Receiving The Water Bill

DEFRA – to some cynics the Department for Eliminating Farming and Rural Activity – is piloting a Bill through the Westminster Parliament to change how the water and sewerage industry is regulated.

It tells us that “privatisation of the water industry has been successful in attracting over £116 billion of investment… Without this investment, water companies would need to collect all of the money needed to upgrade the infrastructure from their customers, which would make bills around a third higher than they currently are.  Water companies would also have to collect money from customers in the year that they spend it on a ‘pay as you go’ basis, which would make bills more volatile from year to year.  The Government places a high priority on ensuring that the water sector continues to remain attractive to investors…  We need to encourage greater innovation and efficiencies alongside this investment, and to deliver it without undermining the reputation for stable regulation which attracts investors to the sector.”

What utter rubbish!  What economic illiteracy!  Ever wondered how Victorian councils funded all those mighty civil engineering works?  You know the ones – the reservoirs, the aqueducts and the pipelines – that bring water from the hills to the cities, and which now grease the sovereign wealth funds of assorted dictatorships.  They didn’t do it by putting the whole cost onto one year’s rates bill.  They did it through access to capital markets, just as the water companies do now.  They issued bonds secured on the rates for however many years ahead were needed to pay off the debt.  After that, the profits were their own, though some deliberately didn’t think in terms of maximising profits: cheap, clean water was deemed its own justification.  That was in the days when pluralism ruled, the days before totalitarian liberalism intervened to order that every alternative to naked market forces must be shut down.  Except for those clothed in a highly lucrative and stable regulatory regime.

So today it seems the key question is no longer what needs to be done to maximise community benefit.  The key question is how investors can be attracted by having the scent of helpless consumers’ money waved before their nostrils by a succession of tarts posing as governments.  Attracted indeed to take part in what has been aptly termed ‘the tollbooth economy’, one in which the essentials of life are parcelled out among private monopolies.  It’s one where investors are no longer willing to lend to public authorities for a fixed return if instead they can have their own direct slice of the action, and have the poodle politicians to deliver it to them.

Wessex has ten main water suppliers, which are, from the Tamar eastwards, as follows:

·        South West Water (based in Exeter) – once publicly owned, now part of Pennon Group plc

·        Wessex Water (Bath) – once publicly owned, now part of the Malaysian group YTL

·        Bristol Water (Bristol) – always privately owned, currently owned by Capstone Infrastructure (a Canadian investment trust), the Catalan group Agbar (itself partly French-owned) and the Japanese group Itochu

·        Severn Trent Water (Coventry) – once publicly owned, now a public limited company

·        Thames Water (Reading) – once publicly owned, now owned by the Australian-based consortium Kemble Water (some of the shares in which are owned by the governments of Abu Dhabi and China)

·        Sembcorp Bournemouth Water (Bournemouth) – always privately owned, currently part of the Singaporean group Sembcorp

·        Cholderton & District Water (Cholderton) – always privately owned by the Stephens family as part of the Cholderton Estate

·        Southern Water (Worthing) – once publicly owned, now owned by the investor and pension fund consortium Greensands Investments

·        Portsmouth Water (Havant) – always privately owned, now a private limited company

·        South East Water (Snodland) – always privately owned, currently owned by Australian and Canadian investment funds

Why is there more private ownership than there ever used to be, and why is water now such an attractive and secure investment, especially for foreign investors?  Because we have a gutless State that expects our loyalty yet will not exercise its duty to provide and protect the framework of community life.  Its duty now is to the owners of capital and no-one else.  Concerns about financial engineering at the heart of the water industry go unheeded.

This should come as no surprise, given that the British State is irrevocably captured by the City of London.  Every aspect of potential policy is judged by whether or not the City benefits.  The City’s trade is no longer in facts but in fictions.  Without laws and the power of force to compel obedience to them, its wealth, and therefore the standing of the whole British economy, is as fleeting as the blips on its computer screens.  One reason why we as a party support deep cuts in the military budget is because we fear that the military today have no real role in the defence of the realm but exist mainly to enforce the City’s writ at home and abroad.  Third World regimes that seek to repossess their common wealth for the benefit of their own folk will not be tolerated.  (Think Suez.  Think Mossadegh.)  It can’t be allowed, not least because that sort of thing might even encourage us to do the same.

There are some superficially good bits to the Water Bill that will increase the supply to Wessex with minimal effort.  It will make it easier for those with private water supplies – farmers and industrialists – to feed the surplus into the public supply.  It will also make it easier for water companies to trade bulk supplies across their boundaries.  Not exactly a national water grid – which isn’t really practical – but a poor man’s version perhaps.  It’s not the solution because it’s not addressing the real problem.  We’ve noted before that Wessex is running out of water, for domestic and for industrial consumption.  The chalklands are being sucked dry and that’s because nothing must stand in the way of London overspill housing.  That’s the real problem we aren’t allowed to mention.

These measures at the margins aren’t going to transform the industry because they won’t alter the fact that the distribution network is a natural monopoly.  No competitor is going to lay a whole new set of water mains.  As with electricity, gas, telecommunications and railways, somebody owns and operates the network while being forced by the regulator to allow others access to it for a fee.  Those others can be little more than trading and billing operations, with a foreign call centre attached.  They don’t actually get their hands dirty at all.

So if there’s no real competition in the provision of real services, what’s the benefit to the consumer?  There isn’t one: it’s a tollbooth economy.  Indeed, in the water industry there is what is called the ‘special merger regime’, which means that even if a merger offers clear cost advantages to the consumer it might still not be allowed, if the number of companies would fall below that needed for comparison purposes if the regulator is to have any idea of what is really going on.

Public provision would be cheaper, if only the democratic sector would allow itself to have access to capital.  To do that requires a model of State action that is now all but illegal under international law.  The laws are made by the glove puppets of private capital, with or without public consent.  In politics, you can have any colour, it seems, as long as it’s blue.  The ongoing theft of public assets is legal; the repossession of private ones therefore requires first a revolution of the mind.

So the answer is?  Solidarity.  Among decentralists.  It isn’t to fight private centralism with public centralism on the Soviet or Labour model.  It isn’t to sneer at nationalists in Scotland or Catalonia for not seeing the ‘big picture’ and to predict their imminent demise at the hands of global finance.  It’s to recognise how they fit into the big picture, like every other bit of the jigsaw of resistance.  It’s to support local and regional initiatives wherever they may be, and never to lift a finger in defence of the property claims of private corporations.  (They’ve had their chance and they’ve abused it shamelessly.)  It’s to demand not the dissolution of the EU for the benefit of the liberal imperialist nation-states but its transformation into a true Europe of the regions, where subsidiarity really does what it says on the tin.  There’s no shortage of solutions, and never has been, only a shortage of mainstream politicians willing to argue for them.

Scotland and Wales, along with the Crown Dependencies, are part of the seedbank of alternative economic models.  Some better than others, no doubt, but all different from the One Solution imposed throughout the English regions whether we like it or not.

Welsh Water, though initially privatised along with the rest, is now owned by a not-for-profit company.  Scottish Water has never been privatised, despite Gordon Brown’s attempts to put it on the sales list to fund his spending habit.  Scotland’s independence White Paper issues a call for Royal Mail in Scotland to be returned to public ownership.  Scotland’s canals have never left, while those in England & Wales now have.  The Coalition plans to privatise English Heritage, judging conservation to be no part of the core functions of government.  Alex Salmond and his colleagues could hardly be clearer that they won’t be following suit: “This Government does not measure the worth of culture and heritage solely in money – we value culture and heritage precisely because they embody our heart and soul, and our essence."  It’s a different world.  Everything in England that ought to be cherished is regarded instead as a resource to be exploited, preferably by foreign capital; England itself is viewed as nothing more than a base for economic and military aggression.

Why the difference?  It comes down to the fact that in the Celtic fringe the home State and the community are viewed as complementary, not as sworn enemies.  In Scotland’s governance, the contribution of civil society is welcomed as that of a critical friend.  In England’s governance, the contribution of civil society is welcomed as that of an abused domestic servant, carrying the burden of ‘the Big Society’ while the toffs trouser the cash that is meant to pay for the services our government used to provide.

The problem is that it isn’t ‘our’ government and never has been.  The mixed economy and the welfare state were a fleeting illusion in England because England isn’t English.  England is Norman.  Scotland’s constitutional bedrock is the sovereignty of the people.  England’s is that the Crown in Parliament can do no wrong.  It can be held to account only in accordance with concessions it has chosen to make.  Magna Carta doesn’t apply in Scotland because it was never needed there.  It is applauded in England only because the English are the most conquered subjects of all.

Hope lies in the regions, not in London.  The political and economic elites that govern the UK from London are completely interchangeable through the revolving door of jobs and directorships.  That system cannot be taken over.  Labour tried, and failed so miserably that it was Labour that was captured instead.  Increasingly, those in Scotland and Wales now recognise that.  We need to follow them into making our own decisions.  To be English, rather than simply Anglo-Norman, is not to dream of occupying the citadels of power but to deny them the legitimacy they crave.  It is to build the regional alternative, to link up with the technicians and the administrators, with those who are sick of the bankers and the lawyers, with all those who can envisage a better way.

Before nationalisation, the electricity industry included companies with some rather interesting names: the Cornwall Electric Power Company, the East Anglian Electric Supply Company and the Wessex Electricity Company.  In water, there was the Wessex Water Board, later subsumed into the Wessex Water Authority.  In telecommunications, Post Office Telephones had a South-Western Region that stretched as far east as Southampton.  In radio and television, the BBC’s West Region once did the same.  And we once had Wessex Trains.  Wessex has had so many opportunities to get it right, to form a joined-up, self-reliant region within a free England and a co-operative Europe at peace with itself and the world.  So many opportunities.  And every one of them thrown away to take up again the London yoke.  The message needs to be hammered home again and again: if you can’t join them (and you can’t, without betraying all around you), then beat them.

Down The Drain

Thames Water’s bills are set to rise.  That’s bad news in Swindon, especially as the reason given for needing the money is to upgrade infrastructure in London.

The locals aren’t happy and the suggestion has been made that perhaps Thames should be split into Upper and Lower zones for billing purposes.  An excellent idea.  London can well afford to pay for its own infrastructure.  Which of the London parties will include it in their manifesto?  That’s right.

It makes sense to us as an interim solution but what is really needed is for Wessex to take back control of its own natural resources.  Forty years ago, most of Wessex was supplied by local water boards, made up of councillors from the area served.  Swindon, along with Bath, Plymouth, Southampton and Winchester, was one of five Wessex councils that still ran its own water department.  These were financed by municipal bonds, and ultimately by ratepayers, but under democratic control, as befits a natural monopoly.  

Because of Treasury interference, however, the publicly owned water service was never able to spend what was needed to keep itself up to date.  When we hear about 'crumbling Victorian sewers' needing replacement we really ought to ask why the Victorians were willing to put public money into public works and our generation is not.  Might it have something to do with the ruling ideology that sees public utilities as pipes for channelling customers' payments into deep private pockets?

Today Thames is a subsidiary of Kemble Water, a consortium based in Australia.  Surely decisions about water bills in Wessex shouldn’t depend on what London demands, let alone what suits investors in Sydney?  In recent years, large slices of the company’s shares have been bought by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the China Investment Corporation.  Are they elected by the voters of Swindon?  If not, ought we to describe this situation as progress?

Squeezed Down The Plughole

“Man stalks across the landscape, and desert follows his footsteps.”
Herodotus (5th century BC)

North-eastern Wessex, along with much of the rest of southern and eastern England, is now subject to a hosepipe ban. Parts of western Wessex are heading that way too.

Why? Last night, the BBC’s reporter let slip that one component of the problem is population growth. Thank you. Perhaps the reporter has since been quietly led outside and ‘dealt with’? For a long time, it’s been against the policy of the BBC and of the London regime as a whole to mention the ‘P’ word. Half a century of ceaseless mental dragooning has left them unable to tell the difference between racism and preventing the destruction of the environment through over-use. Nothing could be worse than curbing the right to live wherever you want, regardless of the consequences for others. That would be prejudice in favour of those already here, an attack on the equal right of all human beings to devour their world. And anything, even the end of civilisation as we know it, would be better than that.

Our own population policy recognises that something must be done, in the most humane way possible, or something will be done anyway, in ways that are less than humane. New housebuilding must be wound down and the economy, especially the financial sector, radically restructured to remove the pathological imperative for growth. Emigration must be encouraged. Paying folk to leave our shores would be well worthwhile in terms of improved quality of life for those left behind. Less stressed, less polluted, lower cost. Child benefit needs to be reformed to remove any incentive for having large families. One way would be to pay it on an inverse sliding scale, tailing off as family size grows. This would more accurately reflect the true costs of child-rearing, encouraging the re-use of clothing and toys, for example. (At present, the only distinction made is between the first child and all subsequent children.)

That the London parties will all throw up their hands in horror at such suggestions shows how out of touch they’ve become. They forget that a sustained or, where still possible, improved quality of life for all ought to be the primary goal of sound political thought and action. Deliberately fostering irresponsible and environmentally destructive practices that undermine that quality of life is what they do best. For the New Left in particular, the creation of conditions of tension in the belief that a better society will somehow emerge out of them is an article of faith (‘chaos is good’). On the near Right, there is a similar belief that chaos is self-correcting, through the operation of markets (‘greed is good’), but stunned silence when markets hit resource barriers. What do you mean, we can’t buy our way out?

The result is authoritarian panic, lashing out at the symptoms. Viewers of Channel 4 News last night will have seen Jon Snow floating various possibilities with his interviewee. Putting a (horrendously expensive) pipeline alongside the new HS2 rail link to shove water Londonwards. Banning the installation of new baths and power showers. And this is the same Jon Snow who supports building 2 million new homes, including on greenfield land. Will the penny ever drop? Solutions are needed, Jon. Solutions that don’t go on feeding the problem. Solutions that don’t penalise those who are not the fundamental cause of the problem. Solutions that get folk to open their eyes to what the fundamental cause really is. And the threat it poses to all of us who just want to go on living our lives in some reasonable state of comfort.

It really isn’t a lot to ask. Just a whole lot more than the London parties are willing to deliver. Much of the time they seem actually to relish the scarcity their policies promote. More folk, fewer resources. So more rationing, and fairness, and jobs for the boys (and the girls) who oversee it all! More folk, higher house prices. So smaller houses, making super-efficient use of space! More folk, less water. So new Building Regulations that only permit showers! More folk, less farmland. So a vegan diet for all! Eliminate your non-needs! Minimalise, move over and make room! Stop living! Start existing!

Seen in this context, the drive for a less wasteful society is not a neutral, technical process but carries all kinds of ideological baggage needing to be screened. Unavoidable scarcity and avoidable scarcity have been deliciously fused to deter any analysis of the latter. Yes, the future will be constrained. But the economic constraints brought about by the exhaustion of energy minerals and other non-renewable resources will be bad enough without ageing hippies and their acolytes engineering a situation in which a whole level of political constraints gets imposed on top so as to keep order in their human zoo.

Missing the Obvious

There’s a water crisis looming. The Coalition wants us all to be more careful. Hippy conservationists seem to agree that water meters, dual-flush toilets and garden water butts will take the pressure off. Maybe sharing showers or bathwater would help. All of which is nonsense. It’s nonsense because we would actually have more than enough water if we’d limit ourselves to a sustainable population. Climate change, if it proves to be anything more than a corporatist hoax, may make the shortage worse but the real cause is letting folk live where the water ain’t.

Over the past 90 years we have seen a long-term drift of England’s population from north to south. The northern cities, supplied from reservoirs in the Pennines, the Lake District and Wales, are not short of water, just inhabitants to use it. The southern cities, growing unsustainably, depend on squeezing water out of exhausted aquifers and planning new reservoirs on good farmland. Bristol has a clutch of reservoirs supplied by rain off the Mendips yet still has to import half its drinking water from Wales via the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal. The Thames valley has a significant water deficit, which re-opening of the Thames & Severn Canal may partly relieve. Swindon remains a growth area, despite drawing its water from the Thames and the groundwater source that feeds the Kennet, one of the most heavily abstracted rivers in the country. There’s talk of building a national water grid to redress the imbalance between supply and demand but there are limits to how much the gathering-grounds of upland Britain can realistically deliver, not least because water is heavy and pumping it uphill uses scarce energy.

Obsessed with markets, Ministers seem more keen to allow users to switch suppliers and investors to extract profits than to focus on managing resources sustainably, let alone democratically. (We should never forget that municipal water departments were STOLEN from local folk by the London regime in a series of moves between 1973 and 1989. No compensation has ever been paid: the proceeds from privatisation funded tax cuts for the rich.)

The fact is that we’re all being taken for idiots. The forthcoming shortages are self-inflicted. Pulling together, Blitz-style, to do our bit for water conservation is the kind of script that well-meaning Guardian readers love. Like the mythical slow-boiled frog, they cannot see that the problem can ONLY get worse so long as development in Wessex continues. No doubt they’ll be among the first to offer up their garden shed to ease the housing shortage too.

Freedom cannot thrive in high-density environments. Throughout the history of human settlement, urban areas have always been more tightly regulated than rural ones, because the pressures on resource management are greater. The point is the same whether the subject matter be fire regulations, waste disposal, clean air or congestion charges. Professor Leopold Kohr, in The Breakdown of Nations, warned that density also has direct social consequences: “the police force of communities, to cope with the ever present danger of sudden social fusion, must increase at a more than proportionate rate as the population increases, not because larger cities harbour proportionately more bad men than smaller ones, but because, after a certain point, social size becomes itself the chief criminal.”

The obvious is being missed: that it is always better to have the foresight to prevent problems arising than to panic over what is ultimately the inability to devise any lasting solution compatible with liberty.