchester.
They’ll increase taxes and immigration?
We have councils in NZ that look after water.
Now you would think that would mean it all goes well given that councils are not meant to be “profit driven”.
However what councils here have done is squandered millions and billions of dollars of rate payers money over decades in not keeping up with maintenance.
Wellington our capital is the most worse off.
But to be fair the more “conservative” and rural you go the less complaining there is about water. They have not been all bad.
Which makes our capital and political capital look all the worse.
A few years ago the our dams in Auckland were at record lows and climate wonks were claiming they will never get filled again.
Well you know what happened next, we got the downpours and they got filled in no time.
Funny business water and just because it’s getting “hotter” it doesn’t mean it’s going to be dry.
New Zealand is tropical, of course they aren't drying up
It’s not tropical
Interesting. I gather from your presentation, London is failing in its infrastructure. That may stem the population rise it has seen over recent times.
Given the mayor has recently suggested that a poster doesn't represent Londoners, perhaps that final 36% will eventually move. The mayor will then have an issue with water supply with double the replacement population.
Pure mismangement.
Still, having been all over the world, I'll cite a case of some success.
Around 20 years ago, I was in The Gambia and have been many times. The then president had been donated two enormous GEC diesel generators. These were paraded around the nation.
When installed, they provided electricity to many outlying villages, towns and communities. It enabled electric pumps to be introduced to the manually operated wells.
No software needed, just an on-off button.
This, in turn provided a better sewage system rather than open ditches.
London has a future.
Oh, diesel generators. Never mind.
Piss in the wind?....
Overbuild renewables (needed anyway due to intermittency to reliably have enough) and then at times of excess energy divert that into intermittent desalination. Newer desalination tech is being trialled to run intermittently for this use case already. I expect millions, of not billions, of people are going to die due to climate change but techniques such as this can help.
Why are they taking bonuses? 🤪
We die.
Scotland has 90% of europes drinking water time for Scottish independence
Don't worry an independent Scotland will get rich bottling water and selling it to england
I really want to turn off the captions
Get a decent water filter like a sawyer
Take it back in public ownership , fuck the share holders . Sick of all this bollocks .
If we can afford £3 billion a year to keep Zalenskii in the life style he has become accustomed to we can afford to run the water companies .
Careful, you'll trigger the YT political correctness algorithm.
@@MrSloika It's Mr. "I'm using the wrong setting and blaming youtube because I'm too thick to click my mouse on the correct one."
Ever heard of rain?
GREED
Could be that there is not enough water for the people. Or, too many people for the water. A Victorian system being asked to work for a much larger number of people. Ownership does not change that basic fact.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. The population of the world is expanding past the ability of the environment to keep up.
Concentrating more people in a space and allowing that population density to expand outward is a bad idea. The planners invented the green belt for a reason and it should not be built on, but this inept government will do so.
Starmer will buy another desalination plant from his friends in israel.
Desalination ?
I'd like to see you try without bankrupting the country almost instantly.
Use less water is by far the cheapest and most effective solution and can be implemented immediately with no effort from anyone, including central government.
Change the title. It's misleading.