Dezzy Taylor, Swindon Socialist Party
Swindon is a town that is suffering at the hands of privatisation. Like everywhere in the UK, the encroachment of profit into public services has impacted their quality and our quality of life suffers.
It has become something of a bad joke in Swindon that Thames Water is only good for hiking prices and providing a sluggish response to burst pipes. Previously, burst pipes were a big deal due to how rarely they happened. Now barely a year goes by without a large-scale burst affecting Swindon. This year’s occurred on Nythe Road, leaving a large portion of the town without running water and bottled water needed to be distributed.
And its not just in Swindon – Bermondsey in London recently suffered a severe flood affecting requiring evacuation. The number of burst pipes and the delays and subsequent issues can be directly linked to the record profits reported by these water companies. Every penny of profit made by these leeches is money that could go to valuable maintenance work (paying for both labour and materials). It would also help to stop the waste of water lost from burst pipes.
Testing themselves
Operator self-monitoring, in which water companies essentially marked their own homework, has landed an ex-CEO of Southern Water in court because they allegedly falsified records of how safe water was. Evidently, running any service properly and safely is not profitable. The fact that this extends to water is a damning indictment of the system and presents numerous potential crises on its own.
We need to take the water industry out of the hands of the profit-hungry bosses, to be placed under the democratic control of workers, with no compensation paid to the private equity leeches. That way we can plan to invest in improving our water system, using the wealth and resources of wider society held in democratic public ownership, to bring down our bills, prevent wastage and stop environmental destruction.
