Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
The Tories have to go, for their incompetence and corruption, but nothing about Labour’s record in charge in Wales or local government fills me with any confidence.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
What is it with financial institutions that their formidably well-remunerated bosses appear to have no fucking clue what they're doing and expect us to rescue them from their stupidity?
They really have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
Does whether it's petrol or diesel matter?
Also: the majority of older cars are driven by people who cannot afford newer ones. It's alright people who are reasonably well-off saying their vehicles meet it; it will badly affect many others who are less well-off.
I don't believe my VW Passat (2012) meets the requirement.
Having said all that; it's probably a good idea. But you cannot ignore its negative consequences when talking about the positives.
Not necessarily. I had to buy a new (second hand) car to replace my non compliant diesel MPV a few years ago when the original ULEZ came in, and I am minted. If you have a rusty old banger you can buy an almost as old and cheap banger that meets the rules - especially if it's petrol. Second hand cars are quite cheap. I agree it's going to hurt some people and that is a shame but more poor people are affected by breathing dirty air (check out how many inner city schools are in areas with poor air quality) than are affected by having to get a slightly newer car.
As I probably mentioned previously, parking charges in the centre of Glasgow (currently £3.20 ph on a meter) would already surely put off people on a low income only able to afford an old banger. It seems inconceivable to me that these folk could afford to drive to work in the first place (I couldn’t).
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Depends what you think a Mayor is for, and there are two views on that. One is the one @Leon was talking about last night- to be Mr London (or wherever), bang the drum for the city and be the pole of unity for the population. It's not a wrong view, though it's more a thing on the right. We like our leaders to lead.
The other is the one to get nitty gritty things done. Realistic plans and schemes to improve lives.
Boris, whatever was wrong about him (and was wrong at the time) was a damn good Mayor of the first sort. Sadiq is good on the second front but not the first. Nothing wrong with that- my distant impression is that Andy Street does the same sort of thing with a blue tint in the West Midlands.
Really good Mayors manage both. Prime Ken did it, Andy Burnham seems similar. Steve Norris might well have been the same. Part of the problem for London Conservatives is that they seem bent on choosing a candidate who does neither.
The Right likes the Raa Raa Raa London brah model of mayorship because it is an all mouth and no trousers approach to governing that distracts trivial minded people with nonsense and doesn't get anything done, and getting nothing done is their favoured model of government. Could Khan be a bit more flash? Maybe. But getting actual stuff done to improve people's lives - like building transport infrastructure and affordable homes and giving our kids clean air to breathe is way more important.
Actually, binning the new bus was a mistake.
The reason it cost a bit more was
1) New design 2) Made in the U.K. 3) Cost of developing the new hybrid power train
The reason for the hybrid power train was to reduce emissions - buses are/were a big chunk of particulates emissions, for example
The design included the option to go to full electric when batteries got cheap enough. This would be for new buses of that design.
The buses in question are still running in London. The drivers prefer them to other designs - driver ergonomics was an input into the deign, for a change.
So if we had kept rolling them out, the London bus fleet would be going electric, using a made in the U.K. vehicle.
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
Does whether it's petrol or diesel matter?
Also: the majority of older cars are driven by people who cannot afford newer ones. It's alright people who are reasonably well-off saying their vehicles meet it; it will badly affect many others who are less well-off.
I don't believe my VW Passat (2012) meets the requirement.
Having said all that; it's probably a good idea. But you cannot ignore its negative consequences when talking about the positives.
It’s something that can be useful in dense central London, with a lot of traffic and good public transport - but totally inappropriate in a more rural area with low-density housing and non-existant or unreliable public transport, that describes a lof of the area between the M25 and N/S circular roads.
In particular, including Heathrow just inside the new zone, comes across as being set up to catch out large numbers of occasional visitors.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
As well as being an inherently misconceived idea the privatised water companies have been appallingly regulated. No wonder they took advantage of it.
Been looking into the still state owned Scottish Water, which seems to be well run, providing water services at a lower cost, while investing more. People of England and Wales read this and weep:
If even the National takes a rather different view (although naturally they reflexively say independence would magically solve it) I'm not sure that's correct.
I would have said - entirely non-expert so I could easily be wrong - the key issue is we have an essentially Victorian water network serving more than twice the population it was designed for (and to much higher standards than the Victorians demanded) while the density of building makes renewal work very difficult.
This is compounded by the eagerness of companies to show profits rather than carry out the work stopping leaks or improving the sewer system, and further compounded by the poor quality of many managers and regulators who are appointed because of who they know not what they know.
I don't think that would be solved by renationalisation. Ultimately, it will be solved by accepting we need to prioritise renewing our utility network and putting actual engineers in charge to make it happen. That would not be cheap (exhibit A - I K Brunel).
One of the major problems with Scottish Water is their reluctance to extend their network to facilitate new developments, whether residential or commercial. It is proving a serious block to new investment and the obtaining of planning permission.
Which was the classic issue of other nationalised businesses. They saw new customers as a pain & a problem.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
As i've said before, I don't think Thatcher is going to go down in history as the great, reviving prime minister many people have liked to believe for a long tome.
Too much of what she promised has turned out to be a short-term sticking plaster, or outright fantasy, and there will always be the question having over this of what would have happened if the Continental, SDP/Liberal Alliance route had been taken instead.
Selling off all of your possessions so that you can go out on the raz every night is never a sustainable strategy.
On Susan Trump running for the Tories in London - as others are suggesting she is basically all the party have left. Nutjobs spewing lunacy in the mistaken belief that everyone who is right-thinking agrees with them.
I had expected Sunak to clean the house a little - a firm directional change, tack to the centre to win back those critical votes whilst throwing enough populist bones to the red wall Brexiteers to keep them Tory.
Instead he's managing to pander to all the extremes enough to drive away more voters whilst simultaneously not pandering to the extremes enough to keep them on board. We're going to see a choice of conservative parties on the ballot (unless they manage to pull SDPKIPREFCLAIM together as the "Britannia Party" or some other proto-fascist outfit and actually campaign on the policies that right-thinking people want.
The "respectable" hard right used to be a minority faction both in votes and in politics. Despite Brexit making it briefly feel bigger than it is, the "sink the migrants / support our veterans" mob are still only a small vote. Yet currently has 3 parties vying for its vote plus the lunatic wing of the Tories resolutely dragging them in the same direction, that pro-gollywog vote being precious. Madness piled on madness.
Isn't it just a case of Boris/Brexit hollowing out the sane Tories which makes it very difficult to recover to a more central position and broad church.
QTWAIN.
Boris at the last election had a broad church central position which attracted one of the highest shares of the vote in England recorded in the past half century. Higher even than Tony Blair achieved.
No "centrists" got kicked out, the only people who lost the whip were a few diehard zealots who voted against the whip on a confidence motion on Europe which is not a "centrist" position whatsoever.
Indeed, 52% of UK voters voted to leave the EU. That was the centrist position in 2019, not try and block Brexit by whatever means possible.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
The Tories have to go, for their incompetence and corruption, but nothing about Labour’s record in charge in Wal
On Susan Trump running for the Tories in London - as others are suggesting she is basically all the party have left. Nutjobs spewing lunacy in the mistaken belief that everyone who is right-thinking agrees with them.
I had expected Sunak to clean the house a little - a firm directional change, tack to the centre to win back those critical votes whilst throwing enough populist bones to the red wall Brexiteers to keep them Tory.
Instead he's managing to pander to all the extremes enough to drive away more voters whilst simultaneously not pandering to the extremes enough to keep them on board. We're going to see a choice of conservative parties on the ballot (unless they manage to pull SDPKIPREFCLAIM together as the "Britannia Party" or some other proto-fascist outfit and actually campaign on the policies that right-thinking people want.
The "respectable" hard right used to be a minority faction both in votes and in politics. Despite Brexit making it briefly feel bigger than it is, the "sink the migrants / support our veterans" mob are still only a small vote. Yet currently has 3 parties vying for its vote plus the lunatic wing of the Tories resolutely dragging them in the same direction, that pro-gollywog vote being precious. Madness piled on madness.
Isn't it just a case of Boris/Brexit hollowing out the sane Tories which makes it very difficult to recover to a more central position and broad church.
QTWAIN.
Boris at the last election had a broad church central position which attracted one of the highest shares of the vote in England recorded in the past half century. Higher even than Tony Blair achieved.
No "centrists" got kicked out, the only people who lost the whip were a few diehard zealots who voted against the whip on a confidence motion on Europe which is not a "centrist" position whatsoever.
I disagree, although not with the specific logic of your two points.
Your 2nd point is valid, but it is this group (and associates) that made up the centrists in the Tory party and most have gone. The reality is (and this is a generalisation) the left of the Tory party were pro remain and the right pro leave. As a consequence the right now has more sway.
I would disagree that Boris won on broad church central position. In my opinion, and one held by many is that Boris won for two reasons - Get Brexit done and Corbyn. That is not a broad church centrist position, although an excellent campaigning position at the time.
I find it difficult to argue that a lot of Tories from the left have not been driven out and that the two main causes are Boris and Brexit. They have and these are the two main reasons.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
As I observed yesterday.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two. But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Why would the people who have walked off with wheelbarrows full of cash care about the long term?
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
As i've said before, I don't think Thatcher is going to go down in history as the great, reviving prime minister many people have liked to believe for a long tome.
Too much of what she promised has turned out to be a short-term sticking plaster, or outright fantasy, and there will always be the question having over this of what would have happened if the Continental, SDP/Liberal Alliance route had been taken instead.
Selling off all of your possessions so that you can go out on the raz every night is never a sustainable strategy.
That was of course what Harold Macmillan was complaining about with his 'selling the family silver' gibe. He later clarified he didn't mind the sell-offs but he thought it was extremely stupid to consider the money raised as income instead of capital.
On Susan Trump running for the Tories in London - as others are suggesting she is basically all the party have left. Nutjobs spewing lunacy in the mistaken belief that everyone who is right-thinking agrees with them.
I had expected Sunak to clean the house a little - a firm directional change, tack to the centre to win back those critical votes whilst throwing enough populist bones to the red wall Brexiteers to keep them Tory.
Instead he's managing to pander to all the extremes enough to drive away more voters whilst simultaneously not pandering to the extremes enough to keep them on board. We're going to see a choice of conservative parties on the ballot (unless they manage to pull SDPKIPREFCLAIM together as the "Britannia Party" or some other proto-fascist outfit and actually campaign on the policies that right-thinking people want.
The "respectable" hard right used to be a minority faction both in votes and in politics. Despite Brexit making it briefly feel bigger than it is, the "sink the migrants / support our veterans" mob are still only a small vote. Yet currently has 3 parties vying for its vote plus the lunatic wing of the Tories resolutely dragging them in the same direction, that pro-gollywog vote being precious. Madness piled on madness.
Isn't it just a case of Boris/Brexit hollowing out the sane Tories which makes it very difficult to recover to a more central position and broad church.
QTWAIN.
Boris at the last election had a broad church central position which attracted one of the highest shares of the vote in England recorded in the past half century. Higher even than Tony Blair achieved.
No "centrists" got kicked out, the only people who lost the whip were a few diehard zealots who voted against the whip on a confidence motion on Europe which is not a "centrist" position whatsoever.
Indeed, 52% of UK voters voted to leave the EU. That was the centrist position in 2019, not try and block Brexit by whatever means possible.
You and Barty setting yourselves up as the arbiters of centrism is a jolly wheeze.
Sadiq Khan is right to fear "Susan", whoever she is. She looks utterly terrifying. "You are safer with Susan" is presumably a threat, not reassurance.
She backed Boris and Brexit, shilled for Trump and hailed the Truss budget. I am not sure you could find someone more out of step with majority opinion in London. It would be an interesting choice, to say the least. But given how the party has hollowed out and moved to the right since 2019, she probably represents what a lot of Tory candidates are going to be like in the coming years.
She will win Havering and Bexley and Harrow, where she led the council in 2013, by a landslide but yes isn't going to have the reach beyond there to the broader London suburbs and West London she needs to have a chance of beating Khan.
She is now surely odds on favourite to be Conservative candidate for Mayor though
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
At the risk of triggering @ydoethur again, it does seem as if Ofwat have not carried out their duties very well. Anyone testing financial stability should surely have included a significant interest rate rise as a clear and obvious risk, particularly when interest rates were at record lows. It wasn't so much a risk as an inevitability, only the timing was uncertain.
This should have restricted the amount of debt they were allowed to carry, no matter how cheap it was at the time. It is absolutely basic. These companies have become bets on the gilt market but not very good ones since the betting was all one way.
Why would I be triggered by Ofwat? It's OFSTED I've got in my sights.
I got the impression yesterday that OFanything was enough these days and you have a point.
The problem with regulation in this country can be summed up thus -
In the court case following the collapse of Kids Company, the *judge* said that it would be invidious to put legal responsibility on the legally responsible trustees. That is, punishing the legally responsible “regulators” of the charity, for not doing their fucking job, would be Not Nice.
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
Does whether it's petrol or diesel matter?
Also: the majority of older cars are driven by people who cannot afford newer ones. It's alright people who are reasonably well-off saying their vehicles meet it; it will badly affect many others who are less well-off.
I don't believe my VW Passat (2012) meets the requirement.
Having said all that; it's probably a good idea. But you cannot ignore its negative consequences when talking about the positives.
It’s something that can be useful in dense central London, with a lot of traffic and good public transport - but totally inappropriate in a more rural area with low-density housing and non-existant or unreliable public transport, that describes a lof of the area between the M25 and N/S circular roads.
In particular, including Heathrow just inside the new zone, comes across as being set up to catch out large numbers of occasional visitors.
Nonexistent public transport in outer London? WTAF are you talking about?
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Sadiq Khan is right to fear "Susan", whoever she is. She looks utterly terrifying. "You are safer with Susan" is presumably a threat, not reassurance.
She backed Boris and Brexit, shilled for Trump and hailed the Truss budget. I am not sure you could find someone more out of step with majority opinion in London. It would be an interesting choice, to say the least. But given how the party has hollowed out and moved to the right since 2019, she probably represents what a lot of Tory candidates are going to be like in the coming years.
She will win Havering and Bexley and Harrow, where she led the council in 2013, by a landslide but yes isn't going to have the reach beyond there to the broader London suburbs and West London she needs to have a chance of beating Khan.
She is now surely odds on favourite to be Conservative candidate for Mayor though
Yes, although some have called for CCHQ to reopen the nomination process.
Interesting EU election poll. The hard right ECR (Mreloni, and the Polish nationalists in PiS) which the Tories used to belong to) is being outflanked by the ID ultras (AfD, Le Pen), while the Left is doing well thanks to Sinn Fein. I suspect that it'll end up with EPP (centre-right), Renew (Macron) and S&D (social democrats) still holding the only viable majority. Early days though.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
It'd be completely illegal for Thames Water to actively block the water supply. The sewers , pipes and so forth that have been going for 100+ years aren't going to stop working overnight. When a company is as upside down and close to bankruptcy as Thames Water is right now I can't imagine contractors are rushing out to do work for them on credit terms.
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
Does whether it's petrol or diesel matter?
Also: the majority of older cars are driven by people who cannot afford newer ones. It's alright people who are reasonably well-off saying their vehicles meet it; it will badly affect many others who are less well-off.
I don't believe my VW Passat (2012) meets the requirement.
Having said all that; it's probably a good idea. But you cannot ignore its negative consequences when talking about the positives.
It’s something that can be useful in dense central London, with a lot of traffic and good public transport - but totally inappropriate in a more rural area with low-density housing and non-existant or unreliable public transport, that describes a lof of the area between the M25 and N/S circular roads.
In particular, including Heathrow just inside the new zone, comes across as being set up to catch out large numbers of occasional visitors.
Nonexistent public transport in outer London? WTAF are you talking about?
I assume you sir have never visited outer London.
Compared to many other semi-rural areas, public transport within the M25 can be good. But compared to central London, it can be utterly cr@p. I discovered this when walking the London Loop a few years back, where bus services, routes and times were not necessarily helpful.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
But also research funding only provides about 75% of the cost of doing research. The standard government funding pays 80% of the full economic cost, and charity funding pays less. So research-intensive universities need teaching to subsidise the research they do.
RFK Jr was also anti the Iraq War, is sceptical of NATO and wants a wealth tax. He is basically Corbynite/Sandersite on some issues, Trumpite on others
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Depends what you think a Mayor is for, and there are two views on that. One is the one @Leon was talking about last night- to be Mr London (or wherever), bang the drum for the city and be the pole of unity for the population. It's not a wrong view, though it's more a thing on the right. We like our leaders to lead.
The other is the one to get nitty gritty things done. Realistic plans and schemes to improve lives.
Boris, whatever was wrong about him (and was wrong at the time) was a damn good Mayor of the first sort. Sadiq is good on the second front but not the first. Nothing wrong with that- my distant impression is that Andy Street does the same sort of thing with a blue tint in the West Midlands.
Really good Mayors manage both. Prime Ken did it, Andy Burnham seems similar. Steve Norris might well have been the same. Part of the problem for London Conservatives is that they seem bent on choosing a candidate who does neither.
The Right likes the Raa Raa Raa London brah model of mayorship because it is an all mouth and no trousers approach to governing that distracts trivial minded people with nonsense and doesn't get anything done, and getting nothing done is their favoured model of government. Could Khan be a bit more flash? Maybe. But getting actual stuff done to improve people's lives - like building transport infrastructure and affordable homes and giving our kids clean air to breathe is way more important.
Actually, binning the new bus was a mistake.
The reason it cost a bit more was
1) New design 2) Made in the U.K. 3) Cost of developing the new hybrid power train
The reason for the hybrid power train was to reduce emissions - buses are/were a big chunk of particulates emissions, for example
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
Does whether it's petrol or diesel matter?
Also: the majority of older cars are driven by people who cannot afford newer ones. It's alright people who are reasonably well-off saying their vehicles meet it; it will badly affect many others who are less well-off.
I don't believe my VW Passat (2012) meets the requirement.
Having said all that; it's probably a good idea. But you cannot ignore its negative consequences when talking about the positives.
It’s something that can be useful in dense central London, with a lot of traffic and good public transport - but totally inappropriate in a more rural area with low-density housing and non-existant or unreliable public transport, that describes a lof of the area between the M25 and N/S circular roads.
In particular, including Heathrow just inside the new zone, comes across as being set up to catch out large numbers of occasional visitors.
Nonexistent public transport in outer London? WTAF are you talking about?
I assume you sir have never visited outer London.
I think it fair to say that an issue in really outer London, is that the transport links are quite radial. So it is easy (sometimes) to go in or out of the centre. But going sideways (as it were) is a pain.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
But also research funding only provides about 75% of the cost of doing research. The standard government funding pays 80% of the full economic cost, and charity funding pays less. So research-intensive universities need teaching to subsidise the research they do.
You're a scientist, I think?
In the fields I was working in it (notably cultural history) tended to be the other way around. A research grant normally covered about twice the cost of the research project, and it was accepted that was one way of keeping unis afloat.
This was one reason why a lot of senior professors never did any teaching. They were getting the money in to subsidise their colleagues.
But in any case, my answer would be that if teaching is needed to subsidise research, the Russell Group needs to take it a lot more seriously.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
The Tories have to go, for their incompetence and corruption, but nothing about Labour’s record in charge in Wal
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
What a load of crap.
All investments can go down as well as up.
If shareholders make a bad investment that's not the taxpayers responsibility.
The sort of “investors” who expect the government to pick up the bill for their failings deserve to lose their shirts
Let the government take back the company for £1, and let these idiots learn a salutary lesson.
I’d say that makes the UK a better place to invest in, not worse.
Need a short, punchy slog for this new policy.
Hmmm
“Fuck Business!” ?
I speak as one who thinks that in a number of areas, Fuck Business is actually a sensible slogan. As in pollution, demanding the right to treat low end workers as disposable diapers, demanding the right not to have to invest in productivity. For a start.
This is because being Pro Business isn’t “give them everything they ask for”. Any more than bringing up children is about “give them everything they ask for”.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
You are right about this not just being a Tory issue. The post-Thatcher political settlement accepted the marketisation of such things as water. Whilst all of the utilities are regulated industries (and thus can be directed by government how to behave) the mood has been to let the market keep doing what it is and use the tax revenues raised to pay for the public good.
The issue now is the breakdown in that post-Thatcher settlement. Brexit was for millions a direct rebellion against the long-term decay and decline that so many communities have suffered in this era. The Johnson government promising money a direct result. But there is no money, and not only has the market overseen the hollowing out of public service provision, its doing so in a way that threatens pensions if these outfits implode like a carbon-fibre submarine under the weight of their own debts.
Lots paid for poor services, and companies crushed by massive debt.
The money has gone somewhere, hasn't it...?
As people realise they have been scammed by the spivocracy, the post-Brexit settlement will see us move to the same StateCo model which works so successfully in much of Europe (and up here in Scotland with water etc). Because we won't have much of a choice.
Yes. The big privatisations began in the 1980s, which by now feels a long time ago. Since then there have been a few massive but slow cultural changes which alter the picture.
Two 'good chaps' theories have gone. The good chaps theory of government and the good chaps theory of UK private enterprise.
A third 'good chaps' theory is on the way out, especially since 2007/8: the good chaps theory of regulation.
If, as would be good, we had drinkable water in our taps and disposal of sewage without pouring it over children as they swim, there are few ways of doing it. The state has proved a less than brilliant monopoly provider; the unregulated free market isn't possible as it would walk away from water if plastic duck manufacture proved a better investment leaving us to die; and a regulated 'free' monopoly market is failing.
Brexit could actually provide a platform for rethinking how government and capitalism cooperation might work. Hyper-globalisation is beginning to be questioned. We might begin to wonder why UK water has proved so attractive to overseas investors, while less so to domestic ones.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
One of the sideplots in the Thames Water shitstorm is that it is 19.7% owned by the general Uni pension pot (AKA "USS" which always makes me think of an enormous boat).
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
There is a shortage of people wanting to buy -£14bn for +£1.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Oh FFS! That's what it means to be a shareholder. They've taken the dividends so now they can bloody well pay for the losses. We don't need more incompetently run arrogant groups thinking they are Too Big To Fail.
If Starmer's Labour does not get that what's the point of it?
Sadiq Khan is right to fear "Susan", whoever she is. She looks utterly terrifying. "You are safer with Susan" is presumably a threat, not reassurance.
She backed Boris and Brexit, shilled for Trump and hailed the Truss budget. I am not sure you could find someone more out of step with majority opinion in London. It would be an interesting choice, to say the least. But given how the party has hollowed out and moved to the right since 2019, she probably represents what a lot of Tory candidates are going to be like in the coming years.
She will win Havering and Bexley and Harrow, where she led the council in 2013, by a landslide but yes isn't going to have the reach beyond there to the broader London suburbs and West London she needs to have a chance of beating Khan.
She is now surely odds on favourite to be Conservative candidate for Mayor though
Yes, although some have called for CCHQ to reopen the nomination process.
It was absurd London MP Paul Scully and London AM Andrew Boff did not get through the interview stage to get on the approved list of Conservative Mayoral candidates and the final 3 to be put to London Members. Either would have had a better chance than the 3, now 2, that are left of winning.
Korski says he mentioned the alleged incident he has faced with with CCHQ but they let him through
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
There is a shortage of people wanting to buy -£14bn for +£1.
Which is why it goes into administration, the administrator seeks a buyer and the bondholders see what they get back for their £14bn.
The problem with Thames Water is that I think it's committed to buying the new Waste pipelines and that adds more billions to the debt bill...
On Susan Trump running for the Tories in London - as others are suggesting she is basically all the party have left. Nutjobs spewing lunacy in the mistaken belief that everyone who is right-thinking agrees with them.
I had expected Sunak to clean the house a little - a firm directional change, tack to the centre to win back those critical votes whilst throwing enough populist bones to the red wall Brexiteers to keep them Tory.
Instead he's managing to pander to all the extremes enough to drive away more voters whilst simultaneously not pandering to the extremes enough to keep them on board. We're going to see a choice of conservative parties on the ballot (unless they manage to pull SDPKIPREFCLAIM together as the "Britannia Party" or some other proto-fascist outfit and actually campaign on the policies that right-thinking people want.
The "respectable" hard right used to be a minority faction both in votes and in politics. Despite Brexit making it briefly feel bigger than it is, the "sink the migrants / support our veterans" mob are still only a small vote. Yet currently has 3 parties vying for its vote plus the lunatic wing of the Tories resolutely dragging them in the same direction, that pro-gollywog vote being precious. Madness piled on madness.
Isn't it just a case of Boris/Brexit hollowing out the sane Tories which makes it very difficult to recover to a more central position and broad church.
QTWAIN.
Boris at the last election had a broad church central position which attracted one of the highest shares of the vote in England recorded in the past half century. Higher even than Tony Blair achieved.
No "centrists" got kicked out, the only people who lost the whip were a few diehard zealots who voted against the whip on a confidence motion on Europe which is not a "centrist" position whatsoever.
I disagree, although not with the specific logic of your two points.
Your 2nd point is valid, but it is this group (and associates) that made up the centrists in the Tory party and most have gone. The reality is (and this is a generalisation) the left of the Tory party were pro remain and the right pro leave. As a consequence the right now has more sway.
I would disagree that Boris won on broad church central position. In my opinion, and one held by many is that Boris won for two reasons - Get Brexit done and Corbyn. That is not a broad church centrist position, although an excellent campaigning position at the time.
I find it difficult to argue that a lot of Tories from the left have not been driven out and that the two main causes are Boris and Brexit. They have and these are the two main reasons.
Sorry but that's a rewriting of history by those who loved to consider being pro-Europe to be the "centrist" position.
In what possible way was Dominic Grieve a part of the Tory "left"?
He didn't even vote for same sex marriage. Boris Johnson supported same sex marriage, along with David Cameron, but Dominic Grieve did not and yet Grieve is this great centrist? Why?
The idea he was this great liberal/left Tory is only because people who embrace pro-EU love to claim that.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
What is it with financial institutions that their formidably well-remunerated bosses appear to have no fucking clue what they're doing and expect us to rescue them from their stupidity?
They really have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Might I introduce you to my world. Having "no fucking clue what they're doing" is why people like me have a career sorting out the messes of their stupidity.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
As I observed yesterday.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two. But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Would have been fine if the regulator had stood over them with a metaphorical baseball bat. They could have borrowed to pay for long term infrastructure improvements. That would have required a very determined run of governments, of course
Sadiq Khan is right to fear "Susan", whoever she is. She looks utterly terrifying. "You are safer with Susan" is presumably a threat, not reassurance.
She backed Boris and Brexit, shilled for Trump and hailed the Truss budget. I am not sure you could find someone more out of step with majority opinion in London. It would be an interesting choice, to say the least. But given how the party has hollowed out and moved to the right since 2019, she probably represents what a lot of Tory candidates are going to be like in the coming years.
She will win Havering and Bexley and Harrow, where she led the council in 2013, by a landslide but yes isn't going to have the reach beyond there to the broader London suburbs and West London she needs to have a chance of beating Khan.
She is now surely odds on favourite to be Conservative candidate for Mayor though
Yes, although some have called for CCHQ to reopen the nomination process.
TBH I think the Tories will be disembowelled at the next London Mayoral Election.
Susan Hall has been spouting BS about the ULEZ and LTNs for some time afaics *, and even amongst car owners in Havering approaching 90% will have time before the election to discover that they are already compliant with the ULEZ.
Add in that afaics (have not done extensive study) LibDems have been digging in to some often Tory areas, and I think she's cruising for a bruising.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
One of the sideplots in the Thames Water shitstorm is that it is 19.7% owned by the general Uni pension pot (AKA "USS" which always makes me think of an enormous boat).
There is also the use of student accommodation as “investment” in the housing market. Many unis are up to the eyeballs in this game - which is why they were screaming in terror at the idea of students not being forced to use their accommodation in lockdown.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
There is a shortage of people wanting to buy -£14bn for +£1.
Who says its -£14bn.
Buy it from administration with the -£14bn being wiped out or taking a haircut, then it can be easily worth £1.
Just like the shareholders, the bondholders have made a bad investment. Oh well, poor old them, what a shame. They should have done better due diligence, maybe they won't be so foolish next time.
Having those who made poor investments lose out from time to time is critical for a successful market economy.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
Yeah, that'll work.
Any friends or families of Ministers ready to take a punt?
Hands up who remembers the Phoenix Four? Bought Rover Group for a tenner from BMW. Accepted a multi- million Euro dowry from BMW and, as it turned out, quite legally stripped the assets into their own bank accounts until nothing was left.
Because, absent interest payments, Thames Water will be highly profitable.
EBITDA! EBITDA!
I mean, I don't know any Finance Director who (realising this trick) capitalised EVERYTHING and then depreciated it.
Oh wait... I do. Quite a few actually.
Remind me what the D stands for again...
Actually it is the Blair settlement we are dealing with, the so called "Third Way".
Blair championed it for 3 terms and Cameron expanded it. It is the fiction that the government can fix your problems hence the huge expansion in regulation, most if it counter productive or in effective.
By nature Im for the government doing the essentials well and letting individuals sort their own lives out.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
Yeah, that'll work.
Any friends or families of Ministers ready to take a punt?
Hands up who remembers the Phoenix Four? Bought Rover Group for a tenner from BMW. Accepted a multi- million Euro dowry from BMW and, as it turned out, quite legally stripped the assets into their own bank accounts until nothing was left.
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
I have my wife's 2001 registered BMW Series 3 convertible and it is ULEZ compliant. Plus my 2002 BMW BMW 5 series, also ULEZ compliant. Both running very well.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
What is it with financial institutions that their formidably well-remunerated bosses appear to have no fucking clue what they're doing and expect us to rescue them from their stupidity?
They really have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Might I introduce you to my world. Having "no fucking clue what they're doing" is why people like me have a career sorting out the messes of their stupidity.
I remember when you first set up your consultancy you said it was 'teaching bankers not to be fuckwits.'
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
Does whether it's petrol or diesel matter?
Also: the majority of older cars are driven by people who cannot afford newer ones. It's alright people who are reasonably well-off saying their vehicles meet it; it will badly affect many others who are less well-off.
I don't believe my VW Passat (2012) meets the requirement.
Having said all that; it's probably a good idea. But you cannot ignore its negative consequences when talking about the positives.
It’s something that can be useful in dense central London, with a lot of traffic and good public transport - but totally inappropriate in a more rural area with low-density housing and non-existant or unreliable public transport, that describes a lof of the area between the M25 and N/S circular roads.
In particular, including Heathrow just inside the new zone, comes across as being set up to catch out large numbers of occasional visitors.
Nonexistent public transport in outer London? WTAF are you talking about?
I assume you sir have never visited outer London.
Pre-2016 diesel, and pre-2006 petrol cars are the approximate boundaries of non-compliance I believe.
As a different view, there is no London Borough where less than 80% of cars are ULEZ compliant.
Susan Hall is chasing a small and declining minority amongst one of the smallest vehicle owning fractions of population in the country, and trying to scaremonger the rest.
The headline tells most of the story which may be relevant to general election betting on Brighton Pavilion (Caroline Lucas, Green, is retiring).
Misreporting by the Telegraph. The Greens were going to hike parking charges massively, the new Labour Council has put it on hold. Brighton's parking problem in summer is largely due to 10,000 car drivers thinking they have a right to one of the 500 spaces on the seafront. As for tourists abandoning Brighton - ha ha. The city is heaving.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
As i've said before, I don't think Thatcher is going to go down in history as the great, reviving prime minister many people have liked to believe for a long tome.
Too much of what she promised has turned out to be a short-term sticking plaster, or outright fantasy, and there will always be the question having over this of what would have happened if the Continental, SDP/Liberal Alliance route had been taken instead.
Selling off all of your possessions so that you can go out on the raz every night is never a sustainable strategy.
That was of course what Harold Macmillan was complaining about with his 'selling the family silver' gibe. He later clarified he didn't mind the sell-offs but he thought it was extremely stupid to consider the money raised as income instead of capital.
He was right then and he was right now.
I'm old enough to remember the shit the Thatcherites gave him for that speech.
Even though I voted for her government (once, in 1983), the flaws in her philosophy were quite apparent at the time. They're glaring now.
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
Does whether it's petrol or diesel matter?
Also: the majority of older cars are driven by people who cannot afford newer ones. It's alright people who are reasonably well-off saying their vehicles meet it; it will badly affect many others who are less well-off.
I don't believe my VW Passat (2012) meets the requirement.
Having said all that; it's probably a good idea. But you cannot ignore its negative consequences when talking about the positives.
It’s something that can be useful in dense central London, with a lot of traffic and good public transport - but totally inappropriate in a more rural area with low-density housing and non-existant or unreliable public transport, that describes a lof of the area between the M25 and N/S circular roads.
In particular, including Heathrow just inside the new zone, comes across as being set up to catch out large numbers of occasional visitors.
Nonexistent public transport in outer London? WTAF are you talking about?
I assume you sir have never visited outer London.
Compared to many other semi-rural areas, public transport within the M25 can be good. But compared to central London, it can be utterly cr@p. I discovered this when walking the London Loop a few years back, where bus services, routes and times were not necessarily helpful.
If you’re close to the Tube network it’s fine, so long as your destination is close to another stop. The closer to the M25 you get, the more likely that you have to head towards the centre and back out again. Buses can be quite irregular compared to central London, and there’s a lot of people who live some distance from the bus stops.
If the Mayor was serious about getting people out of their cars, rather than raising revenue for City Hall, he’s have invested in bringing the outer bus services up to standard before adding more taxes to drivers.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
As I observed yesterday.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two. But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Why would the people who have walked off with wheelbarrows full of cash care about the long term?
Of course they don’t. It has been a fabulously successful business for them. But the regulators…sheez.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
What is it with financial institutions that their formidably well-remunerated bosses appear to have no fucking clue what they're doing and expect us to rescue them from their stupidity?
They really have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Might I introduce you to my world. Having "no fucking clue what they're doing" is why people like me have a career sorting out the messes of their stupidity.
I remember when you first set up your consultancy you said it was 'teaching bankers not to be fuckwits.'
It looks more and more like a Labour of Sisyphus.
It’s a very Green business
Fuckwits in Banks are an infinitely renewable resource.
A couple of days ago, a bright young chap in research was suggesting that a good business would be investing in property. At this stage of the market. Because house prices never go down…
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
I have my wife's 2001 registered BMW Series 3 convertible and it is ULEZ compliant. Plus my 2002 BMW BMW 5 series, also ULEZ compliant. Both running very well.
That makes me recall the flapping over unleaded petrol, when Honda nonchalantly announced that all their cars made since 1972 could use it with no adjustments.
All those BMWs are a heck of a reputational hit, however . At least they aren't Audis or Land Rovers.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
Yeah, that'll work.
Any friends or families of Ministers ready to take a punt?
Hands up who remembers the Phoenix Four? Bought Rover Group for a tenner from BMW. Accepted a multi- million Euro dowry from BMW and, as it turned out, quite legally stripped the assets into their own bank accounts until nothing was left.
Well quite. And that's why the company should/will be bought be either the Gov't or an arms length Gov't company.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
There is a shortage of people wanting to buy -£14bn for +£1.
The people that are owed the £14bn, would be the most obvious people to buy it. That way, they might get to see most of their money back over time.
They’ll likely put in their own management, restructure both the company and the debt, and look to sell it back to the stock market in a couple of years’ time.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
As I observed yesterday.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two. But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Why would the people who have walked off with wheelbarrows full of cash care about the long term?
Of course they don’t. It has been a fabulously successful business for them. But the regulators…sheez.
The regulators who've operated a revolving door of getting into bed with those they're regulating?
Seems like they've had a successful 'career' too.
Regulation doesn't work as well as the market does. If the market means that Thames Water dies and bondholders face a £14bn haircut, then they ought to be more careful in what they invest in next time. That's the market working, not failing.
Treating any firm as "too big to fail" destroys the market principles.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
This is absolutely what should happen - the business fails. I fear there are two problems though with your pro-market perspective in this case: 1 Will prove increasingly difficult to find investors willing to spend money on these things, as the collapse of rail franchising demonstrated. 2 Another private company can shag the business just as badly
Let it collapse and the shareholders get wiped out. And then sweep up the assets into a StateCo. Instead of vast billions of our money being hoovered up by another private sector bottom feeder not actually providing the service, lets actually invest in the infrastructure.
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
On Susan Trump running for the Tories in London - as others are suggesting she is basically all the party have left. Nutjobs spewing lunacy in the mistaken belief that everyone who is right-thinking agrees with them.
I had expected Sunak to clean the house a little - a firm directional change, tack to the centre to win back those critical votes whilst throwing enough populist bones to the red wall Brexiteers to keep them Tory.
Instead he's managing to pander to all the extremes enough to drive away more voters whilst simultaneously not pandering to the extremes enough to keep them on board. We're going to see a choice of conservative parties on the ballot (unless they manage to pull SDPKIPREFCLAIM together as the "Britannia Party" or some other proto-fascist outfit and actually campaign on the policies that right-thinking people want.
The "respectable" hard right used to be a minority faction both in votes and in politics. Despite Brexit making it briefly feel bigger than it is, the "sink the migrants / support our veterans" mob are still only a small vote. Yet currently has 3 parties vying for its vote plus the lunatic wing of the Tories resolutely dragging them in the same direction, that pro-gollywog vote being precious. Madness piled on madness.
Isn't it just a case of Boris/Brexit hollowing out the sane Tories which makes it very difficult to recover to a more central position and broad church.
QTWAIN.
Boris at the last election had a broad church central position which attracted one of the highest shares of the vote in England recorded in the past half century. Higher even than Tony Blair achieved.
No "centrists" got kicked out, the only people who lost the whip were a few diehard zealots who voted against the whip on a confidence motion on Europe which is not a "centrist" position whatsoever.
Indeed, 52% of UK voters voted to leave the EU. That was the centrist position in 2019, not try and block Brexit by whatever means possible.
a) You can't determine a centrist position from a binary decision
b) I was referring to the loss of the left wing Tories from the Tory party not about the political leaning of the country as a whole so the referendum is not relevant to the point I was making as that is a reflection of the views of the population not the Tory party.
c) I apologise for possibly causing confusion in my post as I used (confusingly) centrist and left wing Tories interchangeably. Although they might mean the same thing, one is in relation to the country the other is in relation to the party. I did not make that clear.
I am surprised by the disagreement. I don't think it is controversial to suggest that both Brexit and Boris has alienated the more left wing Tories (or those with more centrist views). Regardless of your political views that seems obvious. It also seems obvious that some of this has not been the normal sway from left to right and back again as normal within parties but quite an angry reaction to either Brexit or Boris or both.
Even if you are believer in Brexit and/or Boris you can't dismiss the impact of both.
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Oh FFS! That's what it means to be a shareholder. They've taken the dividends so now they can bloody well pay for the losses. We don't need more incompetently run arrogant groups thinking they are Too Big To Fail.
If Starmer's Labour does not get that what's the point of it?
Quite simply Labour are terrified of taking these companies / assets / services back onto the public books. Will take up £lots of cash which they need to spend elsewhere.
What they seem to miss - surely for reasons of electoral timidity - is that the StateCo model works. Already in the UK we have various foreign StateCo's running "privatised" services like trains and buses and deliveries and utililities.
The solution is to do the same. StateCo, run commercially but state owned. No more billions of public money walked off into the right people's pockets.
I wonder if what is spooking the government is the thought of having to rescue the USS? It's already in big trouble and losses on Thames Water might even tip it over.
That's another example of regulatory failure, right there. They should have been forcing it to have a more diverse portfolio and a better contributions system long before they did (and that goes back into at least the Blair years, so it's not a partisan thing).
Although they could actually use it as a lever to either lifeboat it or merge it with TPS.
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
Yeah, that'll work.
Any friends or families of Ministers ready to take a punt?
Hands up who remembers the Phoenix Four? Bought Rover Group for a tenner from BMW. Accepted a multi- million Euro dowry from BMW and, as it turned out, quite legally stripped the assets into their own bank accounts until nothing was left.
New Labour at its best
So you think they should have stepped in to save a private enterprise just prior to election 2005? OK.
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
Even if you clapped while balancing a ball on your nose?
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Oh FFS! That's what it means to be a shareholder. They've taken the dividends so now they can bloody well pay for the losses. We don't need more incompetently run arrogant groups thinking they are Too Big To Fail.
If Starmer's Labour does not get that what's the point of it?
Quite simply Labour are terrified of taking these companies / assets / services back onto the public books. Will take up £lots of cash which they need to spend elsewhere.
What they seem to miss - surely for reasons of electoral timidity - is that the StateCo model works. Already in the UK we have various foreign StateCo's running "privatised" services like trains and buses and deliveries and utililities.
The solution is to do the same. StateCo, run commercially but state owned. No more billions of public money walked off into the right people's pockets.
Yes, maybe we should get the NHS to take TW over, and show us how well a StateCo works.
Because, absent interest payments, Thames Water will be highly profitable.
EBITDA! EBITDA!
I mean, I don't know any Finance Director who (realising this trick) capitalised EVERYTHING and then depreciated it.
Oh wait... I do. Quite a few actually.
Remind me what the D stands for again...
Actually it is the Blair settlement we are dealing with, the so called "Third Way".
Blair championed it for 3 terms and Cameron expanded it. It is the fiction that the government can fix your problems hence the huge expansion in regulation, most if it counter productive or in effective.
By nature Im for the government doing the essentials well and letting individuals sort their own lives out.
We've had two post-war political settlements. Attlee set up the modern socialised state and future Tory governments expanded it. That model broke down in the 70s (shit management, shitter unions, and the oil crisis), being replaced by the consumer free market model of Thatcher. Blair - like Macmillan - may have made tweaks to the model, but it was still substantially the same.
Blair was Thatcher's greatest achievement remember?
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
As I observed yesterday.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two. But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Why would the people who have walked off with wheelbarrows full of cash care about the long term?
Of course they don’t. It has been a fabulously successful business for them. But the regulators…sheez.
The regulators who've operated a revolving door of getting into bed with those they're regulating?
Seems like they've had a successful 'career' too.
Regulation doesn't work as well as the market does. If the market means that Thames Water dies and bondholders face a £14bn haircut, then they ought to be more careful in what they invest in next time. That's the market working, not failing.
Treating any firm as "too big to fail" destroys the market principles.
When/if Thames Water fails who or what, in your perfect scenario, delivers the relevant utility services. The administrators? The state?
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
Yeah, that'll work.
Any friends or families of Ministers ready to take a punt?
Hands up who remembers the Phoenix Four? Bought Rover Group for a tenner from BMW. Accepted a multi- million Euro dowry from BMW and, as it turned out, quite legally stripped the assets into their own bank accounts until nothing was left.
New Labour at its best
So you think they should have stepped in to save a private enterprise just prior to election 2005? OK.
The real disaster was letting Towers take it over to start with. Moulton at least had a sensible business plan. It might not have worked but you can see how it *could* have worked.
The irony is the unions, who had backed Towers, accused Moulton of being an asset stripper when they were the ones whose nominee was doing the asset stripping!
I wonder if what is spooking the government is the thought of having to rescue the USS? It's already in big trouble and losses on Thames Water might even tip it over.
That's another example of regulatory failure, right there. They should have been forcing it to have a more diverse portfolio and a better contributions system long before they did (and that goes back into at least the Blair years, so it's not a partisan thing).
Although they could actually use it as a lever to either lifeboat it or merge it with TPS.
I know the investment in Thames Water isn't looking good but I thought the Universities Superannuation Scheme was generally in a decent surplus ?
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
As I observed yesterday.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two. But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Why would the people who have walked off with wheelbarrows full of cash care about the long term?
Of course they don’t. It has been a fabulously successful business for them. But the regulators…sheez.
The regulators who've operated a revolving door of getting into bed with those they're regulating?
Seems like they've had a successful 'career' too.
Regulation doesn't work as well as the market does. If the market means that Thames Water dies and bondholders face a £14bn haircut, then they ought to be more careful in what they invest in next time. That's the market working, not failing.
Treating any firm as "too big to fail" destroys the market principles.
When/if Thames Water fails who or what, in your perfect scenario, delivers the relevant utility services. The administrators? The state?
Yes.
The administrators, or a new firm who buys them out, or a bondholder buyout, or as a last resort the Government could nationalise it for the £1 (after ensuring a haircut so no bailout) and then potentially re-privatise it later on.
The point is the principles of administration are well established. If they go out of business, then operations can continue, even if the bondholders and shareholders are wiped out.
There is no reason to bailout the bondholders and shareholders. If you privatise the gains, you privatise the losses. Its their losses, not the taxpayers losses.
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
Even if you clapped while balancing a ball on your nose?
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
How is a private firm failing a bird coming home to roost? That's the entire point of privatisation.
A failed state business will just keep draining taxpayer funds, but a failed private business will be put out of it's misery.
If it fails, it fails. Let it die. That's a success not a failure for privatisation. The idea private businesses can't be allowed to die is turning your back on privatisation.
And the taps turn off and the s*** backs up.
No, they don't. The firm goes into Administration, somebody buys the assets for £1 and operations continue uninterrupted but with the shareholders wiped out and the bondholders taking a haircut.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
Yeah, that'll work.
Any friends or families of Ministers ready to take a punt?
Hands up who remembers the Phoenix Four? Bought Rover Group for a tenner from BMW. Accepted a multi- million Euro dowry from BMW and, as it turned out, quite legally stripped the assets into their own bank accounts until nothing was left.
New Labour at its best
So you think they should have stepped in to save a private enterprise just prior to election 2005? OK.
No I think they should have let Moulton buy it in the first place,
God, if I liked Red Bull I might put a few offers in.
Incidentally, an ex-colleague of mine used to work for Renault, and he had used a couple of carbon fibre brake disks on his desk at work as paperweights.
On Susan Trump running for the Tories in London - as others are suggesting she is basically all the party have left. Nutjobs spewing lunacy in the mistaken belief that everyone who is right-thinking agrees with them.
I had expected Sunak to clean the house a little - a firm directional change, tack to the centre to win back those critical votes whilst throwing enough populist bones to the red wall Brexiteers to keep them Tory.
Instead he's managing to pander to all the extremes enough to drive away more voters whilst simultaneously not pandering to the extremes enough to keep them on board. We're going to see a choice of conservative parties on the ballot (unless they manage to pull SDPKIPREFCLAIM together as the "Britannia Party" or some other proto-fascist outfit and actually campaign on the policies that right-thinking people want.
The "respectable" hard right used to be a minority faction both in votes and in politics. Despite Brexit making it briefly feel bigger than it is, the "sink the migrants / support our veterans" mob are still only a small vote. Yet currently has 3 parties vying for its vote plus the lunatic wing of the Tories resolutely dragging them in the same direction, that pro-gollywog vote being precious. Madness piled on madness.
Isn't it just a case of Boris/Brexit hollowing out the sane Tories which makes it very difficult to recover to a more central position and broad church.
QTWAIN.
Boris at the last election had a broad church central position which attracted one of the highest shares of the vote in England recorded in the past half century. Higher even than Tony Blair achieved.
No "centrists" got kicked out, the only people who lost the whip were a few diehard zealots who voted against the whip on a confidence motion on Europe which is not a "centrist" position whatsoever.
I disagree, although not with the specific logic of your two points.
Your 2nd point is valid, but it is this group (and associates) that made up the centrists in the Tory party and most have gone. The reality is (and this is a generalisation) the left of the Tory party were pro remain and the right pro leave. As a consequence the right now has more sway.
I would disagree that Boris won on broad church central position. In my opinion, and one held by many is that Boris won for two reasons - Get Brexit done and Corbyn. That is not a broad church centrist position, although an excellent campaigning position at the time.
I find it difficult to argue that a lot of Tories from the left have not been driven out and that the two main causes are Boris and Brexit. They have and these are the two main reasons.
Sorry but that's a rewriting of history by those who loved to consider being pro-Europe to be the "centrist" position.
In what possible way was Dominic Grieve a part of the Tory "left"?
He didn't even vote for same sex marriage. Boris Johnson supported same sex marriage, along with David Cameron, but Dominic Grieve did not and yet Grieve is this great centrist? Why?
The idea he was this great liberal/left Tory is only because people who embrace pro-EU love to claim that.
Bart, You seem to have missed 5 critical words in my post which are: 'and this is a generalisation'
Are you really suggesting that in general the following statement is not true:
The left of the Tory party was more pro Remain and the right more pro Leave
There is no criticism in that statement. Just a statement of the bleeding obvious.
I don't think we need to resort to lists or exceptions to conclude that do we?
Sadiq Khan is right to fear "Susan", whoever she is. She looks utterly terrifying. "You are safer with Susan" is presumably a threat, not reassurance.
She backed Boris and Brexit, shilled for Trump and hailed the Truss budget. I am not sure you could find someone more out of step with majority opinion in London. It would be an interesting choice, to say the least. But given how the party has hollowed out and moved to the right since 2019, she probably represents what a lot of Tory candidates are going to be like in the coming years.
She will win Havering and Bexley and Harrow, where she led the council in 2013, by a landslide but yes isn't going to have the reach beyond there to the broader London suburbs and West London she needs to have a chance of beating Khan.
She is now surely odds on favourite to be Conservative candidate for Mayor though
Yes, although some have called for CCHQ to reopen the nomination process.
It was absurd London MP Paul Scully and London AM Andrew Boff did not get through the interview stage to get on the approved list of Conservative Mayoral candidates and the final 3 to be put to London Members. Either would have had a better chance than the 3, now 2, that are left of winning.
Korski says he mentioned the alleged incident he has faced with with CCHQ but they let him through
Safer With Susan is shaping up to be one of the all-time worst political campaigns. While Boff has maybe become a bit of a joke (unfairly) with his perennial candidacy, I don't see what Scully has done wrong to not get through to the list. At least if Susan Hall has got through, the bar can't be very high.
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
I have my wife's 2001 registered BMW Series 3 convertible and it is ULEZ compliant. Plus my 2002 BMW BMW 5 series, also ULEZ compliant. Both running very well.
That makes me recall the flapping over unleaded petrol, when Honda nonchalantly announced that all their cars made since 1972 could use it with no adjustments.
All those BMWs are a heck of a reputational hit, however . At least they aren't Audis or Land Rovers.
They are very old! I inherited my wife's car. My daughter makes most use of it.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
As I observed yesterday.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two. But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Why would the people who have walked off with wheelbarrows full of cash care about the long term?
Of course they don’t. It has been a fabulously successful business for them. But the regulators…sheez.
The regulators who've operated a revolving door of getting into bed with those they're regulating?
Seems like they've had a successful 'career' too.
Regulation doesn't work as well as the market does. If the market means that Thames Water dies and bondholders face a £14bn haircut, then they ought to be more careful in what they invest in next time. That's the market working, not failing.
Treating any firm as "too big to fail" destroys the market principles.
When/if Thames Water fails who or what, in your perfect scenario, delivers the relevant utility services. The administrators? The state?
Back when I worked in Big Oil, not long after 9/11, an analysis was done of the effect of the complete destruction of the London HQ.
The stupid consultancy employed reported the truth. The companies world wide operations would be entirely unaffected.
Stupid, because the report was binned and the company put on the “don’t hire” list. By the people at the top of the tower they had declared to be a waste of money..
There's evidently no cost-of-living crisis, as people who are struggling can easily find the dosh to change their cars to be ULEZ-complaint.
For many people a car is vital, like housing. They simply have to pay any price to have one, even at the cost of considerable hardship.
Which I think is @BartholomewRoberts viewpoint whenever it comes to cars - in a lot of places they are unavoidable because public transport passenger density makes anything else impractical.
It does seem that the ULEZ zones in London are being expanded into areas where other options simply don't exist.
Because, absent interest payments, Thames Water will be highly profitable.
EBITDA! EBITDA!
I mean, I don't know any Finance Director who (realising this trick) capitalised EVERYTHING and then depreciated it.
Oh wait... I do. Quite a few actually.
Remind me what the D stands for again...
Actually it is the Blair settlement we are dealing with, the so called "Third Way".
Blair championed it for 3 terms and Cameron expanded it. It is the fiction that the government can fix your problems hence the huge expansion in regulation, most if it counter productive or in effective.
By nature Im for the government doing the essentials well and letting individuals sort their own lives out.
We've had two post-war political settlements. Attlee set up the modern socialised state and future Tory governments expanded it. That model broke down in the 70s (shit management, shitter unions, and the oil crisis), being replaced by the consumer free market model of Thatcher. Blair - like Macmillan - may have made tweaks to the model, but it was still substantially the same.
Blair was Thatcher's greatest achievement remember?
You have been duped by Blair spin. Blair played fiscal responsibility in 1997, Post relection in 2002 he went with his own policies of big government. Cameron copied him. That model has now come to the limits of what it is able to do and it will be back to the future the election after next.
I wonder if what is spooking the government is the thought of having to rescue the USS? It's already in big trouble and losses on Thames Water might even tip it over.
That's another example of regulatory failure, right there. They should have been forcing it to have a more diverse portfolio and a better contributions system long before they did (and that goes back into at least the Blair years, so it's not a partisan thing).
Although they could actually use it as a lever to either lifeboat it or merge it with TPS.
I know the investment in Thames Water isn't looking good but I thought the Universities Superannuation Scheme was generally in a decent surplus ?
Last time it did a serious revaluation it had a deficit of £14.1 billion.
I think the key reason it's argued otherwise is because the UCU are opposed to any reforms to pension schemes - which is understandable - and therefore are claiming things can't be that bad.
And it is worth noting - again - that the current CEO is the former pensions regulator, which is ludicrous.
On Susan Trump running for the Tories in London - as others are suggesting she is basically all the party have left. Nutjobs spewing lunacy in the mistaken belief that everyone who is right-thinking agrees with them.
I had expected Sunak to clean the house a little - a firm directional change, tack to the centre to win back those critical votes whilst throwing enough populist bones to the red wall Brexiteers to keep them Tory.
Instead he's managing to pander to all the extremes enough to drive away more voters whilst simultaneously not pandering to the extremes enough to keep them on board. We're going to see a choice of conservative parties on the ballot (unless they manage to pull SDPKIPREFCLAIM together as the "Britannia Party" or some other proto-fascist outfit and actually campaign on the policies that right-thinking people want.
The "respectable" hard right used to be a minority faction both in votes and in politics. Despite Brexit making it briefly feel bigger than it is, the "sink the migrants / support our veterans" mob are still only a small vote. Yet currently has 3 parties vying for its vote plus the lunatic wing of the Tories resolutely dragging them in the same direction, that pro-gollywog vote being precious. Madness piled on madness.
Isn't it just a case of Boris/Brexit hollowing out the sane Tories which makes it very difficult to recover to a more central position and broad church.
QTWAIN.
Boris at the last election had a broad church central position which attracted one of the highest shares of the vote in England recorded in the past half century. Higher even than Tony Blair achieved.
No "centrists" got kicked out, the only people who lost the whip were a few diehard zealots who voted against the whip on a confidence motion on Europe which is not a "centrist" position whatsoever.
I disagree, although not with the specific logic of your two points.
Your 2nd point is valid, but it is this group (and associates) that made up the centrists in the Tory party and most have gone. The reality is (and this is a generalisation) the left of the Tory party were pro remain and the right pro leave. As a consequence the right now has more sway.
I would disagree that Boris won on broad church central position. In my opinion, and one held by many is that Boris won for two reasons - Get Brexit done and Corbyn. That is not a broad church centrist position, although an excellent campaigning position at the time.
I find it difficult to argue that a lot of Tories from the left have not been driven out and that the two main causes are Boris and Brexit. They have and these are the two main reasons.
Sorry but that's a rewriting of history by those who loved to consider being pro-Europe to be the "centrist" position.
In what possible way was Dominic Grieve a part of the Tory "left"?
He didn't even vote for same sex marriage. Boris Johnson supported same sex marriage, along with David Cameron, but Dominic Grieve did not and yet Grieve is this great centrist? Why?
The idea he was this great liberal/left Tory is only because people who embrace pro-EU love to claim that.
Bart, You seem to have missed 5 critical words in my post which are: 'and this is a generalisation'
Are you really suggesting that in general the following statement is not true:
The left of the Tory party was more pro Remain and the right more pro Leave
There is no criticism in that statement. Just a statement of the bleeding obvious.
I don't think we need to resort to lists or exceptions to conclude that do we?
No, I don't accept that generalisation.
Theresa "Go Home" May was pro-Remain, and I would never once consider her to be on the left of the Party.
I believe from memory a majority of Tory MPs in 2016 were pro-Remain, but they overwhelmingly accepted the democratic will of the country and moved on. The die hard zealots who voted against leaving the EU on a confidence motion in 2019 and lost the whip as a result were not particularly left wing, and not representative of Remain backing MPs.
The headline tells most of the story which may be relevant to general election betting on Brighton Pavilion (Caroline Lucas, Green, is retiring).
Misreporting by the Telegraph. The Greens were going to hike parking charges massively, the new Labour Council has put it on hold. Brighton's parking problem in summer is largely due to 10,000 car drivers thinking they have a right to one of the 500 spaces on the seafront. As for tourists abandoning Brighton - ha ha. The city is heaving.
I think that's the Telegraph feeding its trolls.
The parking charge changes in Brighton are interesting - the hikes on short term (eg 1hr) parking are far steeper than those on long-term parking (all day).
They are incentivising visitors in motor vehicles to stay for half a day or a full day, and disincentivising large numbers of polluting journeys, which sounds like a very good strategy.
The other side of that coin should be strategic long-term investment in high quality public transport. They need a workplace parking levy and a tram network, like Nottingham.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
As I observed yesterday.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two. But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Why would the people who have walked off with wheelbarrows full of cash care about the long term?
Of course they don’t. It has been a fabulously successful business for them. But the regulators…sheez.
The regulators who've operated a revolving door of getting into bed with those they're regulating?
Seems like they've had a successful 'career' too.
Regulation doesn't work as well as the market does. If the market means that Thames Water dies and bondholders face a £14bn haircut, then they ought to be more careful in what they invest in next time. That's the market working, not failing.
Treating any firm as "too big to fail" destroys the market principles.
When/if Thames Water fails who or what, in your perfect scenario, delivers the relevant utility services. The administrators? The state?
Back when I worked in Big Oil, not long after 9/11, an analysis was done of the effect of the complete destruction of the London HQ.
The stupid consultancy employed reported the truth. The companies world wide operations would be entirely unaffected.
Stupid, because the report was binned and the company put on the “don’t hire” list. By the people at the top of the tower they had declared to be a waste of money..
Well, at least they were better than the DfE if things were only 'unaffected' rather than 'dramatically improved.'
Faisal Islam on R4 today hinting both government and opposition are nervous about Britain's investabilty outlook if the shareholders have to pay.
What a mess-up. In fact that's an understatement ; what an epochal, symbolic fiasco.
Oh FFS! That's what it means to be a shareholder. They've taken the dividends so now they can bloody well pay for the losses. We don't need more incompetently run arrogant groups thinking they are Too Big To Fail.
If Starmer's Labour does not get that what's the point of it?
Quite simply Labour are terrified of taking these companies / assets / services back onto the public books. Will take up £lots of cash which they need to spend elsewhere.
What they seem to miss - surely for reasons of electoral timidity - is that the StateCo model works. Already in the UK we have various foreign StateCo's running "privatised" services like trains and buses and deliveries and utililities.
The solution is to do the same. StateCo, run commercially but state owned. No more billions of public money walked off into the right people's pockets.
Yes, maybe we should get the NHS to take TW over, and show us how well a StateCo works.
The NHS is not a StateCo. Deutsche Bahn (Arriva) is. La Poste (DPD) is. State owned commercial enterprise. Not state-run as we embarrassingly have been doing these last few years running the likes of Transpennine Express into the ground.
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
Even if you clapped while balancing a ball on your nose?
Good point. That might get it reduced to a fine.
Couldn't you ask for a pardon under the Great Seal?
It looks like unless Nadine is elevated to the Lords after all or gets a satisfactory explanation why she wasn't, she will stay as an MP until the next general election out of spite. There will therefore be no by election in Mid Beds after all
Question - given her obvious statement otherwise does anyone know if she (is) still:
a) Holds the Conservative whip? b) A member of the Conservative party at all?
Comments
Nationalise it.
Another privatisation disaster. What a moronic model.
The reason it cost a bit more was
1) New design
2) Made in the U.K.
3) Cost of developing the new hybrid power train
The reason for the hybrid power train was to reduce emissions - buses are/were a big chunk of particulates emissions, for example
The design included the option to go to full electric when batteries got cheap enough. This would be for new buses of that design.
The buses in question are still running in London. The drivers prefer them to other designs - driver ergonomics was an input into the deign, for a change.
So if we had kept rolling them out, the London bus fleet would be going electric, using a made in the U.K. vehicle.
Did someone mention jobs from Green Investment?
Labour blame ‘incompetence’ of former council’s policies as parking fees to rise 300pc
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/green-party-war-on-cars-backfires-tourists-abandon-brighton/ (£££)
The headline tells most of the story which may be relevant to general election betting on Brighton Pavilion (Caroline Lucas, Green, is retiring).
In particular, including Heathrow just inside the new zone, comes across as being set up to catch out large numbers of occasional visitors.
Utilities seem to have worked best when run by local authorities. Indeed, they were mostly built by the efforts of local authorities.
However, that was (a) when most of them were provided only in large urban areas and (b) before local government was so hollowed out.
Perhaps the way to go is to look to make them much smaller co-operatives run by elected boards including nominees from LAs?
It wouldn't be perfect but surely it would be better than the current mess.
Let the government take back the company for £1, and let these idiots learn a salutary lesson.
I’d say that makes the UK a better place to invest in, not worse.
Your 2nd point is valid, but it is this group (and associates) that made up the centrists in the Tory party and most have gone. The reality is (and this is a generalisation) the left of the Tory party were pro remain and the right pro leave. As a consequence the right now has more sway.
I would disagree that Boris won on broad church central position. In my opinion, and one held by many is that Boris won for two reasons - Get Brexit done and Corbyn. That is not a broad church centrist position, although an excellent campaigning position at the time.
I find it difficult to argue that a lot of Tories from the left have not been driven out and that the two main causes are Boris and Brexit. They have and these are the two main reasons.
He was right then and he was right now.
She is now surely odds on favourite to be Conservative candidate for Mayor though
In the court case following the collapse of Kids Company, the *judge* said that it would be invidious to put legal responsibility on the legally responsible trustees. That is, punishing the legally responsible “regulators” of the charity, for not doing their fucking job, would be Not Nice.
I assume you sir have never visited outer London.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
ETA for instance:-
Tory MPs urge nominations for London mayor to be reopened
Only two candidates left now that Daniel Korski has dropped out of running because of sexual assault allegations
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/28/daniel-korski-london-mayoral-race-grope-claim/ (£££)
The Left block, the ECR, ID and non aligned all up, so leakage from the centre right, liberals and centre left to the nationalist right and left.
EPP do seem willing to work with the ECR though unlike Renew
The reason it cost a bit more was
1) New design
2) Made in the U.K.
3) Cost of developing the new hybrid power train
The reason for the hybrid power train was to reduce emissions - buses are/were a big chunk of particulates emissions, for example
The I think it fair to say that an issue in really outer London, is that the transport links are quite radial. So it is easy (sometimes) to go in or out of the centre. But going sideways (as it were) is a pain.
There's a complete rewriting of history going on this morning that zombie businesses failing is somehow a repudiation of Thatcher. The truth could not be more polar opposite. Thatcher's whole premise was that carrying the deadweight of zombie firms was not worthwhile so better to let them fail and have something else arise instead.
Thatcher would never have contemplated 'bailing out' Thames Water. Let it die, let someone buy its assets for £1, and move on.
In the fields I was working in it (notably cultural history) tended to be the other way around. A research grant normally covered about twice the cost of the research project, and it was accepted that was one way of keeping unis afloat.
This was one reason why a lot of senior professors never did any teaching. They were getting the money in to subsidise their colleagues.
But in any case, my answer would be that if teaching is needed to subsidise research, the Russell Group needs to take it a lot more seriously.
Hmmm
“Fuck Business!” ?
I speak as one who thinks that in a number of areas, Fuck Business is actually a sensible slogan. As in pollution, demanding the right to treat low end workers as disposable diapers, demanding the right not to have to invest in productivity. For a start.
This is because being Pro Business isn’t “give them everything they ask for”. Any more than bringing up children is about “give them everything they ask for”.
Two 'good chaps' theories have gone. The good chaps theory of government and the good chaps theory of UK private enterprise.
A third 'good chaps' theory is on the way out, especially since 2007/8: the good chaps theory of regulation.
If, as would be good, we had drinkable water in our taps and disposal of sewage without pouring it over children as they swim, there are few ways of doing it. The state has proved a less than brilliant monopoly provider; the unregulated free market isn't possible as it would walk away from water if plastic duck manufacture proved a better investment leaving us to die; and a regulated 'free' monopoly market is failing.
Brexit could actually provide a platform for rethinking how government and capitalism cooperation might work. Hyper-globalisation is beginning to be questioned. We might begin to wonder why UK water has proved so attractive to overseas investors, while less so to domestic ones.
If Starmer's Labour does not get that what's the point of it?
Korski says he mentioned the alleged incident he has faced with with CCHQ but they let him through
The problem with Thames Water is that I think it's committed to buying the new Waste pipelines and that adds more billions to the debt bill...
In what possible way was Dominic Grieve a part of the Tory "left"?
He didn't even vote for same sex marriage. Boris Johnson supported same sex marriage, along with David Cameron, but Dominic Grieve did not and yet Grieve is this great centrist? Why?
The idea he was this great liberal/left Tory is only because people who embrace pro-EU love to claim that.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two.
But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Would have been fine if the regulator had stood over them with a metaphorical baseball bat. They could have borrowed to pay for long term infrastructure improvements.
That would have required a very determined run of governments, of course
Susan Hall has been spouting BS about the ULEZ and LTNs for some time afaics *, and even amongst car owners in Havering approaching 90% will have time before the election to discover that they are already compliant with the ULEZ.
Add in that afaics (have not done extensive study) LibDems have been digging in to some often Tory areas, and I think she's cruising for a bruising.
* eg https://conservativehome.com/2021/10/22/susan-hall-the-mayor-of-londons-ultra-low-emission-zone-will-punish-those-who-have-no-alternative-to-car-travel/
Buy it from administration with the -£14bn being wiped out or taking a haircut, then it can be easily worth £1.
Just like the shareholders, the bondholders have made a bad investment. Oh well, poor old them, what a shame. They should have done better due diligence, maybe they won't be so foolish next time.
Having those who made poor investments lose out from time to time is critical for a successful market economy.
Any friends or families of Ministers ready to take a punt?
Hands up who remembers the Phoenix Four? Bought Rover Group for a tenner from BMW. Accepted a multi- million Euro dowry from BMW and, as it turned out, quite legally stripped the assets into their own bank accounts until nothing was left.
Blair championed it for 3 terms and Cameron expanded it. It is the fiction that the government can fix your problems hence the huge expansion in regulation, most if it counter productive or in effective.
By nature Im for the government doing the essentials well and letting individuals sort their own lives out.
{OneWeb has entered the chat, with Iridium and others}
It looks more and more like a Labour of Sisyphus.
As a different view, there is no London Borough where less than 80% of cars are ULEZ compliant.
Susan Hall is chasing a small and declining minority amongst one of the smallest vehicle owning fractions of population in the country, and trying to scaremonger the rest.
That is why the Tories will be eviscerated.
I note the absence of "Sir" Simon Clarke, another Boris! lickspittle who was tweeting support for the allegations against the committee.
Even though I voted for her government (once, in 1983), the flaws in her philosophy were quite apparent at the time. They're glaring now.
If the Mayor was serious about getting people out of their cars, rather than raising revenue for City Hall, he’s have invested in bringing the outer bus services up to standard before adding more taxes to drivers.
F1: bad news, everyone. The sprint race bullshit is back this weekend.
Fuckwits in Banks are an infinitely renewable resource.
A couple of days ago, a bright young chap in research was suggesting that a good business would be investing in property. At this stage of the market. Because house prices never go down…
All those BMWs are a heck of a reputational hit, however
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/40679/documents/198237/default/
They’ll likely put in their own management, restructure both the company and the debt, and look to sell it back to the stock market in a couple of years’ time.
Seems like they've had a successful 'career' too.
Regulation doesn't work as well as the market does. If the market means that Thames Water dies and bondholders face a £14bn haircut, then they ought to be more careful in what they invest in next time. That's the market working, not failing.
Treating any firm as "too big to fail" destroys the market principles.
1 Will prove increasingly difficult to find investors willing to spend money on these things, as the collapse of rail franchising demonstrated.
2 Another private company can shag the business just as badly
Let it collapse and the shareholders get wiped out. And then sweep up the assets into a StateCo. Instead of vast billions of our money being hoovered up by another private sector bottom feeder not actually providing the service, lets actually invest in the infrastructure.
https://news.sky.com/story/nadine-dorries-and-jacob-rees-mogg-among-eight-named-in-privileges-committee-special-report-on-partygate-probe-12911488
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
a) You can't determine a centrist position from a binary decision
b) I was referring to the loss of the left wing Tories from the Tory party not about the political leaning of the country as a whole so the referendum is not relevant to the point I was making as that is a reflection of the views of the population not the Tory party.
c) I apologise for possibly causing confusion in my post as I used (confusingly) centrist and left wing Tories interchangeably. Although they might mean the same thing, one is in relation to the country the other is in relation to the party. I did not make that clear.
I am surprised by the disagreement. I don't think it is controversial to suggest that both Brexit and Boris has alienated the more left wing Tories (or those with more centrist views). Regardless of your political views that seems obvious. It also seems obvious that some of this has not been the normal sway from left to right and back again as normal within parties but quite an angry reaction to either Brexit or Boris or both.
Even if you are believer in Brexit and/or Boris you can't dismiss the impact of both.
What they seem to miss - surely for reasons of electoral timidity - is that the StateCo model works. Already in the UK we have various foreign StateCo's running "privatised" services like trains and buses and deliveries and utililities.
The solution is to do the same. StateCo, run commercially but state owned. No more billions of public money walked off into the right people's pockets.
That's another example of regulatory failure, right there. They should have been forcing it to have a more diverse portfolio and a better contributions system long before they did (and that goes back into at least the Blair years, so it's not a partisan thing).
Although they could actually use it as a lever to either lifeboat it or merge it with TPS.
Blair was Thatcher's greatest achievement remember?
https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/217833/red-bull-confirms-alphatauri-name-disappears-from-formula-1.html
Something that’s definitely all above board, and in no way an attempt to do a run around the cost cap for the larger team.
The AT auction does look good though, if anyone wants some expensive memorabilia:
https://www.catawiki.com/en/a/th/14799-scuderia-alphatauri-x-catawiki-auction-direct-from-the-grid
The irony is the unions, who had backed Towers, accused Moulton of being an asset stripper when they were the ones whose nominee was doing the asset stripping!
The administrators, or a new firm who buys them out, or a bondholder buyout, or as a last resort the Government could nationalise it for the £1 (after ensuring a haircut so no bailout) and then potentially re-privatise it later on.
The point is the principles of administration are well established. If they go out of business, then operations can continue, even if the bondholders and shareholders are wiped out.
There is no reason to bailout the bondholders and shareholders. If you privatise the gains, you privatise the losses. Its their losses, not the taxpayers losses.
formation will get two new managers, and it is uncertain whether the duo of de Vries and Tsunoda will still exist next year.
Incidentally, an ex-colleague of mine used to work for Renault, and he had used a couple of carbon fibre brake disks on his desk at work as paperweights.
Bart, You seem to have missed 5 critical words in my post which are: 'and this is a generalisation'
Are you really suggesting that in general the following statement is not true:
The left of the Tory party was more pro Remain and the right more pro Leave
There is no criticism in that statement. Just a statement of the bleeding obvious.
I don't think we need to resort to lists or exceptions to conclude that do we?
The stupid consultancy employed reported the truth. The companies world wide operations would be entirely unaffected.
Stupid, because the report was binned and the company put on the “don’t hire” list. By the people at the top of the tower they had declared to be a waste of money..
It does seem that the ULEZ zones in London are being expanded into areas where other options simply don't exist.
https://www.pensions-expert.com/DB-Derisking/UUK-Ignoring-USS-problem-is-not-the-answer
It has said the position is improving because they hold a lot of debt so interest rate rises will help
https://www.uss.co.uk/news-and-views/latest-news/2022/10/10102022_uss-statement-in-response-to-recent-media-coverage-on-ldi-strategies
But - that's not everyone's view.
https://www.ft.com/content/20c2e871-a5dc-4551-924f-367d4efbea94
I think the key reason it's argued otherwise is because the UCU are opposed to any reforms to pension schemes - which is understandable - and therefore are claiming things can't be that bad.
And it is worth noting - again - that the current CEO is the former pensions regulator, which is ludicrous.
Theresa "Go Home" May was pro-Remain, and I would never once consider her to be on the left of the Party.
I believe from memory a majority of Tory MPs in 2016 were pro-Remain, but they overwhelmingly accepted the democratic will of the country and moved on. The die hard zealots who voted against leaving the EU on a confidence motion in 2019 and lost the whip as a result were not particularly left wing, and not representative of Remain backing MPs.
The parking charge changes in Brighton are interesting - the hikes on short term (eg 1hr) parking are far steeper than those on long-term parking (all day).
They are incentivising visitors in motor vehicles to stay for half a day or a full day, and disincentivising large numbers of polluting journeys, which sounds like a very good strategy.
The other side of that coin should be strategic long-term investment in high quality public transport. They need a workplace parking levy and a tram network, like Nottingham.
a) Holds the Conservative whip?
b) A member of the Conservative party at all?