alex coope (hullbantam)

When Margaret Thatcher made England and Wales the only countries in the world with fully privatised water, the naysayers argued it was a terrible idea. Today, everyone agrees privatisation has been a roaring success. It has delivered an impressive rise in customer bills which has coincided with an equally impressive rise in shareholder profits. These improvements were delivered through efficiency savings, such as not building any reservoirs since 1992 and forgetting about silly ideas like sewage treatment. Thanks to neoliberalism, turds are now a common sight at our beaches and marine life is not. If that wasn’t impressive enough, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has confirmed the UK is officially the world’s dampest desert. Three-quarters of the nation has been plunged into drought, despite the fact it constantly pisses down. You are therefore banned from gardening and bathing your children so that data centres don’t go without. No one knows why countries that contain actual deserts don’t experience the same difficulties we do. For example, Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a hose pipe ban. Unfortunately, we live in a place where the weather breaks everything. Sunshine? Drought. Rain? Floods. An inch of snow? The whole country closes for some reason. The only weather the UK can actually cope with is grey and miserable. Any deviation leads to immediate national collapse. If we didn’t have such a brilliant water system, we’d be in serious trouble. But thankfully, our system is built to protect corporate profits, no matter what. Everything is secondary to that, including your ability to drink. Thankfully, Andy Burnham is showing leadership on the matter. He is taking the emergency step of doing absolutely nothing. When questioned about nationalisation, the Prime Minister calmly explained that his donors won’t allow it. In a bizarre coincidence, the system that allows them to personally profit is the only one that could possibly work. Sure, we could end up with crop failures and food shortages, but I’m sure things would’ve been worse if Jeremy Corbyn had got his way. Obviously, this is not a systemic problem, it’s a technological one. Virtually all our rainfall is lost because we can’t make pipes that don’t burst. Water companies have absolutely no incentive to stop leaks and every incentive not to, but I’m confident this has nothing whatsoever to do with the matter.