Pollution incidents, aka releasing sewage into our rivers and beaches, up by 40%. A debt pile so massive, a result of decades of squeezing any drops of profit from the water company, the company may run out of cash as soon as March. And customers face bill increases of 50% over the next five years.
Photo: Philafrenzy/CC
There’s not much to smile about the situation at Thames Water, the crisis-ridden private water company. (See ‘Thames Water crisis: We need socialist nationalisation’ and ‘Thames Water crisis is capitalism laid bare‘). But the bosses, currently begging the government for a bailout while leaving them in charge, won’t be crying into their Christmas eggnogs. They’ve turned the bonus taps on – to the tune of £770,000! Chief executive Chris Weston, himself getting a £195,000 bonus for the first three months at the company, defending the “competitive packages” as needing to “attract talent”.
This whole situation smells worse than one of Thames Water’s leaky pipes. Instead of bailing out bosses we need to drain the cesspool and take our water system back into public ownership. We could run it democratically with workers’ control and management to stop the waste and fix the pipes, stop pumping shit into our waterways, and kick the private profiting leaches out!