Is Britain’s nationalised water better than Britain’s privatised water?

To repeat a point we’ve made before. Britain has four different arrangements for water. Thus if we wish to compare the performance of the different arrangements we should compare those four different arrangements. Obviously.

So here’s The Guardian with a long piece on the iniquities of the English, privatised, water system. There was that recent docu-fiction about the subject. There’s that campaign run by Surfers against Sewage with the able assist from Feargal Sharkey. In none of which, absolutely none of which, do we see any such comparison made.

Now, knowing as we do the numbers for comparison, it’s the English water system - the privatised one - which does better. It’s also the English one which has improved more since the varied systems were set up. But facts, eh, who would believe them? This is, after all, politics we are talking about and facts are not the currency used in that activity. Nor should journalists be trusted wth numbers.

So let us use logic instead then. If the performance of the English system were worse than those other three - Scots, Welsh and N Irish - systems then that would be the angle of attack, wouldn’t it? No one would leave such a powerful weapon alone after all. Thus, that we are not - never, not ever - shown such comparative statistics means that such comparisons would indeed show the English system to be the better performing. QED.

As so often in politics the propaganda is being shovelled out wholly without reference to facts. Which is, of course, why political propaganda is such a bad way to run things.

Tim Worstall