00:00When we talk about privatisation of public utilities we go back to the
00:05days of a certain Margaret Thatcher who believed passionately I have to say
00:09that public utilities and public services they were somehow flabbing
00:15and bureaucratic and the public were not getting the value that she
00:19thought that they deserved and privatisation was the way to do it. Of
00:22course what we've seen is many sorts of these organisations which have failed
00:27I guess the most egregious example if you like was the British Rail which of
00:34course has never really sort of functioned properly and of course you
00:37know parts of the rail system have been put back into public hands because the
00:43difficulty is that when you privatise you sell off bits to the public and indeed
00:47I'm all must remember when we were sort of offered the sort of the chance to buy
00:50shares in these companies but of course these shares got sort of hoovered up or
00:54vacuumed up if I may use the word by sort of large equity investors and of
01:01course they see sort of value in sort of getting these organisations.
01:04Public frustration with water companies largely stems from repeated failures to
01:11invest adequately in infrastructure. Over the last decade profits often went to
01:16shareholders rather than upgrading ageing systems. This has directly
01:22contributed to increased pollution incidents including untreated sewage spills
01:27affecting rivers, beaches and local wildlife habitats. But you know water is an
01:32essential sort of part of going you know we have to have it to live but the
01:36water companies have been sort of assets stripped if you like and indeed in
01:40Thames example yet to to amass a three billion pound debt is absolutely so
01:45phenomenal. This money has gone somewhere and as they say the sort of the
01:49investors they've taken dividends but at the same time not sort of put the money
01:53into sort of to improving the system. The fact that sort of so many of the
01:57water companies are in sort of difficulty suggests that there is
02:00something fundamentally wrong. I also believe that sort of the regulator has to
02:04sort of step and sort of take responsibility for this whereby sort of money
02:07that's been sort of paid in and indeed I sort of challenge anyone to look at
02:10their water bill and look what's happened in the sort of recent years they've
02:13gone up and up and up which of course was not the sort of what was promised by
02:16you know the conservative sort of government of the 1980s by and large
02:21under Sir Thatcher we would get better value services for lower cost.
02:24That's not what's happening and people are having to pay more for a sort of a less
02:28good service.
Comments