We thought this was quite remarkable for not even understanding its own internal logic:
All that profit, yet investment in our waterways is falling woefully short. Not a single new reservoir has been built in the past three decades, and our Victorian water pipes are being replaced at a rate 10 times slower than our European neighbours. So we need immediate action. The Green party is calling for an urgent enforcement order on water firms, a cut to bosses’ obscene executive pay, an end to dividends to shareholders and for the water supply to be brought back into public ownership as soon as is practicably possible.
Public ownership works, and is popular. Publicly owned Scottish Water is the most trusted public utility in the UK, while not-for-profit Welsh Water has helped 60,000 low-income customers to pay their bills. They invest more, too. Scottish Water has invested nearly 35% more per household in infrastructure since 2002 than privatised firms in England; it charges 14% less in water bills; and it doesn’t pay out costly dividends to shareholders.
There are four ownership regimes for water in the United Kingdom. None of them have produced a new reservoir in 30 years. We must assume, therefore, that it’s something other than the ownership structure that builds, or does not build, reservoirs. We might even suspect that it’s the shrieking from the likes of Ms. Lucas’ Green Party when anyone plans to build absolutely anything that could be the cause there. For there have most certainly been many applications to build new reservoirs. Which varied parties - say, the Environment Agency, or planning permissions etc - have denied.
It’s even true that the private, for profit, companies in England have a greater incentive to build reservoirs as their allowable return is set, in part, by their investment in such infrastructure. If they plough more capital into such things then OfWat is likely to allow them to make more profit. OfWat’s determination of whether they be allowed to do so or not also being a possible brake on said building.
We’re also not sure about that touting of lower prices in the Pictish lands. Wetter place charges less for water does it? That’ll have the economists headscratching all night trying to work out how that could possibly happen.
But it’s that claim that Scotland invests more that is the failure of logic. Investment is an input, a cost. So Scotland’s government owned water system spends 35% more per household and still doesn’t build any reservoirs. We’ve more input, more costs, for the same result therefore. Which is proof that the government owned structure is less efficient than the privately - money-grubbing - owned one.
We do tend to think that the country would run better if the varied politicians hoping to do that running even understood their own logic. But then that so few do is why politics should be, when running anything let alone a country, be kept to its irreducible minimum.