“They’re a private company” (with a state-sponsored monopoly on an essential good).
I don’t know how anybody is surprised by this. Who do you think would buy a privatized municipal water supplier, other than people trying to squeeze as much money as possible from a population with no recourse and no say in the matter?
It was a Thatcher-era thing, and despite being evil and wrong about nearly everything, she at least thought what she was doing would help normal people. In the case of privatisation, it was accompanied by a big push to get normal people to buy shares in the newly formed companies. As a result, the water companies are mostly owned by pension funds and there’s a large chunk that’s normal people owning a tiny bit each. That’s then meant that any attempt to claw back illegally paid dividends (the companies have a legal duty to invest in keeping the water working and haven’t been doing so) would tank loads of people’s pensions, as would dissolving the companies or putting stronger restrictions on paying out dividends.
The whole system’s all knotted together in a way that makes all the obvious solutions cause other big problems, and the government can’t afford to cause big problems when the polls have Reform so far ahead on account of them just claiming the obvious solutions will work flawlessly and not giving a shit about whether that’s true. Everything’s so on fire that it can’t be extinguished within a single electoral term, let alone rebuilt, so it’s become the priority to avoid upsetting anyone before the next election, lest the flamethrowers get voted in again only with napalm as fuel this time instead of petrol because the Tories have been eclipsed.
Yeah, pretty sure the cunt that shut down all the industries in the North because workers went on strike didn’t give a flying fuck about helping people.
But her favourite story book said that if she destroyed all the industry then the invisible hand of the free market would liberate all the workers from drudgery and they’d all become doctors and live lives of luxury and never have to do any work.
Thatcher was a die-hard believer in Ayn Rand’s economics, and a core part of that is that people are poor because you give them the opportunity to be, and then through several unexplained leaps of logic, that if you take away the option to be a bit poor, instead of making everyone even poorer like obviously happens in real life, somehow they’ll instantly gain qualifications in unrelated fields and become rich. It’s insane, and yet somehow a wildly popular worldview among the ‘intellectual’ right, despite being dismissed as moronic by anyone with two braincells to rub together and every serious academic.
It’s roughly equivalent to claiming we should enslave short people and call them house elves and then as a result we’ll all get wands and certificates from Hogwarts that let us do magic (except the house elves, who wouldn’t need wands), but then instead of being placed into a secure hospital to protect the public, you get put in charge of one of the most influential countries in the world, and by an unrelated coincidence, the North Sea Oil Boom happens and makes that country more wealthy, so then decades later, magic being accepted as fact despite being purely from a fantasy novel full of plotholes.
Its fucking wild to read the take of “Thatcher actually really cared”. What’s next, Reagen really thought he was helping all those people when he was shutting down mental health facilities?
That’s because Thatcher and Reagan are essentially just modern liberals who openly detest minorities.
I’m not gonna sit and argue, but to pretend they thought what they were doing was best for the people is wild to me. They didn’t care, at all.
Privitizing basic needs only makes things worse
You can tell they are really improving competition and efficiency by raising the C - suite salaries.
In hypercapitalism, a perfect private water utility is one that provides no water, is purely a registered corporation without any physical assets, pays no taxes, and charges people their entire monthly income for a water bill. And government protection of the monopoly is a big plus, the shareholders love that
almost, you’d also take the actual water you’re given a legal monopoly on and bottle it to sell to other countries!
that is why essential services can not be fully privatised. fuck competition and better service when people are having difficulty paying their bills. the best that should be allowed is privatisation with strict government oversight. you don’t like it? fuck off and start your company on some other sector rather than leeching on essential services.
It would be a real shame for Lawrence to get Luigi’d
We don’t cry about blessed regime whores around this here social media.
May he rest in piss!
one joke
Second time in 24 hours I’ve seen you complain about suggestions that the rich should be killed
don’t tell my bosses at nestle
Damn bootlickers clutch 'em pearls harder!
It is in fact, a matter of the government.
Steve Reed can do something about it.
