You can have competition in water

There is competition in water provision for businesses in our system. The householder cannot switch suppliers so most of us have to get our water from a regulated monopoly. These companies are now under the spotlight as there is an overall shortage of stored water for a dry spell so far this year. There are also too many sewage discharges into our rivers.

The nation should also be alarmed that we are constrained from doing things that need access to more water. Farmers are discouraged from irrigating more food crops, and are prevented from extracting sufficient water from rivers when flows are low for obvious reasons. The water companies have not done enough to help them find access to safe water in dry periods. Some industrial activities also need plenty of water, and the generation of power from water needs ample supply.

 

The competition allowed in business water provision allows choice of retailer who provides the customer interface, sends the bill and deals with issues. The retailer ,however usually has to buy the water and the waste water services from the local monopolist, so the impact of choice is limited.

The simplest model to bring more effective  water competition to the many is to allow any water company to supply to any consumer using the existing pipe network as a common carrier. This will reduce the amount of regulated monopoly considerably and will allow new entrants to invest in new storage or borehole water they can provide in addition to current amounts. The pipe network will need rules on quality of water put in and on access rights to pipes given their capacities. The existing rules on water quality should suffice and are already being enforced.  Where a monopoly pipe is already being used by the monopolist at full capacity then there will need to be a new pipe anyway and that might then be put in by a competitor if the monopolist refuses to make more pipe capacity available. Over time we might see new capacity to the pipe system added by new owners, or arranged by the current pipe monopolists accepting a regulated return on its use.

 

207 Comments

  1. Peter Wood
    August 14, 2022

    Good Morning,
    I don’t know about you but there is only one water pipe in my street, and that is supplied by one district provider. To have more pipes would be expensive and disruptive, totally illogical.
    Your private water companies are, as you admit, simply ‘charging entities’, between supplier and consumer, adding an additional cost to the consumer, partly because of the need to pay a return on investment to each private company.
    You are trying to create competition from the belief in dogma, when it is not logical or economically viable.
    What is needec is a long term review of the essential services, water, energy, transport infrastructure, health that all members of the population have to use. Yes, monopolies are to be avoided if possible. We have tried privatisations in areas where patently they don’t work, the railways are a clear example. We need new thinking.

    PS, We’re going to have to give money to the many who are most needful this winter, or see them die. It’s going to come from tax or borrowing, if not from those making exceptional profits, then it’s going to be all of us who pay, one way or another. Think carefully.

    1. Nigl
      August 14, 2022

      Yes. You only have to see what is happening with broadband. The government has got it into its head that there is a lack of provision of super fast services so has given contracts to umpteen companies to ride off the back of the Openreach network. Another example of regulatory failure to take on their monopoly back in the day.

      To do this cheaply they are having to put in a large number of poles from which they will extend wires to anyone who wants their services. This is a typical unnecessary and unsightly (1950s BT) solution. My street has already got the capacity through ducting. HMG knew there would be pushback, residents in general don’t want this garbage so to prevent planning appeals at local level it used its powers to ensure none are possible.

      And in other news Ben Wallace admitted what we have known almost from the start, the Afghan intervention failed so umpteen service men lost their lives, limbs etc for nothing. Meantime politicians, generals etc continue to live in uninterrupted luxury. The U.K. is spending a million pounds a week to house their refugees.

      1. Peter
        August 14, 2022

        Nigl,

        Water provision is even more difficult than telephony.

        Changes in technology have eased the demand on the copper network, as has fibre for broadband.

        There are still tensions between BT and newer entrants to the market. This would be even worse with water where no new delivery methods are possible.

        1. Mickey Taking
          August 14, 2022

          Well (boom boom) we could insist each Water Company introduced a slight (food?) colouring to enable easy recognition of the supplier! Then when leaks are reported the supplier could be charged for the repairs. Perhaps water ‘jug’ filters could be introduced to remove the colour for those who can’t accept it?

        2. Hope
          August 14, 2022

          Being reported today ÂŁ3 billion taken from companies for shareholders including the Chinese!

          It strikes me before vast are taken infrastructure such as no dumping in rivers and leaks should be sorted out first! What is Ofwat and ofgem for unless expensive punch bags for govt policy failure. Again, we the taxpayer cash cows for foreign enterprises.

          1. X-Tory
            August 14, 2022

            Although competition is normally the best solution, I find it hard to agree with Sir John in this case, as he seems to want to over-complicate what could be solved more easily, cheaply and quickly. What we need is simply better regulation. The regulator needs to be much more forceful about how water companies run their businesses. Yesterday I criticised both the selling-off of reservoirs (and the failure to build new ones), and also the appalling quantity of water lost through leaking pipes.

            Today the papers report that back in 2018 it was estimated that around 3 BILLION litres of water were lost to leakage each day – around 45 litres for every man, woman and child in the country – and that the problem has got significantly worse during the current dry spell. As each person uses about 150 litres a day, we can see that the equivalent of about a third is lost to leakages. That is the great scandal that this useless government has done NOTHING about, and neither Sunak nor Truss have said a word about it either.

            I suggested yesterday that water companies not be allowed to pay any dividends, or raise their prices, until ALL their leaks were fixed. I believe that would be the easiest, quickest and cheapest solution (for the government/taxpayer). As over 70% of water company shareholders are foreigners this solution would not seriously affect British savers either. Somebody suggested that water companies would walk away, but that would be fine, as the government would then be able to nationalise the companies, and acquire all their assets, for free (which is why I doubt the companies would, in reality, leave). As for Ofwat, they (like all other quangos) should be wound up and the responsibility taken in-house by the government minister. I expect politicians to be in charge, not fob their responsibilities off to others!

            Reply Not realistic to get them to fix all the leaks urgently. How many roads would be dug up? Where is all the capacity to do the roadworks?

          2. Hope
            August 14, 2022

            BOE today reporting ÂŁ23 million given in staff bonuses!! FFS. Failure rewarded with our money, what does a bad performance look like to Bailey! He said last year inflation was transitory. What is our useless govt. doing with these quangos.

            JR, if you get in office under Truss, start scrapping the OBR, ONS, Environment Agency, OFWAT, OFGEM etc. they are absolutely useless and of no use to the taxpayer. Make ministers responsible for their own depts and actions. Depts ripe for change and scrapping EU dominant DEFRA and sack Useless Eustice. BIES totally not needed.

          3. No Longer Anonymous
            August 14, 2022

            Reply to Sir John’s reply to X-Tory that roads can’t be dug up.

            BUT RESERVOIRS CAN BE BUILT !

            Reply Silly. Some roads can be dug up and some reservoirs built but not all roads with a leak at the same time

      2. Original Richard
        August 14, 2022

        NigL :

        The correct way for the Government to tackle the monopoly position of BT/Openreach AND ensure that outlying/difficult areas can obtain faster commnications would be for the Government to subsidise a new organisation supplying wireless broadband/5G rather than just throw further money at BT/Openreach.

        But of course, improved communications for the plebs is NOT what the elites want…

        1. dixie
          August 14, 2022

          What, like subsidise new energy production companies rather than just throw further money at the oil companies?

          1. Original Richard
            August 14, 2022

            Dixie

            No, I don’t mean that at all.

            Subsidising medieval intermittent, low energy density wind technology is complete nonsense when we have gas (described by the EU as “green”) and nuclear, the only low carbon energy source which is affordable and reliable.

            But if the Government wants to spend money extending communication services, particularly to areas of the country where BT/Openreach do not want to cable for obvious reasons, then it would be better spent on new technology wireless communication that not only can provide services to these outlying areas but at the same time provide competition to BT/Openreach to improve the services for everyone.

            But the Government just gave the money to BT with no guarantee that it made any difference to BT’s existing plans.

          2. dixie
            August 15, 2022

            So subsidies are OK if it is something you want .. how is that the “correct” way?

        2. Mark
          August 14, 2022

          Almost thre years after I was invited to attend a local meeting to explain the plans for deployment of a local fibre network by a relatively new company I am still waiting for it to be connected up. These things seem to take a lot more effort than was budgeted for.

    2. cuibono
      August 14, 2022

      The “needy” get benefits that would make you sit-up very straight indeed!
      They are already in line for higher fuel subsidies in addition to PIPs etc etc.
      And don’t forget the hot tubs!
      The trouble is that these benefits are doled out by woke servants of the Left and they don’t often land on the right doorsteps.

      1. Narrow Shoulders
        August 14, 2022

        Quite – benefits are already generous and recipients have a useful income. By doling out more “help” to benefits recipients the net take home differential between a minimum wage job and a role with greater responsibility or requiring more skill and experiencing diminishes further (in my circumstances I could take home ÂŁ36K per year on minimum wage with benefits, get free school meals and prescriptions, get the full ÂŁ1,650 fuel payment and have a shorter, cheaper commute as minimum wage roles are available closer to home).

        Any help must go to all not just the needy or not be provided.

        1. cuibono
          August 14, 2022

          +1
          Exactly!

        2. No Longer Anonymous
          August 14, 2022

          Narrow Shoulders – A cut in windfall VAT would do that.

        3. rose
          August 15, 2022

          What I want to know is how many people on here grew up without heating but with plenty of old people in their lives? This belief that heating is a necessity – as if it were food and water – is less than a generation old. And I don’t mean generation in the Scotish National Socialist sense. The winter weather was colder then too.

          1. Hope
            August 15, 2022

            Rose,
            We had coal fires, agas and rayburns. Coal was and is a good source of heat and electric.

            This is a self made Tory party mess. 12 years in office and the blame squarely at their feet. Including JR and all his fake Tory MP chums.

      2. oldwulf
        August 14, 2022

        @cuibono
        It may be that some lower paid workers are now doing the maths to help them decide whether a life on benefits is preferable to a life of work.

        1. cuibono
          August 14, 2022

          +1
          I bet you are right!
          Round here they seem to have a lovely benefit life.
          Plenty of steak, booze, huge paddling pools, trampolines, NOISE, BBQs and hosepipe-ban -free hot tubs ( medical reasons, you understand).
          Making others’ lives a misery.
          No work getting in the way and plenty of charities to help and support them.

      3. Mickey Taking
        August 14, 2022

        Is it true that ‘energy relief’ payments will be based on Council tax code? I like millions have become asset ‘rich’ living here for over 30 years, but income ‘poor ‘ being retired over 10 years. That is ridiculous! the subsidy should be income based – us millions have various bills to pay which are rapidly consumming the total pension available….eat or heat will become ‘die of starvation wearing a duvet during the daytime, or die of asphyxiation at night under layers of blankets.

        1. cuibono
          August 14, 2022

          +1
          As far as I know it may depend more on personal circumstances.
          Apparently, according to gossip, some £600 to “vulnerable” benefit claimants on top of what we will all get ( allegedly £400 to ELIGIBLE households. (Remember the govt supposed help for loft insulation?). So I am HOPING for £400.
          ALREADY ON (certain) BENEFITS seems to be the key to survival!
          The council tax rebate is a different thing. Bands A- D get a rebate.
          That rebate may already have been paid. We miraculously got ours.

          1. Mickey Taking
            August 14, 2022

            I didn’t – and I won’t.

        2. cuibono
          August 14, 2022

          Typically blunt instrument and very discriminatory.
          Targeting a benefit by creating winners and losers.
          They have no idea.
          It would be so much better to lower taxes.
          AND reduce the size of the rotten, beastly state.
          Asset rich does not make one cash rich!

          However I would say that my ÂŁ150 ish rebate came at the very high price of living in this ghastly place for about 40 years.

    3. Peter
      August 14, 2022

      PW,

      Agreed.

    4. Donna
      August 14, 2022

      On the plus side (I jest) there are 800+ mostly very wealthy pensioners or political rejects who will be kept nice and warm in their communal Care Home known as the House of Lords. And they’ll be paid ÂŁ300 a day each for dozing on the benches and keeping warm at our expense.

    5. hefner
      August 14, 2022

      PW, +1, ‘we need new thinking’, and clearly on water we don’t get anything new this morning from Sir John.

      1. Peter2
        August 14, 2022

        Yet the last paragraph of today’s article by Sir John does contain new ideas to improve competition in the water industry hefner.

        1. hefner
          August 14, 2022

          Oh yes, P2. Don’t you think Sir John would be a tiny bit more credible if he had written such a thing some time in the last 12 years of Conservative Governments rather than when we seem to be in some kind of a crisis, specially because the solution he advocates (new reservoirs, new pipe systems) are likely to take months if not years before they can properly be made operational.

          Reply I have done so!

          1. Peter2
            August 14, 2022

            Oh dear heffy
            Ever thought an apology might be appropriate to our kind host?

          2. hefner
            August 14, 2022

            Why that P2? Is he so special? Do I have to doff my cap?

          3. Peter2
            August 15, 2022

            Just thought you might be able to admit you were completely wrong in your critical post.
            But on reflection I realise you would never do that heffy.

          4. hefner
            August 15, 2022

            In this, I follow the example of those politicians who will never admit they might have been wrong and certainly never apologise.

          5. Peter2
            August 15, 2022

            You carry on hefner
            You plainly refuse to accept you were wrong.
            It obviously makes you happy.
            And that is what is most important to you.

          6. hefner
            August 19, 2022

            The same way P2 that you get your kicks writing after some of us on this blog, when others that you obviously don’t read have ideas even more ‘on the left’. But you must only be searching for the usual people you troll, and you let nuggets pass you by.

    6. Nottingham Lad Himself
      August 14, 2022

      Absolutely – yes, you can have phoney, notional competition in anything.

      1. Peter2
        August 14, 2022

        Yet you favour a State monopoly nationalisation of various things NHL

      2. Mickey Taking
        August 14, 2022

        agreed – like for example choosing a Party leader to become PM?

  2. Know-Dice
    August 14, 2022

    25% loss to leakage, how is that going to be addressed?

    Is taking back an essential utility a way forward?

    Certainly the relationship between Ofwat and the water companies needs to be investigated. It was suggested yesterday that there was a cosy relationship between them in relation to whether a leak should be fixed based on cost.

    1. Know-Dice
      August 14, 2022

      That should be “taking back in to public ownership”

    2. Mickey Taking
      August 14, 2022

      clearly it should be based on volume of water lost!

      1. turboterrier
        August 14, 2022

        Micky Taking
        Correct 100 %
        Rocket science it is not
        Flow rates are determined on the size of pipe and the pressure on that section and the length of time the pipe is assumed to be leaking. If a farmer hits a water main they have no problem with coming up with a loss figure on litres lost. Every reported leak should be charged back to the company at a litres loss ratio.Based on the size of the pipe and its pressure and the time taken to attend and repair. No matter if the leaking large or small it is the potential leakage that should be accountable.. When Chair persons directors and shareholders are not getting their bonus payments that pain will generate real focus on what questions are being asked. OFWAT like the majority off the regulators are neither use or ornament.
        When Chairpersons and directors are fully accountable to the share holders change happens. It sure don’t under the present set up.

  3. Ian Wragg
    August 14, 2022

    Water is a basic for life and should be a not for profit organisation.
    Foreign owners and private equity bleeding billions of pounds of us and not doing their job.
    Sme with railways, airports etc.
    Our infrastructure sold from under the people who paid for it.

    1. Berkshire Alan
      August 14, 2022

      Ian

      Have to say I agree with you, same with electricity as well, yet another essential basic.
      We have tried the private competition route with many smaller companies being set up in bedrooms and small offices, as soon as push comes to shove and they need to become responsible they simply go broke at huge expense to the taxpayer.
      Simple solution, nationalise the bloody lot, then we all know who is to blame for any failure.
      Yes fully aware it was not great before, but I am getting increasingly fed up with chancers who are just ripping us off, pocketing the money, and still wanting the government (taxpayer) to contribute, so clearly the present system is not working either

      1. Mark
        August 14, 2022

        I can promise you that you really wouldn’t want the government doing any more to operate the electricity system. They simply believe in imposing power cuts while calling them demand management, and ensuring that green investors get looked after while the system falls apart. They already run too much of it via OFGEM.

        1. Hope
          August 14, 2022

          Brearly CEO of ofgem who was the architect of climate change act! Good grief. I have no confidence in this govt.

    2. No Longer Anonymous
      August 14, 2022

      +1 and clearly the water companies are not responsible enough (or either too restricted) to be trusted to provide extra storage for a rapidly increasing population.

      If this area is a typical example – tens of thousands of new houses and no new infrastructure or supply.

      The only thing this can lead to is high prices and rationing. The only thing assured is profit to the companies who then take the money off shore.

    3. glen cullen
      August 14, 2022

      Agree

  4. cuibono
    August 14, 2022

    Tell you what
I’m EXTREMELY alarmed about everything!

    1. Know-Dice
      August 14, 2022

      In other words
      What is this handcart?
      Why are we in it?
      Where are we going?

      1. cuibono
        August 14, 2022

        +1
        All off to the very, very hot and presumably DRY place!
        Trundled off by our very own successive govts.

      2. Fedupsoutherner
        August 14, 2022

        Exactly what we were saying this morning. I don’t know what’s happened recently but I’m sick of all the woke virtue signalling hype. Can we please get back to basic common sense? I’m fed up of people earning a mint on UC getting free everything and still moaning it’s not enough. Back in the 70’s and indeed the 80s we had sky high mortgages abd high inflation and unemployment to deal with. I don’t remember having handouts thrown at us then. It just seems to be expected now. What would help is if government came to terms with the fact that we are not ready for net zero, can’t afford it and can’t manage without fossil fuels. Stop all the taxes on fossils and stop all the absurd green levies, stop all the fines abd low emissions zones. Stop putting in cycle lanes at the expense of the motorists and stop bloody preaching an unproven religion called climate change. The people having to fund this junk are fed up with it all. Fed up working and never getting anywhere while the wealthy carry on as before. Get your bloody heads together and start thinking about real lives and what really matters to the family man.

        1. Fedupsoutherner
          August 14, 2022

          Sorry John that is not a personal attack. Just a rant from the heart because so many of us are sick of the way we see our once great nation being destroyed by ideological crap.

        2. miami.mode
          August 14, 2022

          fus, you’re wrong about benefits during the 70s/80s. If you were unemployed and on benefit invariably you got assistance with your mortgage immediately. There were cases of people taking out enormous mortgages, losing their jobs and then getting the mortgage interest paid immediately which led to legislation delaying mortgage help for 6 months or so. Chancellor Lawson also abolished double tax relief on a mortgage which was allowable for both people if they lived together with a joint mortgage but was restricted to a single allowance for a married couple.

          1. Fedupsoutherner
            August 14, 2022

            I don’t remember getting g enough help to stop us having to sell up and move. I do remember my cheque bouncing at the supermarket though. Yes, those were the days when we paid by cheque and not credit cards.

        3. Berkshire Alan
          August 14, 2022

          FUS
          Plus many, many times.
          Many of us out here feel the same way, sometimes it has to be said in plain Language, no need to apologise.
          Successive Governments and all Opposition Party’s have lost the plot, BIG TIME.

          I just cannot understand why they cannot see it as well, are they that insulated from real life.

          1. anon
            August 14, 2022

            Yes. They are, they have an understanding that it should not apply or affect them.

        4. glen cullen
          August 14, 2022

          I agree with your rant

      3. Mickey Taking
        August 14, 2022

        to (a living) hell?

      4. John Hatfield
        August 14, 2022

        And yet there are those who want Boris to rescind his resignation. Talk about turkeys and Christmas!

    2. Donna
      August 14, 2022

      Wessex Water seems to be fairly well managed. Yes, we have just gone into drought restrictions, but on the whole they provide a good, reliable and not too expensive service. Perhaps that’s because the west country hasn’t been too “enriched” by the 10 million or so immigrants various Governments have imported over the past 25 years so the system here hasn’t been put under intolerable strain?

      Water is an essential utility. Since we have no desalination plants, it is provided by rainfall which falls over the whole country, with the more sparsely populated areas getting a higher rainfall than the overcrowded south.
      It therefore makes sense for water provision ie the infrastructure – reservoirs; a water transfer system*; desalination plants*; water mains etc) to be a monopoly ie Government-owned.

      * Since they’ve been obsessed by climate change for the past 20 years, you’d think the doozies in the Environment Ministry/Environment Agency would have thought about water provision and perhaps got on the blower to James Dyson or similar. But it seems their obsession only goes as far as scrapping reliable power stations and planting unreliable windmills. So the first step on the path to water sanity appears ….. as usual …. to get rid of the Arts Grads in Government and get some engineers.

    3. Donna
      August 14, 2022

      You’re meant to be.
      They are using fear to control people whilst they push forward with their Great Reset/Agenda 2030.

      1. Hope
        August 14, 2022

        Donna, 22,000 houses built in Taunton, an urban ghetto imposed on a west former rural market town. No extra infrastructure.

        1. Mickey Taking
          August 14, 2022

          but it has a lovely cricket ground.

        2. Donna
          August 14, 2022

          Haven’t been there recently. They’re also building tens of thousands to the west of Yeovil, so we can be confident that water provision in the SW will be insufficient in about ….. ooo …… 3 years.

  5. DOMINIC
    August 14, 2022

    Good morning and thank you for your efforts

    I see Marxist Labour has once again and indeed inevitably embraced the Neanderthal economics of Socialism knowing they can neutralise the critical faculties of your average voter and go for the easy hit, the emotions. Stoke some grievance, stoke some upset, stoke some blame and then offer a seemingly cost free alternative, nationalisation.

    Oh, the people adore a free-lunch. Like the Child Catcher in CCBB Starmer stalks the streets with this lollipops tempting the naive out of their cellars and into his gilded cage of Utopian collectivism

    But Labour’s nationalisation is not about helping the populace but about politicisation, union control, parasitism and State power. Nationalisation is Socialism and promotes contempt for the private. Nationalisation is an act of market failure.

    The Gilded Cage of Socialism is a brutal and evil lie and those promoting this deceit are confident they can deceive enough people that they would vote for it though of course they would never pay for it from their own bank accounts

    Well, I for one will not be financing Labour’s political power

    1. No Longer Anonymous
      August 14, 2022

      Rogue capitalism can be every bit as bad, Dom.

      If the Tories wanted to fend off a lurch to the Left among the populace then they couldn’t have done a worse job with their botched privatisations.

      Not a single new reservoir for over thirty years.

      Energy crisis.

      Rolling stock leasing companies charging ÂŁ80,000 a year for 40-year-old units built and paid for by the British taxpayer many times over already. Wage inflation of train drivers caused by an artificial market between TOCs.

      A country of outsourced work, insourced labour and stagnated wages and falling living standards for young professionals.

      We can now look back at privatisation with 40 years of hindsight and declare it a failure.

      1. Hope
        August 14, 2022

        EU regulation has not gone away u dear level playing field for environment. UK is chained to follow EU.

        Mass immigration continues with Abundance. Dopey Wallace Afghanistan was a failure! 457 lives lost, hundred more with life changing injuries, women protesting shot at by Taliban two days ago. Yet Wallace giving away our perfectly hard earned taxes on corrupt Ukraine a war that cannot be won! Truss gave the the Taliban, yes gave, ÂŁ100 million of our taxes when Wallace and his govt ran away despite all the sacrifice and our taxes over 20 years! Wallace thinks that to say our country is open for mass immigration from Afghanistan in some way ameliorates our concerns! FFS! Another village without their idiot.

      2. Mark
        August 14, 2022

        Please remember these water shortages are the planned consequence of the EU Water Directives which are still on our statute books. They are quite open about it. Now we have Brexit we should change the governing laws.

        1. hefner
          August 14, 2022

          How long are you going to keep on peddling this ‘untruth’?
          The UK and the water companies decided to (try to) fix the leaks first, which they somewhat did. It went from 3.3 bn litres per day in the 2000s down to 2.4 bn litres in 2020. Now the 2030 objective is 2.0 bn with a supposedly 4% annual reduction rate. This can be done by the individual companies on their own network without having to require planning permission for reservoirs, that would very likely be opposed by local people. Where are the EU Water Directives in that story? What is Brexit going to change if the priorities of the water companies are on fixing the leaks before building reservoirs?

          1. Hope
            August 15, 2022

            Hef,
            Please explain level playing field terms under EU environment policy/regulations that UK is required under the Brexit agreement.

          2. hefner
            August 15, 2022

            Easy peasy, Hope. The EU Water Directives have never forced a country to have all its utilities privatised. Read around how water, electricity, gas are provided to consumers in the different EU countries. See whether France, Germany, Austria or the Scandinavian countries 
 deal with utilities. The 100% privatised model is a UK specificity. Most other EU countries have to various degrees a mix of private, state, cooperative companies for providing utilities.
            Some people here love to hide behind the EU Water Directives simply because they have never cared enough to look at what other countries are doing. Can be laziness, can be bad faith, can be ideology, can be stupidity, you choose.

          3. hefner
            August 16, 2022

            Sorry, Hope, I had answered your comment, but it has not yet gone through 


  6. Lifelogic
    August 14, 2022

    Not that easy to get much real competition. The regulation has been very poor and it has, to a large degree, been a deliberate climate alarmist promotion policy not to build more capacity.

    Daniel Hannan today in the Telegraph:-
    Britain is in crisis because of the arrogance and delusions of the lockdown fanatics.
    Don’t say I didn’t warn you. This economic storm is the direct result of the belief we could shut down society without cost.

    He could have added also in the crisis for the net zero lunacy. Also in the Telegraph:- Running out of gas:- The ‘crazy’ decisions that left Britain with no gas storage and vulnerable to Putin. A decade of ministerial failures and Whitehall complacency have squandered efforts to improve energy resilience and there could be more trouble in the pipeline. By Rachel Millard and Matt Oliver.

    Energy Secretaries Greg Clark and Ed Davey, Business/Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Theresa May & Carrie/& the new post CarriecBoris largely responsible for this economic and environmental insanity. Perhaps Truss should think twice about making Kwasi Chancellor. Kwasi was not sufficiently logical or numerate to see the insanity that was/is net zero and the war on plant food and kept pushing his insane Saudi Arabia of wind drivel. But then PPE graduate dope Truss is still pushing net zero. But is at least a bit more sane on this than the totally deluded Sunak. An excellent video by David Starkey on Inflation just out.

    1. Lifelogic
      August 14, 2022

      Just heard Lord Howell on Talk Radio an energy sec. under Thatcher and needless to say another foolish believer in the CO2 devil gas religion and indeed a windfall tax on the energy companies. This despite him having a degree in economics albeit from Kings College Camb.!

      Still he does at least realise that – “unless China and the rest of the developing world are on board, all efforts to reach a net zero world are doomed. It matters not a jot what America and Europe do to reduce their emissions if the rest of the world isn’t doing the same.”

      Not only this mate but CO2 is not causing any climate emergency (a net benefit in fact) and anyway and the solutions pushed wind, solar, batteries, EVs, public transport, walking, heat pumps, hydrogen do not even save any sig, CO2 anyway. But then he has no understanding of science. All three are and even if only one is then the net zero agenda is pointless and hugely & insanely damaging.

      1. Fedupsoutherner
        August 14, 2022

        L/L. So is it the case that the countries like China aren’t doing enough or is it the case that man, in all his wisdom can’t change the climate regardless of what they do? I think the latter.

        1. Lifelogic
          August 14, 2022

          The latter pretty much..

    2. Peter
      August 14, 2022

      LL,

      ‘PPE graduate’ gets a mention.

      The topic lends itself well to your other favourite about ‘…….. down drains’.

      1. Lifelogic
        August 14, 2022

        Up market, bent second hand card dealer degrees. But Sunak (PPE too) is even worse. Not even a good bent salesman a promise of tax cuts in seven years from a serial manifesto ratter and fines for missing a GP appointment (not that you cannot even get one) then he retains net zero and has his ÂŁ400K swimming pool issues. Not likely to sell anything to any normal voter!

        1. Lifelogic
          August 15, 2022

          Some people do of course survive PPE and remain fairly sensible. The problem I suspect is probably more the types of people who are drawn to this degree (often aspiring politicians) rather than the course itself. See the rather dire list of well know people with these degrees on Wiki.

  7. Mark B
    August 14, 2022

    Good morning.

    Where a monopoly pipe is already being used by the monopolist at full capacity then there will need to be a new pipe anyway and that might then be put in by a competitor if the monopolist refuses to make more pipe capacity available.

    It never fails to amaze me how politicians create evermore complex ways to solve a simple problem, especially when, the current system they helped create is shown to no longer work. Just imagine the inconvenience, not to mention the cost, of digging up those roads to put in just one pipe ?

    As I keep saying. If there is little or no supply, just allow the consumer the right to refuse payment or receive compensation. If there is low pressure and / loss of service, a company will responded especially when it knows that the cost of not doing any remedy is greater than just to leave it.

    We are where we are. Just legislate and stop trying to micro manage the market.

    1. anon
      August 14, 2022

      Each area must hit a storage/demand kpi, a leakage kpi, etc.
      It should be based on the prior years consumption and seasonal patterns. Plus some reserve.

      Is that so hard, to legislate and or manage?

  8. Philip P.
    August 14, 2022

    Not a word in today’s diary piece about the replacement of defective old pipes, and who pays for it. Anyone writing about the water shortage problem needs to address this issue. Until it is dealt with, imagining a free-market system of ‘access rights’ to a crumbling network is rather pointless.

    1. Dave Andrews
      August 14, 2022

      Is replacing old pipes the “investment” the water companies speak of, which they have borrowed to pay for, whilst giving dividends to the shareholders?
      I don’t call it investment, I call it maintenance. Investment would be something like building new reservoirs, which they haven’t been doing. We have new sewage treatment works in our area, so I give them that.

  9. cuibono
    August 14, 2022

    Maybe water was just the one thing that should never have been sold off to foreign investors?
    OK we fell for the idea of us being the “Dirty Man of Europe” but a cursory glance at history should tell us that we were always subject to continental propaganda.
    After all we were the ones with the gazons while they had bare, DRY earth.
    AND I clearly remember swimming in the Allier river (Vichy!) and I won’t repeat what floated past!!

    1. cuibono
      August 14, 2022

      Not to mention those ghastly little metal footprint holes in the ground ( in very dark pongy shacks) and scarcely-concealed-from-public-view urinals.
      Yet still we joined the EU and nodded in agreement about our inferiority!

  10. Dave Andrews
    August 14, 2022

    State run monopolies are bad, private monopolies not much better so hardly the model to be embraced.
    When it comes to water, the company should be owned by its consumers (plus employees). Move into an area and become a customer, you get a share. Move out and you return it. You vote for the executive and their salary packages. Profits are either retained for cash-flow, for investment or returned to the customer via lower bills. Successful employees can be recognised and rewarded, not vilified because everyone hates a smart-arse.
    Makes sense to me, now someone tell me why this wouldn’t be heaps better than the alternatives we’ve already tried.

    1. Mark B
      August 14, 2022

      +1

  11. Denis Cooper
    August 14, 2022

    A discussion of this kind must take into account the uncontrollable and unpredictable growth in population:

    https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/population

    If subsequent governments had followed the population policies of the post-war Labour government there would now be about 10 million fewer people to be fed and watered and housed and transported and supplied with energy and provided with health and education services and other necessities of modern life.

    However probably the worst aspect of the population growth has not been its magnitude but its unpredictability, with the annual growth rate dropping from 0.7% to just below zero and then surging back again to over 0.8%, which must have made it much more difficult to plan ahead and ensure that sufficient provision was made.

  12. agricola
    August 14, 2022

    Competition in supply is cosmetic and complex, but fails to answer the need, MORE WATER.

    It is to be found in Keilder and innumerable lochs in Scotland. Then as a last resort, desalination plants for emergency use run on windmill electricity. Double the water storage capacity in the Midlands and South. Transport water from northern sources via an undersea pipeline, avoiding most planning permission problems.
    Action Monday.

    1. Dave Andrews
      August 14, 2022

      Wouldn’t it be easier to shift the people once, rather than the water continually?

      1. Mickey Taking
        August 14, 2022

        great idea…start bulding alongside the Lochs… we could build all alongside the Thames and expect the people of Wokingham to move nearer it.

  13. None of the Above
    August 14, 2022

    There are two problems; the leaks and the lack of storage.
    There are two solutions; fix the leaks and build more reservoirs.
    A drought only once in every forty years is not an excuse for complacency and inaction.
    Give OFWAT the powers to fine water companies and stop dividends for every cubic metre of loss, every day of TUB and every day of drought.

    The wailing and gnashing of teeth at the Shareholders meetings will be deafening.

  14. Iain Gill
    August 14, 2022

    who takes the hit when the pipe network leaks massively? who is incentivised to fix those leaks? thats one of the main problems now.

    1. Mickey Taking
      August 14, 2022

      OFWAT should be fining the companies hard enough to make them use half the profit this year spent on repairs next year.

  15. Walt
    August 14, 2022

    With respects, Sir John, your solution stretches competition and private enterprise too far. Some matters belong in state hands, or at least they don’t belong in the hands of businesses seeking profit. Water is the most glaring example of taking privatisation too far. Our infrastructure needs both short and long term planning and investment, with cross-party support so that it’s not blown off course every four or five years. Long term means decades into the future, not the three years of corporate LTIPs. As for other privatisations, e.g. telecoms, gas and electric: they could have worked ok, if accompanied by effective government planning and regulation; but government has failed to provided that, resulting in our current woeful under-provision of gas reserves, electrical power generation, clean water, and inadequate sewage treatment and foul water facilities. The persistent discharge of sewage and effluent into our rivers and coastal waters is disgraceful. Our governments are responsible for this mess, decades of government failure.
    Look back fifty to sixty years: we were one of the leaders in nuclear power; but we let that slip away, to become dependant on the French and the Chinese to build for us in our country.

  16. Gary Megson
    August 14, 2022

    Yet another column telling us how terrible things are in this country. Whose fault is it, I wonder? Maybe the party in power for the last 12 years?

    1. Fedupsoutherner
      August 14, 2022

      Or the one before that started all the crap and would find no different solutions even if they were in power again.

      1. Lifelogic
        August 15, 2022

        Or perhaps the appalling Blair/Brown era with their dire legal reforms & ECHR, economic incompetence, misguided benefit reforms, ever more EU, botched devolution, all shall have usually worthless degrees and stuff every government organisation with left wing/woke/green crap pushing loons.

  17. hefner
    August 14, 2022

    About 40% of the population in Denmark, Finland rural areas get their water from water cooperatives. Some also exist in Germany and France (agrodistribution.fr 18/11/2014, lanouvellrepublique.fr 01/06/2017).
    Different models for water storage, preservation, distribution exist, but it would require another type of politicians not stuck with ideas in fashion forty years ago to see that. Unfortunately 


    1. Peter2
      August 14, 2022

      Yet the Telegraph and others report serious droughts in Germany and France heffy.
      Oh dear.

      1. hefner
        August 14, 2022

        No doubt about this P2. What’s your point?

        1. Peter2
          August 14, 2022

          Well….you wrote about the co operative systems in European countries in a positive manner heffy.
          I assume you were putting that system forward as an alternative to ours.
          Yet severe drought seem also to be a problem for them too.
          As I stated.

          1. hefner
            August 15, 2022

            The point obviously not clear enough is that the EU Water Directives have not prevented other EU countries to have a mix of solutions for their water provision. The UK all-privatised one was a choice of the 1989 Conservative Government, the subsequent creation of regulatory agencies was also a choice of the UK successive governments, and if the MPs who could have called to task the bosses of these regulators entities have not done so that’s their failure. And it is rather rich of Sir John to criticise the whole system now when he and his colleagues could have done something about it years ago.
            But do not expect any apology for failure from MPs, much better for them to throw a Venezuelan bone to the yapping dogs.

          2. Peter2
            August 15, 2022

            So why are there droughts in the two major EU nations of Germany and France?

          3. hefner
            August 19, 2022

            The weather, P2? The same as here? Don’t you think?

    2. Hope
      August 14, 2022

      +1
      Depressing how MPs promoting ideas of yester year that have proven to have failed the taxpayer/consumer.

    3. Mark
      August 14, 2022

      The aggregation of water supply and sewerage treatment into large regional entities, which had previously been split between over 1,000 different ones, mostly aligned with local authorities, happened mainly in the 1960s and 70s. It was motivated by the evident inefficiency of the system with no integrated planning of resources. Throughout the post war period there was chronic underinvestment, as squeezed local government budgets cut water spending. That did not improve under the regional setup either. The motivation in the late 80s for privatisation was to end the capital starvation by regulating for improved standards and escaping from government spending cutbacks to achieve them through private sector funding and controlled higher charges. Then came the EU Water Directives that prevented many of the plans for new reservoirs and water transfers, and insisted on price rationing instead. They also led to legislation(Utilities Act) that enabled foreign ownership by other EU countries.

  18. turboterrier
    August 14, 2022

    The simple unavoidable fact to the water and other essential services is that the directors and the share holders have to be paid. Even when tons of sewerage is discharged into rivers and seas.
    Engineering people will give you the facts and figures that 80% of the high costs of repairs come from 20% of the network and the reality is as a long term strategy it is cheaper to replace the old undersized leaking pipes than to keep going back time and time again. Modern technology decrees that moling and grundomatting reduces disruption to road surfaces. But the shareholders cannot see that far ahead, all they see is an increase on expenditure.
    Sadly the quality of the vast number of our politicians in understanding the actual mechanics of the whole process is instrumental in this situation being allowed to exist.

  19. BOF
    August 14, 2022

    I would worry that several water companies covering the same area will inevitably result in roads being dug up two or three times instead of once!

    I am supplied by Welsh Water and have no complaints about the service. Why can their not for profit model not be repeated and improved. Certainly, it has to be better than paying foreign countries profits that they do not re-invest. Conservative politicians rewarding their freinds, again.

  20. Christine
    August 14, 2022

    Another great speech by Neil Oliver on GBNews – ‘Think The Unthinkable’. Certainly gives food for thought.

  21. Javelin
    August 14, 2022

    Its good to see the Germans have realised the fantasy green propaganda is suiciding the country, by breaking up the eco mob with police with batons.

    The next question is how many UK politicians will be quietly skulking back into the shadows, deleting their tweets and pretending they never supported the completely nonsensical, totally unproven, 3rd rate computer models of the global warming, climate change, climate emergency, sandal wearing, eco virtue signallers.

    1. Fedupsoutherner
      August 14, 2022

      Love your post Javelin.

      1. hefner
        August 15, 2022

        I am not surprised: ‘Birds of a feather flock together’.

        1. Peter2
          August 15, 2022

          Very odd idea of people who simply agree with each other heffy
          Your idea undermines any friendly political union
          Hmm….

    2. Lifelogic
      August 14, 2022

      +1

    3. glen cullen
      August 14, 2022

      The coral on the great barrier reef is back, polar bears are back and ice is back in the antarctic 
and the three day heat wave will be over tomorrow 
and all the water leaks will miraculously repair themselves until next summer

      1. hefner
        August 14, 2022

        Not quite true for the ice: Antarctica sea ice in July (i.e. winter there) is 7% below the average of 40 years of satellite data (FT, The climate graphic explained, 14/08/2022), and Arctic sea ice 4% below average. Temperatures in Thule (Greenland) were an unprecedented 15C. In Svalbard, the sea ice melt was 1.5 times bigger than the last minimum observed in 2018. July 2022 was one of the three warmest Julys on record, the previous ones in 2019 and 2016.

  22. Original Richard
    August 14, 2022

    Our fifth column communist elites in Parliament, the civil service, quangos and corporates have screwed up our electrical power by curbing fossil fuels and subsidising medieval, inefficient, intermittent and expensive windmills. As I write the 27 GW of installed windmill power is providing just 0.59 GW of power, 2.34% of demand.

    They intend to destroy travel and heating through the forced introduction of expensive and impractical evs and heat pumps.

    For the case of water, we have no shortage of rainfall over the country, only a shortage of storage and the transport of water. This is despite these elites knowing they are importing into the country millions of extra people and incessantly informing us that we have global warming producing weather extremes, such as droughts.

    Our communist elites would rather spend ÂŁ100bn+ on a railway to get them to Birmingham 20 minutes faster than invest in a national water grid by connecting up our rivers and canals or simply building more reservoirs.

    In fact, to make matters even worse, our elites prefer instead to sell reservoirs for housing the increased population than keep them for the storage of water because of course water shortages prove that global warming exists.

    Energy and water crises are deliberate policy.

    1. Lifelogic
      August 14, 2022

      Exactly

    2. Pauline Baxter
      August 14, 2022

      Original Richard. I quite agree.
      The Conservative Party with it’s present huge majority has not moved quite so far to the left as communism.
      But it is certainly NOT a CONSERVATIVE party is it. Nor is it any longer a RIGHT OF CENTRE party.
      We just do not have one of those any more.

  23. ukretired123
    August 14, 2022

    The main problem is the extra demand not supply as too many people in the country while gov’t ignores the underlying problem. There was a time when you could drink water safely from the tap but not any more. Bottled water transport miles is concerning.
    Failure to invest in the infrastructure and rely upon Victorian heritage works has been ongoing and the main problem.

  24. Berkshire Alan
    August 14, 2022

    Off topic.

    Just been made aware on social media of a proposal to change the complete road structure in Wokingham Town Centre in favour of cyclists, to reduce the main road through the Town (Peach Street) to one lane, to narrow Rectory Road with 20 mph restriction as well, and also reduce the width of Broad Street etc etc.
    Was not aware of any of these proposals, and certainly none of my neighbours are either, are you aware John ? Comments on the proposals are due to close on 19th August, and from the numbers responding so far of just over 1,100 people in total, I would suggest few locals are aware of such.
    These plans if they go ahead would cause massive disruption, be of huge cost, and in my opinion would increase congestion to Town traffic and increase pollution due to that congestion.
    The roads and paths like many communities are already a disgrace, money would be better spent fixing these problems than putting in fantasy schemes, proposed I guess by some sort of lobby group who dislike cars.
    Any chance of getting this consultation period extended and getting to wider publicity, as there is nothing about these plans that I have seen in Town at all.

    Reply Yes I agree these are worrying proposals and encourage people to write in to the Council.

    1. Bill B.
      August 14, 2022

      Who’s proposing this, Alan?

      1. Hope
        August 14, 2022

        I think Govt are. Burn am claimed Manchester was following govt guidelines on emission zone charging. If true JR ought to miss out the council and seek change from his govt. They keep giving diktats about congestion charging to stop motorists etc.

        1. glen cullen
          August 14, 2022

          My council said that they where just following government guidelines when they build miles upon miles of cycle lanes……just following instructions…I heard that line before somewhere

      2. Berkshire Alan
        August 14, 2022

        Hi Bill

        It’s Wokingham Borough Council
        Details should been their web site
        They say they have gone out for consultation, but I only heard of it this morning.
        Consultation only open until 19th August.
        Visited friends and family in Wokingham this morning, none of them heard about it either.
        This sounds like an opportunist grab by those zealots who promote this sort of nonsense.
        This so called consultation needs to be extended and promoted more widely otherwise we will be stuck with it.

        1. Bill B.
          August 14, 2022

          ‘Details should be on their web site.’ So you haven’t looked to see what truth there is this social media story? Maybe I shouldn’t bother either.

          1. Berkshire Alan
            August 14, 2022

            No Bill, I simply clicked on the link I found on social media, I then filled in the Council form (after looking at the very descriptive plans), with my reasons for why I was against it, had confirmation e mail from the Council that my comments will be registered.
            Vote so far was over 900 for the changes, just over 100 so far disprove.

            I would suggest given that all roads that enclose the Town Centre are affected with regards to this proposal, few have heard of it given the response of only just over 1,000 people.
            If we were all like you appear to suggest, and cannot be bothered to look for ourselves with regards to government and Council policies and proposals, even when they have been given the information, then no wonder we get the policies, and the Council tax rates we deserve.
            Can I suggest you do actually bother if you are at all concerned, as it gives cyclists the right of way at most junctions.
            The Council have spent over ÂŁ6.4 million so far on cycle tracks from Lower Earley to Wokingham with on average a use of 20 cyclists per day (school days) passing our house, what a complete waste of money.
            I also hear today that the Woosehill roundabout will be having traffic lights installed so cyclists will also have right of way at that point as well, but have not seen any documentation yet.

          2. Berkshire Alan
            August 14, 2022

            Interestingly when I filled in the Council form they wanted to know my Name, address, ethnicity, my sex, my gender description, my religion, my age, my job description, retired or not, and last of all, how I travel into Wokingham Town.
            Prey tell me why all this crap, when only the first and last answers are really relevant.
            No wonder the Country is going to the dogs.
            Priorities all wrong now !!!!!!!!!!

          3. Berkshire Alan
            August 14, 2022

            Yes its true, all comments made on their form after viewing the proposals, confirmation e mail sent in reply to my comments.

      3. dixie
        August 14, 2022

        Well the Lib Dems are “in control” now so I guess they are the ones responsible.

        1. hefner
          August 14, 2022

          But the good thing about the LibDems ‘in control’ in Wokingham is that suddenly after more than 17 years at the same address in the Wokingham district I got in July a one page Conservative ‘newsletter’ through the door telling me ‘Thank you for your support’ (when the CUP results have never been so low in the recent past in my ward), plus everything about all the awful things that the new coalition has been doing. And as a premium three pics of Sir John out of six pictures, I guess trying to enter the British equivalent of the competition ‘ma binette partout’ in Le Canard Enchaine.

          In the previous 17 years apart from one leaflet a year funnily enough one week before the May local elections the Conservatives were nowhere to be seen.

          1. Peter2
            August 15, 2022

            I dont know why it bothers you heffy.
            It’s not likely you would ever vote Conservative is it?

          2. hefner
            August 15, 2022

            Contrary to what you infer I would, for a middle-of-the-road Conservative Party, but certainly not for one in thrall to the ERG/CRG/NZSG.
            I give you a hint: read Francis Fukuyama ‘Liberalism and its discontents’. Just chapters 2 and 3. It should not be too taxing and you might even possibly understand where I come from.

            The ‘dry’ in the CUP are completely desiccated, and seeing how intelligent their reactions to the present water and energy situation is, I hope they soon turn to dust.

          3. Peter2
            August 15, 2022

            Having read your many posts I find your claim you are a traditional Conservative Party voter very unlikely.

    2. Peter
      August 14, 2022

      Hiving off huge swathes of road for cyclists is now fairly common in London – Waterloo Bridge, Hammersmith Kings Street, Tooting High Street etc etc.

      It’s in full swing. The cycle lanes are underused and cyclists still ride on pavements but it does not seem easy to prevent these schemes.

      1. Mickey Taking
        August 14, 2022

        oh, and in some boroughs cyclists are overtaking cars whose drivers are studiously trying to stick to max.20mph.

        1. glen cullen
          August 14, 2022

          Yeah mean the whole of Wales…the new beacon of light

    3. ukretired123
      August 14, 2022

      August is the favourite month for rushing through planning permission and avoiding objections when folks go on summer holidays, both here and in the EU. (I remember Monsieur François Hollande quietly passing a law doubling the gains tax on British and other expatriates selling homes in France in early August 2012 when everyone goes “en vacances”.

      1. hefner
        August 15, 2022

        You might have jumped just in time.
        schengenvisainfo.com 05/1/2020 ‘Rights of British Second-Home Owners in France from January 1, 2021’.

    4. Mickey Taking
      August 14, 2022

      worrying and expensive idiotic political games.

  25. glen cullen
    August 14, 2022

    I don’t like nor believe in state intervention in many things …But the supply of water is an exception

  26. glen cullen
    August 14, 2022

    Taking about water, I see that the MOD are reporting 607 illegal immigrants crossing our water in 14 boats yesterday

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats

    1. Iago
      August 14, 2022

      So that’s about 200,000 criminals a year. Our towns and cities will shortly resemble those on the continent. The vast majority of our political class could not care less.

      1. glen cullen
        August 14, 2022

        You’re only a criminal when you’ve been arrested and prosecuted by our police and justice system
.we never see any police – these people will never be arrested. Shame on the Tories

  27. glen cullen
    August 14, 2022

    By competition did you mean allowing China to have 10% ownership of Thames Water
.to me that’s giving control and profit to a totalitarian state

  28. miami.mode
    August 14, 2022

    If Mrs Krankie is certain that this current “climate change/crisis/emergency” has permanence then it would undoubtedly pay her to utilise and save the enormous amount of rainwater that descends upon Scotland every year and construct pipelines to the hated Sassenachs in the Westminster and surrounding areas and charge them per gallon accordingly. Perish the thought that she could get further exposure in Vogue by dressing it up as Scottish altruism.

  29. ChrisS
    August 14, 2022

    Your proposal is an unnecessary administrative complication that will add to costs rather than reduce them.

    By far the biggest element of any water bill is the cost of maintenance and enhancements to the infrastructure. The ownership of the infrastructure will not change and therefore cannot be competitive. All you would be adding is hundreds of extra call centre staff, accountants and managers who will be competing for the same customers and that will be much more expensive.

    Better regulation with financial penalties for not hitting leak targets would achieve far more without adding to costs.

  30. Peter2
    August 14, 2022

    An excellent post Sir John especially the ideas in your last paragraph.
    The answer is more competition not a return to State control.
    We need less of that.
    Encourage more reservoirs instead of refusing planning permissions for example.

    1. hefner
      August 14, 2022

      Well P2, if you like ‘smoke and mirrors’, you are perfectly entitled to be voluntarily taken for a ride.

      1. Peter2
        August 14, 2022

        It is my opinion and that is yours heffy.
        PS
        If you grumpily disagree with everything Sir John posts, then
        why do you you bother coming on here in the first place?
        PPS
        Although it is nice to have a personal troll.

    2. Berkshire Alan
      August 14, 2022

      Peter2
      If more competition was the answer, why did 30 electricity providers go broke in a few months ?
      Why did rail franchises fail ?
      The real answer is proper commercial management and control, something politicians of all Colours, and the existing Water management/supply companies seem to lack. (I exclude our kind host)
      It does not matter who owns what, if it is not managed or run properly.

      Reply Price controls helped cause the bankruptcies.

      1. Berkshire Alan
        August 14, 2022

        Reply – Reply

        That surely is a management/regulator failure then. !
        Who is responsible for the regulators ?
        Who chose the make up, and gave them the remit ?

        1. glen cullen
          August 15, 2022

          Is it perhaps our own government

      2. hefner
        August 15, 2022

        Reply to reply: if the problem with price control was so obvious what did the CUP MPs do about it? After all, the CUP has been in power for 12 years. Try to find a better excuse, Sir John, this one is rather weak.

        1. Peter2
          August 15, 2022

          Mrs May was PM and she decided to have price caps which bankrupted many energy providers.

          Blame her.

          1. hefner
            August 16, 2022

            The price caps did not bankrupt the energy providers as such. A poor management, and/or an agressive pricing not properly thought through are more likely to have done it. But given that a non negligible number of these energy providers had a double/complex structure separating their customer service (in one or more company/ies) from their financial services (in another company, as could be seen on the companies-house website, with Xenergy Ltd, Xgas Ltd, Xelectricity Ltd, Xfinances Ltd, Xgroup Ltd) their customers and the public at large were the only ones to lose.

          2. Peter2
            August 17, 2022

            Complete twaddle heffy
            Price caps ruined many energy companies.

          3. hefner
            August 19, 2022

            Funny P2, Bulb, one of the first energy companies to go down, is known to have failed because of its lack of hedging (cityam.com, 27/06/2022, ‘Bulb Energy: Bidding war lights up as Centrica pulls out of race for fallen energy firm’ (see 12th paragraph).

            Also very interesting and available on companies-house website is the series of annual reports from Bulb (usually called ‘Full accounts’): even the last one dated 10/03/2021 does not appear to see oncoming problems. Interesting is the departure of one of the Directors on 28/06/2021. Five months later the company was ‘under administration’.

            Could you provide a proof of ‘price caps ruining energy companies’ for any other failed energy company, please. Any site would do.
            Also would you be happy if in the absence of price caps the price of your utilities were varying wildly from one month to the next, say by 50-60% as seen on the wholesale price of gas during 2021?

  31. Optimist
    August 14, 2022

    I’m optimistic. I think the papers have sussed it all now.
    It’s just how the establishment rows back
    without losing face.

  32. Jason
    August 14, 2022

    Water like fresh air is a necessity of life and should never have been privatised – but greed and stupidity won out. So what now? and looking at the two individuals concerned vying for the top job I am not at all impressed.

    One we can see wears his clothes two sizes two small in an effort to follow fashion – a followe if you like – and probably a follower in all things
    And the other, the same, taking her lead from the blob of the ERG – as private frazer would say “we are doomed doomed!”

  33. Pauline Baxter
    August 14, 2022

    Yes, well, you are probably right Sir John.
    But let’s face it there is a limit to what even Liz can achieve in the short time she is assured of being in office as PM.
    Make sure she concentrates on abolishing all Sunak’s high tax and big state policies in time to avoid the recession you have forecast.
    Then she should abolish all those regulatory bodies you have criticised, particularly Boris’s stupid carbon neutral ones.
    Perhaps then we would go back to being the free market economy, which Lord Frost has so strongly advocated. As he pointed out that is what the Conservative Party used to stand for.
    So much more!
    Defending our borders from illegal, cross channel, immigrants. Sorting out the N.I. protocol.
    I believe she knows how to do those two.
    What about getting us out of the E.C.H.R.? As the Home Secretary recently found out while we are in that we are effectively still in the E.U.
    As you have frequently pointed out, we need to be self sufficient in energy and to produce as much as possible of our own food.
    It is really quite ridiculous that this notoriously wet country should now be told that we are short of water.
    The whole Global Warming because of man made Carbon Dioxide propaganda, is a SCAM.
    I wish all those pushing it, would just stop breathing!

    1. glen cullen
      August 14, 2022

      Spot On Pauline…..and we’ll be asking the same questions in another decade with this government(s)

    2. turboterrier
      August 14, 2022

      Pauline Baxter
      Grow our own food?
      When I walk through a MoD camp I see hundreds of acres growing thistles nettles and dock leaves. The ground is supposedly let out for grazing but the state of the fields would determine low rental payments.pllantthem with arable crops and earn some decent revenue from the farmers.

  34. Rhoddas
    August 14, 2022

    Utility Regulators have failed us and their industries – they haven’t responsibly provided for resilience nor back up capacity, which would have protected us from shortages and import spot price shocks
    Viz – short squeeze on imports on gas/oil and knock-on to power…
    Viz – water shortages…

    HMG are accountable for their Regulators, the buck stops there.
    So BEIS need to put out and fix decades of failures.. we need a new Minister imvho and newly directed Regulators.

    1. jerry
      August 14, 2022

      @Rhoddas; There is nothing to stop any of these private utility companies operating in excess of what the regulations demand, almost all regulation sets a minimum expectation. It has not been regulation that shut down, for example, the UK’s network of natural gas storage network, it came about due to accountants at energy companies deciding that it was cheaper to take delivery of their previously purchased (hedged) wholesale gas contracted as demand required, rather than pay for storage here in the UK, what is more this further hedged the balance of the contract against further wholesale price rises should the UK demand be less that expected.

      Regulation is not to blame.

      Reply You do not understand that the Regulator controls amounts of capital invested and returns so the companies cannot do what they wAnt

      1. jerry
        August 14, 2022

        @JR reply; That is surely an argument for a change of regulation, not for more competition, as surely any new entrants would also have one hand tied behind their backs, but if controls on capital were changed (relaxed I assume) there will be absolutely no need for new ‘competitor’ entrants as the existing utility companies will be free to raise their level of their own (re)investment, and as there will be less need for any duplication of infrastructure it will be cheaper for the end customers too.

        1. Peter2
          August 14, 2022

          You don’t want any more entrants into the existing market then Jerry?
          “absolutely no need for new competitors”

          1. hefner
            August 15, 2022

            As said by Jerry, the regulators were entities created by successive governments. If Government or MPs are not satisfied with the regulators they can recall them, redefine their purposes/tasks or at least ask them to appear before the relevant Parliamentary Select Committee.
            Your comment about ‘new entrants’ in on par with the rest of your usual interventions, ie meaningless.

          2. Peter2
            August 15, 2022

            You either want a more competitive market or you don’t heffy.
            Which is it?
            It isn’t a “meaningless” argument.
            It is fundamental.

            Although I already know the answer heffy.
            You want the State to have a monopoly.

      2. Mark
        August 14, 2022

        Indeed, regulation is often down to granting or refusing approval for individual projects, as well as placing a ceiling on what can be spent and the return that is allowed.

  35. hefner
    August 14, 2022

    For people interested in water leakages
    in the past 
.
    ‘Tracking down three billion litres of lost water’, bbc.co.uk, 17/08/2020.
    water.org.uk, 31/07/2020, ‘Water companies record lowest leakage levels from pipes’.
    discoverwater.co.uk, ‘Leaking pipes: Getting water to your home: Have companies met their targets’, 03/2021. The obvious question here is: who defined the targets? The water companies? OfWat independently of any ministerial oversight? WCos+ OfWat? I’ll let you guess.

    in the future 

    – Read all about it: water.org.uk ‘17/03/2022 ‘A leakage route map to 2050’ a 110 p report.
    ‘Triple the rate of leakage reduction by 2030 and halve leakage by 2050’ is one of these beautiful corporate b/s sentences, when the rate of reduction prior to 2020 for each water company is not defined (or at least I didn’t find the relevant information. Only a countrywide reduction rate is stated).
    – Get familiar with the concept of ELL (economic level of leakage, ie costs of controlling leakage vs. the savings incurred from reducing the volume of water leaking from the network).
    What is promised for 2025: AMP7 targets per company, Table 2, p.46.
    – Know everything about the four scenarii: Limiting low hanging fruit, Smarter networks, Data and asset-focused improvements, Progressive policies drive asset focus (all p.66-86). And their costs (p.90-91).

    1. jerry
      August 14, 2022

      @hefner; Talk about water leaks are a diversion, is the UAE ever short of water?….

  36. Mickey Taking
    August 14, 2022

    and now for something completely different:
    Some visitors to a seaside town were left frustrated when a pay and display parking machine gave instructions only in Welsh. Queues developed as non-Welsh speakers struggled to work out how to use the ticket machine at the underground car park in Rhyl, Denbighshire. The council is looking into it, but said drivers had other payment options.
    It also said the machines default to Welsh, but users can change that by pressing a “language button”.
    Queues were made worse when the machine failed to recognise debit cards.
    One local motorist, who is not fluent in Welsh, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that one driver was so frustrated he gave up trying to figure out the machine.
    In another instance, a crowd gathered around a family from Merseyside “trying to solve the problem”.
    “The whole point of a car park is you can park quickly and easily,” said the motorist, who did not want to be named. “You don’t expect to stand in a queue for half an hour whilst people try and work out how the machine works – or doesn’t work in this case.”
    ‘Look you, a right mess, is nit!’

  37. jerry
    August 14, 2022

    Well considering there has been competition within the energy sector, with multiple producers/suppliers, ever since privatization, but despite all the pro-privatization theory (set out by our host and others over the last 43 years) as to how things SHOULD work in theory, this country is also now dangerously short of both electricity and gas capacity and/or reserves -even before the recent shock waves caused by Russia.

    I also doubt one can have safe competition within the water supply industry without total separation of supplies, from treatment to property, at vast expense and disruption whenever a new supplier comes along, potable water is not like electricity, gas or telecoms. For example, the accidental contamination of the water supply at Camelford in 1988 affected 20,000 to 30,000 people, had such contaminated water been pumped in to a national water grid, or some other shared supply, many more people would have been affected. There are good reasons why a pilot and the co-pilots of a commercial aircraft eat different meals, prepared by different kitchens, whilst on duty…

    Reply There were pollution incidents when nationalised. the lack of capacity is a result of the regulations.

    1. Peter2
      August 14, 2022

      Jerry has a romantic attachment to the 1950s and 1960s Sir John.
      He want politics to be like it was when Macmillan was PM
      It’s like the idea that summers were always hotter in those days.

      1. jerry
        August 14, 2022

        Peter2 has a romantic attachment to the 1920s of not the 1800s Sir John.
        He want politics to be like it was when Bonar Law (if not Benjamin Disraeli) was PM
        It’s like the idea that summers were always hotter in those days.

        1. Peter2
          August 14, 2022

          Ridiculous parody Jerry.
          I live in the present.
          And look forward to the future.
          Unlike your continual references to the 60s and 70s

      2. hefner
        August 15, 2022

        Ridiculous P2, as usual.

        1. Peter2
          August 15, 2022

          No more ridiculous than your endless grumpy left wing posts heffy my personal troll.

    2. Pauline Baxter
      August 14, 2022

      jerry. The shortage of supply in gas and electricity has been caused by carbon neutral based REGULATIONS.

      Rhoddas. Yes in theory HMG is responsible for the regulators but like all quangos and bureaucracies they tend to follow their own ‘we know best’ policy and hide the truth from HMG and us who elected HMG.

      1. Pauline Baxter
        August 14, 2022

        Oh but you are probably right that we need a new minister leading BEIS !

      2. jerry
        August 14, 2022

        @Pauline Baxter; Perhaps, and who started that snow-ball rollicking down the ski slope, by citing questionable ecological science as an excuse to all but shut down the UK coal industry that provided not only plentiful cheap electricity but could even produce a usable town gas is needs-be. Yes sulfur, acid rain, was a problem but scrubbing solutions were possible back in the 1980s.

        Then there is the UK’s historic under investment in nuclear, whatever side of the public/private financing fence one sits.

        1. Peter2
          August 14, 2022

          I’ve read your post several times Jerry.
          What is the point you are desperately trying to make?

      3. hefner
        August 15, 2022

        PB: The heads of the regulatory bodies whether OfWat, OfGen or OfWhatever could have been called in front of the relevant Parliamentary Commission. Were they?

        1. Peter2
          August 15, 2022

          What difference would that have made
          PS
          Do you agree with Jerry’s quote…questionable ecological science.. …leading to the close down of the coal industry….careful who you choose to support heffy.

          1. hefner
            August 19, 2022

            ‘What difference would that have made’. Fascinating. You appear to be for a freer than free market, with no regulatory bodies, no oversee of those by Parliament. Are you for a ‘Dog-eat-dog’ kind of society?
            As for other ‘interesting’ question: why should I agree with Jerry? You seem a bitty limited in your interactions with people. Only two alternatives: with ‘Us’/against ‘Us’. Never afraid of a reductionist approach, are you?

    3. Original Richard
      August 14, 2022

      jerry :

      There simply hasn’t been any real competition in the energy market as the Government has interfered/ruled with its Net Zero Strategy of subsidising expensive, intermittent wind energy (0.85 GW out of an installed capacity of 27 GW as I write), forcing energy companies to use wind energy produced electricity before any other method of production, paying wind suppliers even for when they cannot use the electricity, forcing the reduction of oil and gas supplies, banning fracking, capping prices and reducing nuclear energy to almost zero etc..

    4. Mike Wilson
      August 14, 2022

      There were pollution incidents when nationalised.

      But you’d only have one organisation to investigate with no possibility of ‘it wasn’t us, guvnor, it was them’.

    5. hefner
      August 14, 2022

      Reply to reply: Successive governments have set up these regulatory entities. When has a Government or Parliament acted to ‘put them on the straight and narrow’. If nothing ever happened, isn’t it a dereliction of duty?

    6. jerry
      August 14, 2022

      @JR reply; What a lame interjection! I never suggested otherwise, in fact the Camelford pollution incident was indeed just prior to privatization.

      As for lack of capacity, lack of reinvestment, leaks not repaired, unaceptable sawage discarges etc, these are now all the direct result of under investment or poor decision making by the private water companies, privatization was back in 1989, some THIRTY THREE years ago now for pity sake! If private water companies really have taken 33 years to build or repair something that the nationalised industry should have done then surely both models of ownership should be damned?

  38. Plain Speaker
    August 14, 2022

    Mail/Zahawi ÂŁ400pcm loan to elec suppliers. Clear as mud to me.
    Can no one do plainspeak ?
    So if my ÂŁ75pcm is going up to ÂŁ150pcm in Jan according to Mirror & Express online calculator
    does that mean I can go mad and spend up to ÂŁ400 ie ÂŁ250 pcm extra ?

  39. Mike Wilson
    August 14, 2022

    The simplest model to bring more effective water competition to the many is to allow any water company to supply to any consumer using the existing pipe network as a common carrier.

    Seriously? And someone delivers dirty or contaminated water to your house – whose to blame? Water pressure is low – whose to blame. Really, you’re scraping the barrel here.

    Reply All would be regulated to same quality standards.

    1. Mark
      August 14, 2022

      The electricity system works by calculating how much power each supplier should have purchased to meet customer demand. If they have not done so, they must pay the imbalance price for the difference. In the case of water that would include the cost of supplying bottled water.

      The grid actually refuses to take substandard electricity supply: if the voltage or frequency is out of spec the generator gets cut off, and may have to install additional equipment if it is a persistent problem (see tidal stream generation).

      If your local power line is brought down in a storm the local network operator must repair it, regardless of the company you buy power from. If they take too long you get compensation.

  40. Roy Grainger
    August 14, 2022

    Is there a single MP in England who wouldn’t complain if a new reservoir were proposed in their constituency ? Why would any private company go through the grief of even trying to add capacity. See also Fracking.

  41. Nottingham Lad Himself
    August 14, 2022

    I agree with the headline.

    It’s called Synchronised Swimming, or sometimes Water Polo.

  42. Mike Wilson
    August 14, 2022

    Off topic. I see your dear leader is off on holiday again. I mean, he really doesn’t give a toss. How big will his Prime Ministerial pension be? Will he get it before he is 68, like the rest of people of his age?

    I suppose the silver lining is the damage he has done to the Tory brand.

    I see Starmer is promising no increase to the current energy cap. I don’t care how he would do it or how it would be paid for – Labour will get my vote for the first time since 1974

    1. DOM
      August 14, 2022

      How can anyone walk into a booth and place a cross next to a party whose recent history is littered with acts of barbarism, intolerance and downright inhumanity

      The Tories can be saved from the cancer of progressive extremism and collectivist authoritarianism but Labour, the unions and their activist groups are now infected to the core with it and it will destroy this nation’s people

      1. Mickey Taking
        August 15, 2022

        re- your first para:
        In Russia, China, N.K. the voters are expected to do just that – or else.
        In Scotland the SNP come close, but perhaps not quite?

  43. Mickey Taking
    August 14, 2022

    and talking of almost no choice:-
    Saudi oil giant Aramco has broken its own record with a $48.4bn (ÂŁ39.8bn) profit for the second quarter of 2022.
    It is a 90% year-on-year increase and marks the biggest earnings for the world’s largest energy exporter since its public listing three years ago. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen oil and gas prices skyrocket.
    Russia is one of the world’s biggest exporters but Western nations have pledged to curb their dependence on the country for their energy needs.
    According to Bloomberg, the Saudi oil giant’s figure represents “the biggest quarterly adjusted profit of any listed company”. As well as the record profits, the state-owned Saudi energy giant announced it would keep its dividend unchanged at $18.8bn for the third quarter. The company said it would keep expanding to satisfy demand. “While global market volatility and economic uncertainty remain, events during the first half of this year support our view that ongoing investment in our industry is essential both to help ensure markets remain well supplied and to facilitate an orderly energy transition,” Aramco president and chief executive Amin Nasser said.
    “In fact, we expect oil demand to continue to grow for the rest of the decade, despite downward economic pressures on short-term global forecasts,” he added.
    So what will it be spent on? Individuals will buy lots of the latest supercars, yachts and palatial homes in sought after locations around the world. Centrally no doubt ÂŁbns will buy into succesful and/or key businesses for the future.

    1. glen cullen
      August 14, 2022

      Don’t forget (like our government) that the Saudi Arabia government also receive 5% VAT on petrol….a nice little earner

  44. mancunius
    August 14, 2022

    Alas, competition will not affect the secure provision of a water supply to the individual home. Only 50% of UK homes have water meters, so pay a fixed charge, regardless of the quality of service.
    The wastage of water due to leaks in the mains is not a cost to the water companies.
    The small rebate a water company must make following a damaging or even life-threatening interruption of the water supply makes no difference to its profits.

  45. Bob Dixon
    August 14, 2022

    Water Companies are more interested in paying their staff well and rewarding their shareholders well by paying them dividends on the shares they bought.
    I see no fault here apart from providing interstructure for those years when they cannot make sure
    Their customers are not able to flush their toilet or water their crops.
    Has no one noticed that we are surrounded by sea water?
    I live in St Ives on the banks of The Great Ouse.
    At the moment is has water in it.
    Every year it floods and the excess water ends up in The Wash and North Sea.
    Much of the rain falls in the West and North. That can end in floods and lost into the sea.
    So we have water but we have idiots running the country.
    Let’s take to the streets to sort out the idiots.

  46. Fedupsoutherner
    August 14, 2022

    So 20000 illegals have crossed the channel already this year. The BBC says the threat of deportation to Rwanda isn’t working. Might that be because the illegals know the flights are never going to happen all the time we are tied to the ECHR?

    1. glen cullen
      August 15, 2022

      Correct

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