For six years, privatised Southern Water deliberately poured enormous volumes of untreated sewage into the sea to avoid financial penalties & the cost of upgrading & maintaining infrastructure.
The privatised water company discharged between 16 & 21 BILLION litres of raw sewage into some of the most precious & delicate environments in the country.
But hey, at least the inefficient Marxist nanny state wasn't running it, & the shareholders did extremely well out of it!
“These offences show a shocking & wholesale disregard for the environment, for precious & delicate ecosystems & coastlines, for human health, & for fisheries & other legitimate businesses that operate in the coastal waters,” said the judge.
The deregulated free-market in action!
Southern Water has a history of criminal activity with 168 previous offences/cautions for “previous & persistent pollution of the environment. There is no evidence the company took any notice of the penalties imposed or the remarks of the courts. Its offending simply continued.”
In 1989 the ten publicly owned water & sewerage authorities were privatised. This was achieved by transferring the water supply & sewerage assets, & the relevant staff, of the Southern Water Authority into the limited company Southern Water Services Ltd.
Privatisation was accompanied by the raising of capital by floating parent companies on the London Stock Exchange, a one-off injection of "public capital", the write off of significant government debt, & the provision of capital tax allowances.
In 1996 Southern Water was purchased in a hostile takeover bid by Scottish Power, itself now a subsidiary of Spanish multinational Iberdrola. During this period, assets including in-house scientific laboratory services were shut down, dismantled & sold off.
Maximise that profit!
In 2002, Scottish Power sold the company to First Aqua Limited, then in 2007, to Greensands Investments Limited - a consortium made up of a fund advised by Sajid Javid's recent paymaster JP Morgan Asset Management, Australia's Challenger Infrastructure fund, & Swiss bank UBS. 🇬🇧
Tories, supported by the UK press & a global network of libertarian billionaire-funded free-market think tanks & free-market Brextremist fundamentalists will keep telling voters that There Is No Alternative to free-market fundamentalism.
It is the biggest scam in history.
At the heart of the neoliberal project has been the privatisation of public services & other publicly held assets.
The strategy began in earnest here in Britain during the Thatcherism of the 1980s, & has engulfed the world since.
It was & is mainly about one thing only: shifting wealth & the balance of power to the global ruling elite, who have now amassed at least $30 TRILLION offshore.
The war on the poor has been waged war for the past 40 years.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fault lines & revealed the lengths Govts like ours are prepared to go to to defend the interests of those they represent - it's no coincidence that our Govt is stuffed full of bankers & corporate lobbyists.
We MUST wrestle back control.
The economic system is creaking & democracy is fragile. The culture war seems trivial, but divide & rule has been a VERY successful elite strategy for centuries. It took TWO World Wars before we got the #NHS & the welfare state, & now they're almost gone.
Bringing the toxic broken tax-dodging water companies back into public ownership would be a small start in beginning to repair our country, which is being systematically exploited & polarised by a tiny cabal of free-market fundamentalist Libertarians.
#OnThisDay, 21 July, 1969, the Chicago Daily News published: The ‘love it or leave it’ nonsense, by Sydney J. Harris.
It began: One of the most ignorant and hateful statements that a person can make is “If you don’t like it here, why don’t you leave?”
I reproduce it, below.
Harris was born in London in 1917, moving to the US in 1922. A formidable journalist who established a distinct voice integrating incisive social commentary with wit and humour, his weekday column, ‘Strictly Personal’, was syndicated in 200 US newspapers.
The ‘love it or leave it’ nonsense, by Sydney J. Harris.
One of the most ignorant and hateful statements that a person can make is “If you don’t like it here, why don’t you leave?”
That attitude is the main reason America was founded, in all its hope and energy and goodness.
A few thoughts on Bob Vylan leading the #GlastonburyFestival crowd in chants of "Death to the IDF" (Israeli Defence Force), livestreamed by the @BBC, and the mischaracterisation of the chant by some MPs, news media, and activists.
In England, where #GlastonburyFestival is located, all of us have the right to freely express our criticism of anyone or anything - as long as there is no intent to provoke immediate unlawful violence or there is a reasonable likelihood it will occur as a consequence.
In England, free speech is protected under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998. However, inciting violence is a criminal offence under several laws which attempt to balance public safety with free expression rights.
In many countries, especially since Musk bought Twitter/@X, underregulated online extreme content has been used to groom and radicalise vulnerable people.
Too many cowardly politicians are scared to speak up for fear of being branded 'anti-free speech'.
Some MPs who have been in parliament for many years NEVER appear on any of the @BBC's "flagship" politics shows - but Reform's privately educated shit-stirring 'anti-elite' former Tory Sarah Pochin - an MP for FIVE WEEKS - gets her own special introduction on #PoliticsLive.
Politicians using dangerously irresponsible anti-Muslim rhetoric know their comments are normalising Islamophobia and endanger British Muslim women. Islamophobic incidents rose by 375% in the week after Boris Johnson called veiled Muslim women “letterboxes” in 2018.
#PolitcsLive
Britain prides itself in NOT being the sort of country that tells women how to dress. States that do dictate women’s clothing (eg Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia) are vilified as misogynistic & ultra-controlling: the antithesis of the enlightened, liberal west. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
The 'Women's Safety Initiative' is an anti-migrant AstroTurf disinformation group founded by Jess Gill, a Fellow of the Koch-funded climate change denial group, the Foundation for Economic Education, & an apprentice at the Mises Institute. The '1 in 4' claim is a lie.
Before I outline the evidence that (despite what we are told every day by politicians, activists, and news media) there is no discernable link between either legal or illegal immigration and increased crime rates in OECD countries, including ours, some context about Jess Gill.
Jess Gill’s involvement with these radical free-market climate change denying Koch foundation funded organisations is deeply concerning.
The WSI exploits young women to make misleading claims about supposed links between immigration with women’s safety.
"Foreigners" DO NOT claim £1BILLION/month in benefits.
This disgusting anti-migrant dogwhistle by shameless liar and former Head of Policy Exchange, Neil O'Brien MP, is just one of several recent dispicable divisive Telegraph front page lies.
WTAF @IpsoNews? @HoCStandards?
The claims that the UK spends £1bn/month "on UC benefits for overseas nationals" (O'Brien) and "Foreigners claim £1bn a month in benefits" (Telegraph) are revealed to be lies in the article: the£1bn relates to "Benefits claims by HOUSEHOLDS with AT LEAST ONE FOREIGN NATIONAL."
The Telegraph claims that (unnamed) "experts suggested the increase reflected a SURGE in the number of asylum seekers being granted refugee status and in net migration."
To evaluate/make sense of this sensational unsourced claim, additional context is needed (but not provided).