It is with disbelief that I read Paul McNamee’s editorial letter. Privatisation is the curse upon this nation, how can it be justified to have paid out £57bn to water company shareholders, while the underfunding and woeful mismanagement has led to untreated sewage in our rivers and sea at hereto unbelievable levels!
Supermarkets doubling profits and energy suppliers raking in record profits, whilst working people are struggling with debts, food banks, affordable childcare, energy bills, inflation and rocketing food prices! Our system is broken and as John Bird so eloquently points out we see 40 per cent of government spending used to offset poverty, how have we come to this? We have to change and adapt, or face the real spectre of total social and economic collapse.
AC Zacharski
Many years ago, Financial Times journalists published a series of articles highlighting how the owners of Thames Water had, quite legally, gouged the system for all they were worth, often because Ofwat’s powers were over-limited. It has been clear for all the time since these articles were published that the privatisation of water companies has proved to be a fool’s errand. Let’s hope that now the problem is (again) newsworthy it can be resolved. I’m afraid there is little hope of privatisation’s financial beneficiaries being held to order; I recall from the FT’s articles that many of the corporations they set up after privatisation were registered in overseas territories which may have made their true ownership hard to understand. Yours sincerely,
Keith
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