Water campaigners were out in force in High Wycombe on 4th March. We gathered to convey an urgent message to Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds as Thames Water teeters on the brink of extinction.
This government’s claims about the prohibitive costs of taking over our water system have all been debunked – only Emma Reynolds still believes them. The rest of us know that we can’t afford NOT to take Thames over.
Reynolds also seems to believe that we need foreign investors to finance the upgrading of our long-neglected water system but she’s wrong there too – all those investors have done for the water sector is saddle it with billions worth of debt.
Meanwhile we, the 16 million Thames Water consumers whose bill payments represent the ONLY real cash going into Thames Water, are seeing our bill money lifted from under our noses and used to pay out billions in dividends. Emma Reynolds seemsbent on protecting Thames from regulation to attract those greedy investors but it’s high time she started protecting water consumers and our environment from Thames.
Bring on that Special Administration Regime for Thames Water now Emma Reynolds! And once you have taken control of our water from these maurauding crooks you must keep control. Don’t clean up Thames at our expense and then hand it back to the asset stripping profiteers! Bring our water back into public ownership where it belongs.
A record 20,000 water consumers have emailed Ofwat recently to demand that they say no to Thames creditors who are lobbying for ‘regulatory easements’. The creditors reckon that the only way to lure private investors into bailing out the near -bankrupt Thames Water is to allow the private water company to keep spilling sewage into rivers and seas at the current scandalous rate.
We say that is too high a price to pay for investment that invariably finds its way into shareholder pockets rather than water system maintenance. And we’re beginning to get through. The Financial Times reported recently that insurers are turning away from backing loans to water companies because of their instability. Some of that could be because consumers like us are on payment strike! Join us in withholding payments and lobbying government for public ownership because it’s plain to everyone that private water doesn’t work!