Water Companies Steal Our Money.

While one part of Britain floods and another has a hosepipe ban imposed, water company executives are busy stealing our money, stuffing it greedily into their pockets and then using every trick they can find to avoid paying tax. At Thames Water they received a tax "rebate" amounting to £76 million, but still made enough profit to shove a bonus of £420,000 into the greedy hands of its chief executive, Martin Baggs, as well as paying him a salary of £420,000 per annum. In other words he gets the equivalent of two lottery wins every year as a reward for being no better than a common thief. They are not so much utility companies, therefore, but organised crime syndicates that are little better than machines designed to feed the Tory party with "donations." That is the nature of privatisation under any Tory government and, in ten years time, articles will be appearing in the press explaining how and why the NHS is doing exactly the same sort of things. Like the water companies, the NHS will engage expensive PR men to patiently explain why you must die so they can "reinvest" in such crucial items as potted plants for the chief executive's new multi-million pound office suite and even more expensive accountants whose only job is to make absolutely sure that those robbing us have to pay no tax. There is only one cure for the anti-social crime spree of the water companies - renationalisation without compensation. Want reasonably priced water? Think that utility companies with over-bloated profits filched directly out of your pocket should actually pay some tax? Think that executives with all the instincts of Al Capone should be a thing of the past? Then stop voting Tory.

Thames Water: A Tale Of Ordinary Capitalist Folk.

In the past five years Kemble Water Holdings, the Macquarie-led vehicle that owns Thames Water, has paid dividends to its investors totalling £700 million and has paid not one single penny in tax. In fact it has been given a tax rebate of £43.7 million while, at the same time, its subsidary, Thames Water, has paid out £1.4 billion in dividends. Par for the course when it comes to the privatised utility companies you might think. After all that's why they were privatised in the first place - so that wealthy people could get their hands on even more wealth by extorting ever more more money out of a captive customer base. What is shocking, however, is that the taxpayer is now expected to shell out £3.6 billion to build a a tunnel under the Thames to prevent sewage leaking into the river. Er, shouldn't Thames Water be paying for that? Well, under the new rules of capitalism in which profits are privatised and debt is nationalised, apparently not. Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, has apparently accepted a long and complicated explanation from Thames Water that shows quite conclusively that the utility company has a perfect right to hold its hand out. That alone seems to indicate that she's either a complete moron or she's on the take. Once more we have the spectacle of a private company filling its overly deep pockets with our money as it takes advantage of the neoliberal concept of "money for old rope" and then leaving us to pick up the bill for the investment they should be making. If the Tories are so concerned with "benefit scroungers" maybe they should be looking at this bunch of criminals.