2 years after UK poop-engulfed beaches became national scandals, it's even worse

I think you understand the situation perfectly. I'm similarly at a loss to explain why anyone thinks it was ever a good idea to privatise, unless you're one of the few directly profiting from the situation.

I remember reading about a UK water privatization. The first act of the new board of directors was to raise their compensation by 85,000 UKP each.

The problem isn't privatisation. You can fine companies that pollute:

>When the UK joined the EU in the 70s, it was known for its dirty beaches. But by 2016, 96.5% of UK beaches met EU standards

But then something glorious happened in 2016 and here we are. (quote from https://www.aquaread.com/blog/post-brexit-water-industry/#:~....)

> What personally annoys me is the very disrespectful behaviour of the seeming majority of english residents who are perfectly happy to pave, tarmac or concrete their entire front garden to fill with cars

I disagree with your “disrespectful” label. Modern families might have 2-3 vehicles which can’t be parked on the streets as there’s no space. People have taken to parking two wheels on pavements so as not to block traffic.

Concreting front gardens is a _necessity_ in this modern world in many towns, not an act of malicious disrespect.

It is awful, though. Truly. I sometimes look at historic street photographs of the 50s/60s/70s. Well-manicured front gardens with very few cars on the road. Those days are all but gone… for now.

The Great Stink did not mark the end of the British Empire.

It's kind of the opposite. The cesspits that predated the sewer system were relatively friendlier to waterways. See this article on how changing to pipes caused the great Dutch stink:

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/327-1901/letter-from/7205...

I’m not sure about that, but I can tell you that the UK has been regressing in: healthcare, policing, education, road infrastructure, rail infrastructure, immigration control and social care for the last 10-15 years amongst other things. The median disposable salary has also been decreasing.

What I have seen in UK on other and several other countries with some utilities (not sure if these sewers apply) is that privatisation happened, which was supposed to be good as we learned from the US (… right …), however, if that happens without competitors, it just means that there is one public now turned private company with money and shareholder pressure and 0 competitors will simply up the pricing, cut corners and do less and less over the years until things break enough to get into the news papers and questions to responsible gov agencies.

I think the free market is probably a better outcome as long as there is oversight and regulation. The problem is weak regulation.

I say that because I remember the nationalised services in the UK in the 70s and 80s and they were a complete mess. My mother spent 1/4 of her life arguing with the gas board, the council and British Rail after things went to crap. It definitely improved when privatised even if it’s not perfect.

The public services were not accountable and were completely untouchable to the end user and any legal recourse.

> cutting corners while getting paid the same and pocketing the difference.

It’s not even just that. They have borrowed £60billion(!) and given it to shareholders as dividends.

People should be in jail.

Ireland tried to privatise water a while back. During the "Celtic Tiger" boom that preceeded the global economic crash of 2008, the governed of the time smiled on idea of privatised water, and were also being gently pressured by the EU to introduce it. Before they could do that, the crash happened. The government were pushed by the EU to bail out the banks and socialise the cost. Ireland was particularly screwed during the property crash for a bunch of reasons. First, we had no rent regulation and extremely low quality housing, so if you were renting your simply got screwed. Second, a large number of people had enough land to build a house on. Third, aside from these existing incentives, it's a peculiarity of Irish people that they need to own their own homes. (I say "peculiarity", even though I'm firmly in that camp - frankly I don't understand how other Europeans can sleep at night knowing that they'll rent forever and with no guarantee on the cost, and who knows what might happen to pensions in the future)

Anyway, after the then government agreed to bail out Irish banks, the EU put the Finance Minister under pressure to introduce austerity. Up to this point only businesses, farmers etc actually got billed for water but regular citizens were not. It's was paid for under progressive taxation. So when the government tried to introduce water charges and privatisation, the backlash was huge. Arguments raged.

Electorate: "Why introduce regressive charges that will disproportionately hurt the poorest?"

Politicians: "Other EU have water charges, get with the program".

Electorate: "So what? That's not an argument."

Politicians: "Actually it's because the infrastructure is crumbling and needs investment, but we have no money because 'austerity'!"

Electorate: "Why is it crumbling? Why didn't you invest in it during the Celtic Tiger boom?"

Politicians: "Uh... well... That's beside the point! People are wasting water! We need to charge people for overuse!"

Electorate: (Does some detective work) "Actually, due to our weather we don't water our lawns or own swimming pools. Our water usage is pretty flat across the social classes, unlike places like California and Florida. In fact our usage is comparable to that of England, who have similar weather and water charges."

Politicians: "Ok, by privatising water, the market will make the system more efficient!"

Electorate: "How will the introduction of a complex new billing system, meters, social welfare credits and a private company with its own organisational overhead, salaries, profits and bonuses ... make this cheaper or more efficient? Won't they just charge us more, pay themselves more and save costs by not investing in infrastructure?

Politicians: "That's just stupid"

Electorate: "Look at England"

That whole debacle basically destroyed Ireland's Labour Party, who were in a coalition government at the time and backed the water project. They never recovered from that.

You do know the odds of a significant labour victory at the next election are high? "Those complaining" are probably now in the ascendency. They just won most regional council elections.

Renationalisation is not impossible. Which of course implies taxation to fund investment for capital works.

I think the number of people who even read the manifesto is tiny. And within that group, those who realised privatisation was going to result in something other than individually (and temporarily) saving some money, even smaller. A minority you might say...

And given our low turnouts and small proportion of the country that voted for that party, saying it's what Britain wants is disingenuous.

Extremely incorrect. Nationalisation of water polls as a remarkably popular policy with a clear public majority in favour, even among exclusively Tory voters. As does rail.

The lack of movement on the issue is not due to lack of public will, but the lack of desire from a dying government to deliver effective policy.

Well they’ve certainly changed their mind in recent months.

> Those complaining are a minority, or else they would have representation in parliament that would have lead to a different outcome - and yes, you can wring your hands about how FPTP makes for an unfair democracy - but they voted for that too when given the choice to switch to STV, recently.

The AV referendum was indeed lost, but that does not guarantee the correctness of your other claim, that "those complaining are a minority, or else they would have representation in parliament that would have lead to a different outcome".

The party in power in the UK is usually less than half of all votes cast.

And even when not, that it is representative democracy rather than referendums on literally every question means that voters have to collapse all the various topics they care about into one question of "which colour do I pick?" every couple of years — in an election there is no way to represent "I like Blue national defence, Red personal freedom, Green environmental issues, and Yellow on electoral reform", so looking at the debates listed on Wikipedia with the benefit of hindsight, even though I'm bi and the Blue party was homophobic, I might well have voted Blue due to this from the Red party:

"""On 24 May, Kinnock was interviewed by David Frost and claimed that Labour's alternative defence strategy in the event of a Soviet attack would be "using the resources you've got to make any occupation totally untenable".[citation needed] In a speech two days later Thatcher attacked Labour's defence policy as a programme for "defeat, surrender, occupation, and finally, prolonged guerrilla fighting ... I do not understand how anyone who aspires to Government can treat the defence of our country so lightly".[9]""" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_United_Kingdom_general_el...

In 1987, the Red party was seen as a shower of incompetence much like the Blue party is today.

This is a highly disingenuous argument, flagged by your reference to STV, which any one versed in UK politics knows was a stitch up of the Lib Dem’s by the conservatives.

The UK is controlled by a powerful ruling class that maintains FPTP and other undemocratic institutions to their benefit, as I imagine you well know, and regular polls of the population (as noted by other responses) clearly contradict your assertion.