As the hosepipe ban comes into force in six water regions in the UK, the water companies have more or less successfully convinced the MSM that there is a genuine water shortage, rather than a chronic lack of investment in new capacity and leak reduction.

However, the Daily Wail has been fairly robust about the leakage issue – if a little unfocused, and now it is brining to light the profligacy of the water company directors in lining their own pockets and keeping their shareholders sweet.

What is especially offensive is that Thames water - despite losing nearly 32 percent of the water it delivers, more than the current shortfall which gives rise to the hosepipe ban – is paying three of its executives £2 million in bonuses, with chief executive Martin Baggs taking home £1.67million in 2010/11.

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There is no water shortage...only a tumbrel shortage!

We need a "smiley" for a tumbrel.

Corporate ownership of utilities with monopolies can't work.
Utilities must be owned by the users so they can ensure infra-structure spending.

To add insult to injury, in 2002 my water bill was £283. This year my bill is £533, up 8% from last year. Legalised theft I say. Southern Water btw. I remember one year the water companies were told to reduce their charges and it went down. But they soon bumped their prices up again. And now we pay for drainage from our household gutters and roads.

As you probably know, I am trying (Ha!) to get real data on this issue. I have been waiting now for three weeks for DEFRA to come back on some questions I asked....

In the meantime you might like a reference to a paper from CRU at UAE (Yes, that crown of criminals) showing what has happened to our rainfall over the last 100 years.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/ukrainfall/

You will see that there has been a steady upwards trend, and that rainfall is historically quite variable, so that amounts may easily vary 30% between one year and another. Storage provision should therefore allow for this variation level, and, given this trend, there should be no difficulty in providing water for all.

I believe that water companies are not doing this, and are taking advantage of the overprovision bequeathed to us by former generations to avoid investment (which cuts into their profits). Further, I suspect that the companies are running parts of the delivery system at increased pressures (to avoid having to increase pipe sizes) which will, of course, make leaks far more common. But believing this and showing it are, of course, two different things.

Given the predilection for official lying which marks public life in the 2000s, probably the best I can hope for is to find an inside whistleblower. There do not seem to be any journalists around willing to dig into the technical aspects of hydrological engineering....

How did the argument go..........?

"We must privatise the water utilities because they need to fund future investment in infra-structure - the plant is ageing and defunct".
And, "the government cannot afford to upkeep the system". Or words to that effect.

You hear the same arguments with the provisional privatisation of the Royal Mail -
"privatise to give them the 'freedom' to borrow on the markets to make investments for the future security of the business".
Thus, will the RM be privatised, a financial killing will be made by some shareholders [mainly management insiders of course] - billions of pounds of valuble properties will be sold off and the RM will slowly die the death because you can't run a [universal] service as a business.
'Can't run a service as a business' - tell that to the Railway companies who soak up public subsidy and charge what they like and make billions for their shareholders and whilst the 'service' goes to pot.

Then there is the 'energy market', where the government which is full of global warming alarmists egged on by their masters in Berlaymont are rigging a 'privatised industry' to make them build bird choppers to provide us with power cuts and big bills into the 'bargain'. Fekkin madness.

So in the end, no matter if it is water, gas or mail - the public/customer enjoys the very worst of both worlds - neither private nor 'public' but still riddled with corrupt practice, sharp practice and bad service.

BUT someone is making lots of money - nice one.

And on water matters............

Meanwhile we have a massive useless quango called the environmental agency 'looking after' the waterways, river beds, canals etc under orders from Brussels central. They can't dredge the river beds anymore [environmental catastrophe for water river bedbugs - flora fauna and fish], so the silt builds up and when it does rain - we gets flooding which now is the norm [and climate change is blamed].
Bloody wonderful, if you like water in your front room.

If you have an hour or three, see where the money goes [on paying EA cuties] and fobbing off interested parties.

Seems like a Drought of Productive Investment

Being able to demand higher prices may have something to do with an induced shortage.

Alas, you are not alone. In Western Australia, the population has more than doubled since the last dam was built and catchments reassigned to “environmental flows”, so that flow into the dams is less than half of what it was with the same rainfall about 40 years ago.

There is inevitably a shortage.

I've linked to the EUReferendum article from my blog article. http://contrary2belief.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/water-thieves/

Probably missed it but does anyone know where the £1000 fine gets paid to?

When you have robber banksters owning such utilities, no doubt they pay utility executives such paltry sums out of pity.......Macquarie's boss robbed Aus $ 26.75 million in '08 ...@ 16.50 million Sterling

Deutche's boss stole @ 10 million Zero's in '11, down 18 % from '10

I've added you site to the EUREF.com blogroll.

It will go into central funds ... i.e., government coffers.

Ravenscar has certainly got it correct, they have privatised the industries but made them a monopoly with the so called regulation. Regulators work for the corporates almost everyhere you look, they do not protect the Customers. So no competition, we all get screwed.

Ladies & Gentlemen, I bring you the Plusnet Band Dutch water supply system.
It's publicly controlled at a local level and contracts work out to private companies to avoid the risk of EU-directed foreign ownership. Broadly speaking it's the same system that enabled the Netherlands to get and stay drained for nigh on four centuries. Unfortunately, there's no opportunity for spivs to practice their "hunt the lady" financial expertise or PPI and privatisation.
What was wrong with the "municipal socialism" that established our utilities? People moan about the delay in getting a phone line when the GPO was in charge, but there were waiting lists for many things in the seventies - mortgage queues, for example, when building societies were mutuals and didn't need bailing out.
The unacceptable face of capitalism needs a good slap at its own expense to knock some sense and morality back into it, something that Adam Smith understood and Robert Owen practised. By the way, actually I consider properly-regulated capitalism is the best way to organise part of the economy.

The Government and regulators have also shifted their stance from one of adequate provision to one of 'sustainability' and protecting the environment.

The profits of water companies might be better spent bribing planning inspectors to allow reservoirs to be built.