I'd be embarrassed if I ever wrote such mixed-up crap as Anushka Asthana's comments.
If there's a confidence vote and Sunak wins, he won't go to the country in June. He might possibly look a bit stronger in parliamentary Tory circles - or at least he might enjoy a few weeks when he doesn't seem as if he's head down in the dustbin which is how he seems now - but he won't look any stronger further afield. No voter will go "Wow, the Tory MPs have confidence in their leader - I won't switch to one of the other parties after all".
If he loses, Mordaunt will go to the country ASAP for obvious reasons.
IMO there will be a VOC and Sunak will lose. It will be like when IDS got the push.
The scenario is that Mrs Brady rocks up with the pearl-handled revolver and Sunak quits. I think he would win a confidence vote. Well, "win". But increasing reportage that he has had enough.
Every few years, there is a massive sewage spill in this area. To my distress, there seem to have been no significant political costs to the Democratic politicians who run Seattle and King County, from those spills.
Why not? Perhaps because our journalists have become so partisan they treat these spills as natural accidents, rather than failures of elected officials.
You make a VERY good point, sad (for me anyway) to say. A point yours truly has been making ever since the REALLY humongeous sewage discharge into Puget Sound several years ago.
The Seattle Times did some good investigative reporting on that one. But the silence from the public AND from prominent/active local environmentalists was deafening.
As far as the later group is concerned, reckon one reason for lack of public (or even much private) outrage, is because they do NOT want to attack Democratic officeholders whom they regard as pro-environment, especially with respect to policy, funding and message . . . if NOT always when it comes to management.
Worth noting that our local Metro regional government, which runs public transit AND waste management, was founded over half-century ago, for express purpose of cleaning up Lake Washington, which had a SERIOUS pollution problem due to exploding post-WW2 growth of Seattle region.
This effort was led in first instance by moderate (at least by current standards!) business-based & backed GOPers (what I call "country club Republicans) exemplified by then-Governor Dan Evans (still a WA State icon) and . . . wait for it . . . John Erlichman, a local lawyer who ended up as Richard Nixon's domestic policy czar (and fellow Watergate co-conspirator) who spearheaded number of very important pro-enviro measures, for example establishment of federal EPA = Environmental Protection Agency.
It is time to accept that privatisation of utilities and the railways has been an unmitigated disaster.
Depends whether you class telecoms as a utility? That has been a success IMO.
Energy FAIL Rail FAIL Water MASSIVE FAIL Telecoms SUCCESS
...is my scorecard.
I don't have an inherent fervour for nationalisation, so as a blanket policy for anything I'm not in favour. But water and energy? People need to work much harder to persuade me just how good we apparently have it.
Water has been a massive success
Come on BR. Water is a disaster.
Anyway, let’s get back on topic?
Water is the main privatisation that I feel was pointless. What innovation is possible in water supply?
Plenty.
If you discharge you get fined.
If you get fined you lose money.
Therefore there's a profit motive to not discharge, to not get fined.
Innovation.
Water levels improved dramatically post-privatisation. Rivers and beaches when water was nationalised were far, far, worse. This is an objective fact.
The government fines itself all the time. This should happen more.
I agree that pollution was worse in ye olden days, and the current figures might have more to do with measurement than an actual increase. There are also problems with increased building and the need for improved facilities and investment to cope - which is out of the water companies' hands.
But I don't see that these improvements could not have occurred in a nationalised system - indeed, water supply improved massively whilst nationalised. It's complex.
Either way there is plenty of scope for both innovation and accountability with a privatised utility,.
The good thing is that there will be a long exile in the political wilderness for these kinds of views (in this country).
Most of the rest of the country know the country is a shambles at the moment and we hold utility companies up as examples of the mess.
So you claim, yet not a single person refutes the basic fact that the waterways are leaps and bounds better than they were pre-privatisation.
I do and so does everyone I know. They are a thousand times worse.
They are in atrocious state now. Have you actually talked to anyone in the EA? Or surfers? (See for example, Surfers Against Sewage)
By the way, do you use trains? I do every week, often multiple times. Another example of a complete shambles at present. No BR wasn’t brilliant but the point is that after 14 years of Conservative Government these utilities should all be soooooooooooooooo much better.
There are no excuses left for them.
You're a fool or a liar if you're claiming water is worse today than it was pre-privatisation. Its objective fact that the waterways are far better today than they were in the 1970s and 1980s.
No I don't use trains, I drive as do most of the country. But rail use has doubled post-privatisation after decades of decline under nationalisation.
So have rail subsidies. And where are the extra passengers? If it just means more commuters into London then it's not as if they have any real choice.
Don't get me started on rail subsidies, they ought to be abolished entirely and be as heavily taxed as private transportation instead.
I wonder how much of a toss the Tory MPs who are standing down, and who therefore won't have a seat in a few months' time, will give for who leads or doesn't lead either the party or the country.
Re the three June elections since 1945 the dates were:
18 June 1970 9 June 1983 11 June 1987
Suggesting earlier rather than later in the month.
2001 was also June.
As was 2017
Then it was not 3 but 5?
Argh! This is like a bad version of the Spanish Inquisition sketch. It’s my fault for using the wikipedia list which splits the centuries. So here they are:
18 June 1970 9 June 1983 11 June 1987 7 June 2001 8 June 2017
All resulting in Tory governments. Maybe Rishi’s on to something… 😜
It is time to accept that privatisation of utilities and the railways has been an unmitigated disaster.
Depends whether you class telecoms as a utility? That has been a success IMO.
Energy FAIL Rail FAIL Water MASSIVE FAIL Telecoms SUCCESS
...is my scorecard.
I don't have an inherent fervour for nationalisation, so as a blanket policy for anything I'm not in favour. But water and energy? People need to work much harder to persuade me just how good we apparently have it.
Water has been a massive success
Come on BR. Water is a disaster.
Anyway, let’s get back on topic?
Water is the main privatisation that I feel was pointless. What innovation is possible in water supply?
Plenty.
If you discharge you get fined.
If you get fined you lose money.
Therefore there's a profit motive to not discharge, to not get fined.
Innovation.
Water levels improved dramatically post-privatisation. Rivers and beaches when water was nationalised were far, far, worse. This is an objective fact.
The government fines itself all the time. This should happen more.
I agree that pollution was worse in ye olden days, and the current figures might have more to do with measurement than an actual increase. There are also problems with increased building and the need for improved facilities and investment to cope - which is out of the water companies' hands.
But I don't see that these improvements could not have occurred in a nationalised system - indeed, water supply improved massively whilst nationalised. It's complex.
Either way there is plenty of scope for both innovation and accountability with a privatised utility,.
The good thing is that there will be a long exile in the political wilderness for these kinds of views (in this country).
Most of the rest of the country know the country is a shambles at the moment and we hold utility companies up as examples of the mess.
So you claim, yet not a single person refutes the basic fact that the waterways are leaps and bounds better than they were pre-privatisation.
I do and so does everyone I know. They are a thousand times worse.
They are in atrocious state now. Have you actually talked to anyone in the EA? Or surfers? (See for example, Surfers Against Sewage)
By the way, do you use trains? I do every week, often multiple times. Another example of a complete shambles at present. No BR wasn’t brilliant but the point is that after 14 years of Conservative Government these utilities should all be soooooooooooooooo much better.
There are no excuses left for them.
You're a fool or a liar if you're claiming water is worse today than it was pre-privatisation. Its objective fact that the waterways are far better today than they were in the 1970s and 1980s.
No I don't use trains, I drive as do most of the country. But rail use has doubled post-privatisation after decades of decline under nationalisation.
So have rail subsidies. And where are the extra passengers? If it just means more commuters into London then it's not as if they have any real choice.
Don't get me started on rail subsidies, they ought to be abolished entirely and be as heavily taxed as private transportation instead.
If rail is efficient, it will cope.
The same can be said of road. Externalities, remember, aren't being factored in.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
It is time to accept that privatisation of utilities and the railways has been an unmitigated disaster.
Depends whether you class telecoms as a utility? That has been a success IMO.
Energy FAIL Rail FAIL Water MASSIVE FAIL Telecoms SUCCESS
...is my scorecard.
I don't have an inherent fervour for nationalisation, so as a blanket policy for anything I'm not in favour. But water and energy? People need to work much harder to persuade me just how good we apparently have it.
Water has been a massive success
Come on BR. Water is a disaster.
Anyway, let’s get back on topic?
Water is the main privatisation that I feel was pointless. What innovation is possible in water supply?
Plenty.
If you discharge you get fined.
If you get fined you lose money.
Therefore there's a profit motive to not discharge, to not get fined.
Innovation.
Water levels improved dramatically post-privatisation. Rivers and beaches when water was nationalised were far, far, worse. This is an objective fact.
The government fines itself all the time. This should happen more.
I agree that pollution was worse in ye olden days, and the current figures might have more to do with measurement than an actual increase. There are also problems with increased building and the need for improved facilities and investment to cope - which is out of the water companies' hands.
But I don't see that these improvements could not have occurred in a nationalised system - indeed, water supply improved massively whilst nationalised. It's complex.
Either way there is plenty of scope for both innovation and accountability with a privatised utility,.
The good thing is that there will be a long exile in the political wilderness for these kinds of views (in this country).
Most of the rest of the country know the country is a shambles at the moment and we hold utility companies up as examples of the mess.
So you claim, yet not a single person refutes the basic fact that the waterways are leaps and bounds better than they were pre-privatisation.
I do and so does everyone I know. They are a thousand times worse.
They are in atrocious state now. Have you actually talked to anyone in the EA? Or surfers? (See for example, Surfers Against Sewage)
By the way, do you use trains? I do every week, often multiple times. Another example of a complete shambles at present. No BR wasn’t brilliant but the point is that after 14 years of Conservative Government these utilities should all be soooooooooooooooo much better.
There are no excuses left for them.
You're a fool or a liar if you're claiming water is worse today than it was pre-privatisation. Its objective fact that the waterways are far better today than they were in the 1970s and 1980s.
No I don't use trains, I drive as do most of the country. But rail use has doubled post-privatisation after decades of decline under nationalisation.
So have rail subsidies. And where are the extra passengers? If it just means more commuters into London then it's not as if they have any real choice.
Don't get me started on rail subsidies, they ought to be abolished entirely and be as heavily taxed as private transportation instead.
If rail is efficient, it will cope.
The same can be said of road. Externalities, remember, aren't being factored in.
The genuine externalities of road transportation absolutely are much more than covered by our ridiculously high taxes.
The only way to pretend otherwise is to pretend congestion is an externality on roads, then pretend its not one on rail, which would be news to anyone who ever travels on the WCML or many others.
It is time to accept that privatisation of utilities and the railways has been an unmitigated disaster.
Depends whether you class telecoms as a utility? That has been a success IMO.
Energy FAIL Rail FAIL Water MASSIVE FAIL Telecoms SUCCESS
...is my scorecard.
I don't have an inherent fervour for nationalisation, so as a blanket policy for anything I'm not in favour. But water and energy? People need to work much harder to persuade me just how good we apparently have it.
Water has been a massive success
Come on BR. Water is a disaster.
Anyway, let’s get back on topic?
Water is the main privatisation that I feel was pointless. What innovation is possible in water supply?
Plenty.
If you discharge you get fined.
If you get fined you lose money.
Therefore there's a profit motive to not discharge, to not get fined.
Innovation.
Water levels improved dramatically post-privatisation. Rivers and beaches when water was nationalised were far, far, worse. This is an objective fact.
The government fines itself all the time. This should happen more.
I agree that pollution was worse in ye olden days, and the current figures might have more to do with measurement than an actual increase. There are also problems with increased building and the need for improved facilities and investment to cope - which is out of the water companies' hands.
But I don't see that these improvements could not have occurred in a nationalised system - indeed, water supply improved massively whilst nationalised. It's complex.
Either way there is plenty of scope for both innovation and accountability with a privatised utility,.
The good thing is that there will be a long exile in the political wilderness for these kinds of views (in this country).
Most of the rest of the country know the country is a shambles at the moment and we hold utility companies up as examples of the mess.
So you claim, yet not a single person refutes the basic fact that the waterways are leaps and bounds better than they were pre-privatisation.
I do and so does everyone I know. They are a thousand times worse.
They are in atrocious state now. Have you actually talked to anyone in the EA? Or surfers? (See for example, Surfers Against Sewage)
By the way, do you use trains? I do every week, often multiple times. Another example of a complete shambles at present. No BR wasn’t brilliant but the point is that after 14 years of Conservative Government these utilities should all be soooooooooooooooo much better.
There are no excuses left for them.
You're a fool or a liar if you're claiming water is worse today than it was pre-privatisation. Its objective fact that the waterways are far better today than they were in the 1970s and 1980s.
No I don't use trains, I drive as do most of the country. But rail use has doubled post-privatisation after decades of decline under nationalisation.
So have rail subsidies. And where are the extra passengers? If it just means more commuters into London then it's not as if they have any real choice.
Don't get me started on rail subsidies, they ought to be abolished entirely and be as heavily taxed as private transportation instead.
If rail is efficient, it will cope.
Rail subsidies are a subsidy for those who need to drive. If they didn't exist, millions more journeys would be made on the roads, clogging them up and destroying the wider economy as commercial vehicles struggle to get through.
This goes for all forms if public transport, cycle lanes, pavements. Each Lothian Bus takes up to 80 cars off the road (1.25 car occupancy rate), equivalent to a traffic jam a quarter of a mile long.
Shareholders and bond holders made their choice to invest. They should own the consequences of their choices.
Because they'll nationalise it in a Tory fashion not in a 'how consequences of capitalism should function when it fails ' way
If they nationalise it, they're idiots.
If they bailout the bond holders, they're borderline corrupt.
There is no reason to get involved whatsoever. We have bankruptcy procedures, they should be followed. If nobody else steps in to buy the assets then the state should pick them up for £1 if nobody else offers any more.
Speaking as someone who is in the Thames Water area and would quite like to have continued access to potable water, I'm not sure liquidation is the appropriate way of managing this.
An administrator or liquidator is legally obliged to put getting best value for creditors above continuity of service to customers . That's not appropriate for an essential service. Yes, you can buy water in the shops but it runs out very quickly if there is an interruption to piped water.
I agree that the shareholders and bondholders shouldn't be bailed out, but a standard administrator would be obliged to consider, for example, whether the real estate assets are worth more to creditors than the business as an ongoing concern.
In fact, for this reason, it would appear that standard insolvency law does not apply. Section 26 of the Water Industry Act (1991) seems to specify that normal insolvency practice can't be applied to a company with a water supply and/or sewerage licence. The government seems to be automatically involved.
With all due respect, the best value for creditors is clearly a running utility, earning profits.
If you dug up pipes and tried to resell them, you wouldn't get more than 5 cents in the dollar.
It is time to accept that privatisation of utilities and the railways has been an unmitigated disaster.
Depends whether you class telecoms as a utility? That has been a success IMO.
Energy FAIL Rail FAIL Water MASSIVE FAIL Telecoms SUCCESS
...is my scorecard.
I don't have an inherent fervour for nationalisation, so as a blanket policy for anything I'm not in favour. But water and energy? People need to work much harder to persuade me just how good we apparently have it.
Water has been a massive success
Come on BR. Water is a disaster.
Anyway, let’s get back on topic?
Water is the main privatisation that I feel was pointless. What innovation is possible in water supply?
Plenty.
If you discharge you get fined.
If you get fined you lose money.
Therefore there's a profit motive to not discharge, to not get fined.
Innovation.
Water levels improved dramatically post-privatisation. Rivers and beaches when water was nationalised were far, far, worse. This is an objective fact.
The government fines itself all the time. This should happen more.
I agree that pollution was worse in ye olden days, and the current figures might have more to do with measurement than an actual increase. There are also problems with increased building and the need for improved facilities and investment to cope - which is out of the water companies' hands.
But I don't see that these improvements could not have occurred in a nationalised system - indeed, water supply improved massively whilst nationalised. It's complex.
Either way there is plenty of scope for both innovation and accountability with a privatised utility,.
The good thing is that there will be a long exile in the political wilderness for these kinds of views (in this country).
Most of the rest of the country know the country is a shambles at the moment and we hold utility companies up as examples of the mess.
So you claim, yet not a single person refutes the basic fact that the waterways are leaps and bounds better than they were pre-privatisation.
I do and so does everyone I know. They are a thousand times worse.
They are in atrocious state now. Have you actually talked to anyone in the EA? Or surfers? (See for example, Surfers Against Sewage)
By the way, do you use trains? I do every week, often multiple times. Another example of a complete shambles at present. No BR wasn’t brilliant but the point is that after 14 years of Conservative Government these utilities should all be soooooooooooooooo much better.
There are no excuses left for them.
You're a fool or a liar if you're claiming water is worse today than it was pre-privatisation. Its objective fact that the waterways are far better today than they were in the 1970s and 1980s.
No I don't use trains, I drive as do most of the country. But rail use has doubled post-privatisation after decades of decline under nationalisation.
So have rail subsidies. And where are the extra passengers? If it just means more commuters into London then it's not as if they have any real choice.
Don't get me started on rail subsidies, they ought to be abolished entirely and be as heavily taxed as private transportation instead.
If rail is efficient, it will cope.
Just as soon as motorists cover the full cost of their negative externalities.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
It is time to accept that privatisation of utilities and the railways has been an unmitigated disaster.
Depends whether you class telecoms as a utility? That has been a success IMO.
Energy FAIL Rail FAIL Water MASSIVE FAIL Telecoms SUCCESS
...is my scorecard.
I don't have an inherent fervour for nationalisation, so as a blanket policy for anything I'm not in favour. But water and energy? People need to work much harder to persuade me just how good we apparently have it.
Water has been a massive success
Come on BR. Water is a disaster.
Anyway, let’s get back on topic?
Water is the main privatisation that I feel was pointless. What innovation is possible in water supply?
Plenty.
If you discharge you get fined.
If you get fined you lose money.
Therefore there's a profit motive to not discharge, to not get fined.
Innovation.
Water levels improved dramatically post-privatisation. Rivers and beaches when water was nationalised were far, far, worse. This is an objective fact.
The government fines itself all the time. This should happen more.
I agree that pollution was worse in ye olden days, and the current figures might have more to do with measurement than an actual increase. There are also problems with increased building and the need for improved facilities and investment to cope - which is out of the water companies' hands.
But I don't see that these improvements could not have occurred in a nationalised system - indeed, water supply improved massively whilst nationalised. It's complex.
Either way there is plenty of scope for both innovation and accountability with a privatised utility,.
The good thing is that there will be a long exile in the political wilderness for these kinds of views (in this country).
Most of the rest of the country know the country is a shambles at the moment and we hold utility companies up as examples of the mess.
So you claim, yet not a single person refutes the basic fact that the waterways are leaps and bounds better than they were pre-privatisation.
I do and so does everyone I know. They are a thousand times worse.
They are in atrocious state now. Have you actually talked to anyone in the EA? Or surfers? (See for example, Surfers Against Sewage)
By the way, do you use trains? I do every week, often multiple times. Another example of a complete shambles at present. No BR wasn’t brilliant but the point is that after 14 years of Conservative Government these utilities should all be soooooooooooooooo much better.
There are no excuses left for them.
You're a fool or a liar if you're claiming water is worse today than it was pre-privatisation. Its objective fact that the waterways are far better today than they were in the 1970s and 1980s.
No I don't use trains, I drive as do most of the country. But rail use has doubled post-privatisation after decades of decline under nationalisation.
So have rail subsidies. And where are the extra passengers? If it just means more commuters into London then it's not as if they have any real choice.
Don't get me started on rail subsidies, they ought to be abolished entirely and be as heavily taxed as private transportation instead.
If rail is efficient, it will cope.
Rail subsidies are a subsidy for those who need to drive. If they didn't exist, millions more journeys would be made on the roads, clogging them up and destroying the wider economy as commercial vehicles struggle to get through.
This goes for all forms if public transport, cycle lanes, pavements. Each Lothian Bus takes up to 80 cars off the road (1.25 car occupancy rate), equivalent to a traffic jam a quarter of a mile long.
Bollocks, they're a subsidy for those who don't need to.
Towns were 99% of transportation mileage is on the road aren't having their commutes improved whatsoever by subsidising the train journeys of others into cities.
Roads take up over 90% of our passenger transportation mileage and 95% of our freight mileage, we absolutely could cope without public transport existing let alone being subsidised for the less than 10% and less than 5% of each it takes.
On the other hand, the rails can't even cope with their existing minimal demand they're so heavily congested, now imagine of the roads didn't exist and everyone was forced onto the rails instead - they would completely break down.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
1 if you find one great, if not then the state should step in as a last resort and can re-privatise it down the track.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
1 is not a problem. The issue is not the profitable provision of water, but the fact that these entities were loaded up with massive amounts of debt, such that when interest rates rose they were suddenly... what's the word? fucked.
And 2, yes some pension funds will lose money. But that's capitalism.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
1 is not a problem. The issue is not the profitable provision of water, but the fact that these entities were loaded up with massive amounts of debt, such that when interest rates rose they were suddenly... what's the word? fucked.
And 2, yes some pension funds will lose money. But that's capitalism.
And if its foreign investment firms and foreign pension funds losing money, then they can answer to their clients/voters there why they made such a bad investment.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
No 2 is very much misunderstood by those wanting the shareholders to pay
Many pension schemes will have invested in water and utilities and to suddenly see their investment disappear ' down the drain' is not good for thousands, even millions of our future pensioners
Mind you I very much think the shareholders should lose out but for anyone thinking nationalisation is an easy fix it is not and the customer will pay anyway with 40% rises in water bills already being suggested
There is also some value in backing a June/July election for reasons other than that Sunak might have his hand forced or throw in the towel. Specifically, energy price base effects mean that inflation is due to increase significantly when the July CPI is published in August 2024.
The CPI index for overall gas, electricity and misc energy is almost entirely governed by lumpy movements in the energy price cap which make it very predictable well in advance. The index rose to 232.7 in October 2022, stayed almost unchanged all the way through until June 2023 when it was 231.8, fell abruptly to 196.2 in July 2023 and is currently (Feb 2024) at 191.4. When the July 2024 CPI is published in August 2024, the base 12 months earlier against which energy inflation is measured will fall by 16% compared to a month earlier. And in turn that should add about 0.8% to the whole CPI.
Sunak will be aware of this. If he calls an election date for October 2024, he knows that energy prices will have pushed the CPI up by roughly 0.8% overall compared to if he had chosen July (when only June 2024 CPI will have been published.) Although there are of course other reasons pushing him towards delaying, the need to call an election before inflation starts to rise again is one significant reason why he will be tempted to go this Summer.
Backing June and July at odds of 22 and 20 respectively does indeed look like massive value.
Sophy Ridge @SophyRidgeSky · 50m “Those pesky peers in the House of Lords are continuing to block any attempts to get the Rwanda policy off the ground”
“But you abstained in the Rwanda vote, didn’t you?”
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
No 2 is very much misunderstood by those wanting the shareholders to pay
Many pension schemes will have invested in water and utilities and to suddenly see their investment disappear ' down the drain' is not good for thousands, even millions of our future pensioners
Mind you I very much think the shareholders should lose out but for anyone thinking nationalisation is an easy fix it is not and the customer will pay anyway with 40% rises in water bills already being suggested
Shit happens.
Make a bad investment, that's your fault, nobody else's responsibility.
Those who lose money as they invested in Thames Water deserve the same amount of sympathy as those who had invested in Wilkinsons, Debenhams, BHS, Thomas Cook, C&A, Toys R Us or any other business that's ever failed.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
1 is not a problem. The issue is not the profitable provision of water, but the fact that these entities were loaded up with massive amounts of debt, such that when interest rates rose they were suddenly... what's the word? fucked.
And 2, yes some pension funds will lose money. But that's capitalism.
And if its foreign investment firms and foreign pension funds losing money, then they can answer to their clients/voters there why they made such a bad investment.
I agree.
The owners are playing a game of "Call Our Bluff".
Trying to work out whether June or July is the one to go for. Both are at 14 on BX so offer some value.
He likely calls it when he gets a flight off the ground (if) so I reckon July
The only flight he's bothered about is his own to LAX once he's out of Number 10.
SFO. We don’t want his pastiche tech-bro nonsense in SoCal
Sorry to be a pendant, but technically San Francisco is in Southern California.
"Technically" as in, by a pseudo-geographical construct worthy of the writers of the "IT Crowd"?
San Francisco has always been considered - and considers itself - the Cosmopolis of NORTHERN California.
Or Upper Alto California, por favor. Whereas El Lay is the Great Wen of Lower Alto Cali = Southern CA.
If you draw a line, east to west, across the geographical middle of California, you will discover that San Francisco is slightly - but definitely - in the South.
There is also some value in backing a June/July election for reasons other than that Sunak might have his hand forced or throw in the towel. Specifically, energy price base effects mean that inflation is due to increase significantly when the July CPI is published in August 2024.
The CPI index for overall gas, electricity and misc energy is almost entirely governed by lumpy movements in the energy price cap which make it very predictable well in advance. The index rose to 232.7 in October 2022, stayed almost unchanged all the way through until June 2023 when it was 231.8, fell abruptly to 196.2 in July 2023 and is currently (Feb 2024) at 191.4. When the July 2024 CPI is published in August 2024, the base 12 months earlier against which energy inflation is measured will fall by 16% compared to a month earlier. And in turn that should add about 0.8% to the whole CPI.
Sunak will be aware of this. If he calls an election date for October 2024, he knows that energy prices will have pushed the CPI up by roughly 0.8% overall compared to if he had chosen July (when only June 2024 CPI will have been published.) Although there are of course other reasons pushing him towards delaying, the need to call an election before inflation starts to rise again is one significant reason why he will be tempted to go this Summer.
Backing June and July at odds of 22 and 20 respectively does indeed look like massive value.
I thought energy prices were forecast to reduce over the summer?
I took out the Octopus 12 month fox from last October - I have had the benefit of lower prices than market over winter, plus the insurance value in case prices spiked. The question now is whether I will be left high and dry over summer, though TBF I use 2/3 less energy for both gas and electric in summer vs winter so the odds should be on my side.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
1 is not a problem. The issue is not the profitable provision of water, but the fact that these entities were loaded up with massive amounts of debt, such that when interest rates rose they were suddenly... what's the word? fucked.
And 2, yes some pension funds will lose money. But that's capitalism.
And if its foreign investment firms and foreign pension funds losing money, then they can answer to their clients/voters there why they made such a bad investment.
It's mostly Maquarie Infrastructure Fund, I believe.
Even if Sunak does pull the trigger earlier than currently expected I suspect he won’t have polling day on the first Thursday of June which has often been a favoured day for summer elections as it would be a gift for tabloid headline writers.
Sophy Ridge @SophyRidgeSky · 50m “Those pesky peers in the House of Lords are continuing to block any attempts to get the Rwanda policy off the ground”
“But you abstained in the Rwanda vote, didn’t you?”
It is time to accept that privatisation of utilities and the railways has been an unmitigated disaster.
Depends whether you class telecoms as a utility? That has been a success IMO.
Energy FAIL Rail FAIL Water MASSIVE FAIL Telecoms SUCCESS
...is my scorecard.
I don't have an inherent fervour for nationalisation, so as a blanket policy for anything I'm not in favour. But water and energy? People need to work much harder to persuade me just how good we apparently have it.
Water has been a massive success
Come on BR. Water is a disaster.
Anyway, let’s get back on topic?
Water is the main privatisation that I feel was pointless. What innovation is possible in water supply?
July is without precedent in the modern era if you accept the unusual circumstances of 1945: it was held almost exactly 2 months after VE day.
I very much doubt the GE will be held in the holiday season
The schools don't break up until 19 July this year.
28th June in Scotland
And 1st July in Northern Ireland.
Also early July for many private schools.
If Sunak goes for a July election he's even sillier than I thought.
Mulling over the possibility that he'd do it deliberately. That woudl give disproportionate effect to OAPs who tend not to go on holiday at that time and/or have postal votes.
Edit: they are already cranking up the panic to call it an emergency election because of the catastrophe of the Starmer/Khan dictatorship.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
1 is not a problem. The issue is not the profitable provision of water, but the fact that these entities were loaded up with massive amounts of debt, such that when interest rates rose they were suddenly... what's the word? fucked.
And 2, yes some pension funds will lose money. But that's capitalism.
And if its foreign investment firms and foreign pension funds losing money, then they can answer to their clients/voters there why they made such a bad investment.
It's mostly Maquarie Infrastructure Fund, I believe.
According to Wiki:
As of July 2023, the company listed its shareholders as: OMERS (32%), the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS - 20%), Infinity Investments (a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority) (10%), British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (9%), Hermes Investment Management (manager of the BT Pension Scheme) (9%), the China Investment Corporation (9%), Queensland Investment Corporation (5%), Aquila GP Inc. (5%), and Stichting Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (2%). Shareholders have not taken a dividend since 2017, though the company has paid internal dividends from the operational business to holding companies to be able to service its debt obligations
Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner praise Boris Johnson's vision for levelling up the nation as they accuse Rishi Sunak of killing it at birth
They claim that Johnson's analysis of regional inequality was 'good' but that Sunak failed to back the policy and 'give regions the levers to make it happen'
Starmer & Rayner are playing directly into Tory in-fighting over levelling up - Johnson has criticised Sunak over levelling up while Andy Street, West Midlands mayor, has accused govt of creating 'begging bowl culture" over levelling up funding
July is without precedent in the modern era if you accept the unusual circumstances of 1945: it was held almost exactly 2 months after VE day.
I very much doubt the GE will be held in the holiday season
The schools don't break up until 19 July this year.
28th June in Scotland
And 1st July in Northern Ireland.
Also early July for many private schools.
If Sunak goes for a July election he's even sillier than I thought.
Mulling over the possibility that he'd do it deliberately. That woudl give disproportionate effect to OAPs who tend not to go on holiday at that time and/or have postal votes.
Even if Sunak does pull the trigger earlier than currently expected I suspect he won’t have polling day on the first Thursday of June which has often been a favoured day for summer elections as it would be a gift for tabloid headline writers.
Even if Sunak does pull the trigger earlier than currently expected I suspect he won’t have polling day on the first Thursday of June which has often been a favoured day for summer elections as it would be a gift for tabloid headline writers.
Sophy Ridge @SophyRidgeSky · 50m “Those pesky peers in the House of Lords are continuing to block any attempts to get the Rwanda policy off the ground”
“But you abstained in the Rwanda vote, didn’t you?”
Trying to work out whether June or July is the one to go for. Both are at 14 on BX so offer some value.
He likely calls it when he gets a flight off the ground (if) so I reckon July
The only flight he's bothered about is his own to LAX once he's out of Number 10.
SFO. We don’t want his pastiche tech-bro nonsense in SoCal
Sorry to be a pendant, but technically San Francisco is in Southern California.
"Technically" as in, by a pseudo-geographical construct worthy of the writers of the "IT Crowd"?
San Francisco has always been considered - and considers itself - the Cosmopolis of NORTHERN California.
Or Upper Alto California, por favor. Whereas El Lay is the Great Wen of Lower Alto Cali = Southern CA.
If you draw a line, east to west, across the geographical middle of California, you will discover that San Francisco is slightly - but definitely - in the South.
It depends how you define California. Arguably the dividing line is roughly where San Diego is.
Even if Sunak does pull the trigger earlier than currently expected I suspect he won’t have polling day on the first Thursday of June which has often been a favoured day for summer elections as it would be a gift for tabloid headline writers.
There is also some value in backing a June/July election for reasons other than that Sunak might have his hand forced or throw in the towel. Specifically, energy price base effects mean that inflation is due to increase significantly when the July CPI is published in August 2024.
The CPI index for overall gas, electricity and misc energy is almost entirely governed by lumpy movements in the energy price cap which make it very predictable well in advance. The index rose to 232.7 in October 2022, stayed almost unchanged all the way through until June 2023 when it was 231.8, fell abruptly to 196.2 in July 2023 and is currently (Feb 2024) at 191.4. When the July 2024 CPI is published in August 2024, the base 12 months earlier against which energy inflation is measured will fall by 16% compared to a month earlier. And in turn that should add about 0.8% to the whole CPI.
Sunak will be aware of this. If he calls an election date for October 2024, he knows that energy prices will have pushed the CPI up by roughly 0.8% overall compared to if he had chosen July (when only June 2024 CPI will have been published.) Although there are of course other reasons pushing him towards delaying, the need to call an election before inflation starts to rise again is one significant reason why he will be tempted to go this Summer.
Backing June and July at odds of 22 and 20 respectively does indeed look like massive value.
I thought energy prices were forecast to reduce over the summer?
I took out the Octopus 12 month fox from last October - I have had the benefit of lower prices than market over winter, plus the insurance value in case prices spiked. The question now is whether I will be left high and dry over summer, though TBF I use 2/3 less energy for both gas and electric in summer vs winter so the odds should be on my side.
You're right that energy prices are forecast to fall a bit more by early Summer. In fact, that's a dead cert because a reduction in the energy price cap has been announced taking effect from April. As I said, energy price inflation is highly predictable.
But that's missing the point. My point is that after energy prices have initially pulled the CPI rate down further, the CPI published in August 2024 will see a big hike because the energy component will add about 0.8% upward pressure to the the whole index at that point. And in fact, the fact that energy costs will exert further downward pressure on the CPI index before then gives Sunak a brief inflationary window of opportunity in which to call the election.
Even if Sunak does pull the trigger earlier than currently expected I suspect he won’t have polling day on the first Thursday of June which has often been a favoured day for summer elections as it would be a gift for tabloid headline writers.
Hearing the rain had finally stopped, I took the opportunity to take the dog out for a pee...
Neither of us were prepared for it to be snowing HARD!
Some of us still have our snow shovels, studded overshoe ice grips, and salt in the house porch - won't go into the garden shed for another 2-3 weeks yet.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
1 is not a problem. The issue is not the profitable provision of water, but the fact that these entities were loaded up with massive amounts of debt, such that when interest rates rose they were suddenly... what's the word? fucked.
And 2, yes some pension funds will lose money. But that's capitalism.
And if its foreign investment firms and foreign pension funds losing money, then they can answer to their clients/voters there why they made such a bad investment.
It's mostly Maquarie Infrastructure Fund, I believe.
According to Wiki:
As of July 2023, the company listed its shareholders as: OMERS (32%), the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS - 20%), Infinity Investments (a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority) (10%), British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (9%), Hermes Investment Management (manager of the BT Pension Scheme) (9%), the China Investment Corporation (9%), Queensland Investment Corporation (5%), Aquila GP Inc. (5%), and Stichting Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (2%). Shareholders have not taken a dividend since 2017, though the company has paid internal dividends from the operational business to holding companies to be able to service its debt obligations
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
No 2 is very much misunderstood by those wanting the shareholders to pay
Many pension schemes will have invested in water and utilities and to suddenly see their investment disappear ' down the drain' is not good for thousands, even millions of our future pensioners
Mind you I very much think the shareholders should lose out but for anyone thinking nationalisation is an easy fix it is not and the customer will pay anyway with 40% rises in water bills already being suggested
Like many of our problems, the only easy fix is time travel.
From the perspective of now, it's really obvious that nationalised water companies should have been investing more in repairing and expanding infrastructure than they did. But they didn't, which was one of the arguments for privatisation, to get more capital in.
That being the case, it's really obvious that private equity, reducing the capital base even more, were terrible owners for water companies. And anyone buying a company that had been PEd was a fool.
Trouble is that all that happened, and the lower taxes and profits from those mistakes have been taken and spent. We're not getting it back.
And that's why I wonder if some of these firms are worth less than nothing. That the cost of clearing the works backlog is so high that no plausible income stream can cover it, even if you wipe out the share and bond holders utterly. It's certainly mathematically possible. And then free market economics doesn't really give an answer.
See also the PE ownership of childrens' homes.
The trouble is, the people who profited and those left footing the bill are separated by generations.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
1 is not a problem. The issue is not the profitable provision of water, but the fact that these entities were loaded up with massive amounts of debt, such that when interest rates rose they were suddenly... what's the word? fucked.
And 2, yes some pension funds will lose money. But that's capitalism.
And if its foreign investment firms and foreign pension funds losing money, then they can answer to their clients/voters there why they made such a bad investment.
It's mostly Maquarie Infrastructure Fund, I believe.
According to Wiki:
As of July 2023, the company listed its shareholders as: OMERS (32%), the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS - 20%), Infinity Investments (a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority) (10%), British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (9%), Hermes Investment Management (manager of the BT Pension Scheme) (9%), the China Investment Corporation (9%), Queensland Investment Corporation (5%), Aquila GP Inc. (5%), and Stichting Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (2%). Shareholders have not taken a dividend since 2017, though the company has paid internal dividends from the operational business to holding companies to be able to service its debt obligations
Even if Sunak does pull the trigger earlier than currently expected I suspect he won’t have polling day on the first Thursday of June which has often been a favoured day for summer elections as it would be a gift for tabloid headline writers.
You mean D-Day?
Yup.
Aside from fun for the tabloid headline writers the 80th anniversary of D-Day is probably not a good day to hold an election.
Sophy Ridge @SophyRidgeSky · 50m “Those pesky peers in the House of Lords are continuing to block any attempts to get the Rwanda policy off the ground”
“But you abstained in the Rwanda vote, didn’t you?”
Off topic: The current WaPo has two articles that suggest that entertainment industries may find it harder to abuse women. From France: '“For thirty years, silence has been my driving force.” Last month, in a room in which you could have heard a pin drop, actress Judith Godrèche denounced the sexist violence in which French cinema has been an accomplice for decades. Godrèche’s speech at the César Awards — the French equivalent of the Oscars — was both highly anticipated and unprecedented, and met with a standing ovation. After years in which the American #MeToo movement gained traction while in France it languished, this reception signaled that perhaps the larger culture here is finally ready to push back.' source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/27/france-me-too-film-actresses/
From the hip-hop community in the US: "Armored trucks, helicopters, and swarms of federal agents and police descended upon Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Los Angeles home on Monday — part of a bicoastal raid carried out by the Department of Homeland Security, which also searched his Miami residence. A law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the searches are part of a sex trafficking investigation." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2024/03/26/diddy-sean-combs-sex-trafficking-lawsuits-raid/
I hope, like every decent person, that these incidents are part of a larger change for the better, in both places.
Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner praise Boris Johnson's vision for levelling up the nation as they accuse Rishi Sunak of killing it at birth
They claim that Johnson's analysis of regional inequality was 'good' but that Sunak failed to back the policy and 'give regions the levers to make it happen'
Starmer & Rayner are playing directly into Tory in-fighting over levelling up - Johnson has criticised Sunak over levelling up while Andy Street, West Midlands mayor, has accused govt of creating 'begging bowl culture" over levelling up funding
That's a bit rich of Johnson and Street - just think how much real levelling up could have taken place if the £100 bn still likely to be spent on what's left on HS2 had been diverted into smaller projects actually needed in the North and Midlands.
Street bears prime responsibility for that as he was on Johnson's review board which had the potential to stop HS2 in its tracks, but still gave the go ahead in 2020. As an HS2 cheerleader, his appointment of all people to that board showed that Johnson was never serious about potentially halting the project.
Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner praise Boris Johnson's vision for levelling up the nation as they accuse Rishi Sunak of killing it at birth
They claim that Johnson's analysis of regional inequality was 'good' but that Sunak failed to back the policy and 'give regions the levers to make it happen'
Starmer & Rayner are playing directly into Tory in-fighting over levelling up - Johnson has criticised Sunak over levelling up while Andy Street, West Midlands mayor, has accused govt of creating 'begging bowl culture" over levelling up funding
That's a bit rich of Johnson and Street - just think how much real levelling up could have taken place if the £100 bn still likely to be spent on what's left on HS2 had been diverted into smaller projects actually needed in the North and Midlands.
Street bears prime responsibility for that as he was on Johnson's review board which had the potential to stop HS2 in its tracks, but still gave the go ahead in 2020. As an HS2 cheerleader, his appointment of all people to that board showed that Johnson was never serious about potentially halting the project.
The irony being it might well have been actually cheaper to complete HS2 than the truncated nonsense the imbeciles of the DfT have got.
And that would, in turn, have actually allowed the capacity to develop transport links in the North and Midlands which now won't be physically possible.
I'm probably naïve, but I always thought the whole point and justification of privatisation was to encourage efficiency and improve quality through competition between competing suppliers in a free, capitalist market.
I have no choice but to get my water through Southern Water.
Even if Sunak does pull the trigger earlier than currently expected I suspect he won’t have polling day on the first Thursday of June which has often been a favoured day for summer elections as it would be a gift for tabloid headline writers.
You mean D-Day?
Yup.
Aside from fun for the tabloid headline writers the 80th anniversary of D-Day is probably not a good day to hold an election.
Sunak standing next to Biden on a beach the week before a GE might be a good optic though.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
No 2 is very much misunderstood by those wanting the shareholders to pay
Many pension schemes will have invested in water and utilities and to suddenly see their investment disappear ' down the drain' is not good for thousands, even millions of our future pensioners
Mind you I very much think the shareholders should lose out but for anyone thinking nationalisation is an easy fix it is not and the customer will pay anyway with 40% rises in water bills already being suggested
Like many of our problems, the only easy fix is time travel.
From the perspective of now, it's really obvious that nationalised water companies should have been investing more in repairing and expanding infrastructure than they did. But they didn't, which was one of the arguments for privatisation, to get more capital in.
That being the case, it's really obvious that private equity, reducing the capital base even more, were terrible owners for water companies. And anyone buying a company that had been PEd was a fool.
Trouble is that all that happened, and the lower taxes and profits from those mistakes have been taken and spent. We're not getting it back.
And that's why I wonder if some of these firms are worth less than nothing. That the cost of clearing the works backlog is so high that no plausible income stream can cover it, even if you wipe out the share and bond holders utterly. It's certainly mathematically possible. And then free market economics doesn't really give an answer.
See also the PE ownership of childrens' homes.
The trouble is, the people who profited and those left footing the bill are separated by generations.
I think you are unduly pessimistic. These firms are cash flow positive before interest payments, it's just that they owe massive amounts of money, and that debt load has prevented them from being able to make necessary investments.
And, as @BartholomewRoberts has suggested, no one is prepared to take them over for $1 (and no debt), the government can acquire them.
Joyous news! They're rereleasing The Phantom Menace for the May 4th weekend. Celebrate a time when Star Wars was written by a man with an overall vision which made sense and peaked as intended in Revenge of the Sith. Pod race! Darth Maul with legs! Yoda puppet! Peter Serafinowicz! Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. DUEL OF THE FATES!
Even if Sunak does pull the trigger earlier than currently expected I suspect he won’t have polling day on the first Thursday of June which has often been a favoured day for summer elections as it would be a gift for tabloid headline writers.
You mean D-Day?
Yup.
Aside from fun for the tabloid headline writers the 80th anniversary of D-Day is probably not a good day to hold an election.
Sunak standing next to Biden on a beach the week before a GE might be a good optic though.
He'll get damn few others.
Biden on a beach would give him another chance to copy Kinnock.
Even if Sunak does pull the trigger earlier than currently expected I suspect he won’t have polling day on the first Thursday of June which has often been a favoured day for summer elections as it would be a gift for tabloid headline writers.
You mean D-Day?
Yup.
Aside from fun for the tabloid headline writers the 80th anniversary of D-Day is probably not a good day to hold an election.
Can't help thinking whether Unternehmen Seelöwe might be channelled instead.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
1 is not a problem. The issue is not the profitable provision of water, but the fact that these entities were loaded up with massive amounts of debt, such that when interest rates rose they were suddenly... what's the word? fucked.
And 2, yes some pension funds will lose money. But that's capitalism.
And if its foreign investment firms and foreign pension funds losing money, then they can answer to their clients/voters there why they made such a bad investment.
It's mostly Maquarie Infrastructure Fund, I believe.
According to Wiki:
As of July 2023, the company listed its shareholders as: OMERS (32%), the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS - 20%), Infinity Investments (a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority) (10%), British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (9%), Hermes Investment Management (manager of the BT Pension Scheme) (9%), the China Investment Corporation (9%), Queensland Investment Corporation (5%), Aquila GP Inc. (5%), and Stichting Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (2%). Shareholders have not taken a dividend since 2017, though the company has paid internal dividends from the operational business to holding companies to be able to service its debt obligations
And I stand corrected.
Macquarie loaded the company with debt, paid themselves a load of dividends, and flogged it off to the current shareholders.
An October general election is still the likeliest date
The boats are a big problem for Sunak: it's a mystery to me how so many are still getting over. And the weather has largely been crap.
The French have definitely stepped up patrols and, finally, are experimenting with more aggressive turnback tactics.
I know Vietnam (rather than Albanians) are now fuelling the numbers - the people smugglers are very agile at changing their business model. And they're now adept at surge tactics.
They simply need to stop nearly every one to kill it.
It's partly our asylum success rate. It's three times that of France. The Home Office is just letting everyone in. If we had a lower success rate than France, it would reduce the pull factor hugely.
Joyous news! They're rereleasing The Phantom Menace for the May 4th weekend. Celebrate a time when Star Wars was written by a man with an overall vision which made sense and peaked as intended in Revenge of the Sith. Pod race! Darth Maul with legs! Yoda puppet! Peter Serafinowicz! Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. DUEL OF THE FATES!
Even if Sunak does pull the trigger earlier than currently expected I suspect he won’t have polling day on the first Thursday of June which has often been a favoured day for summer elections as it would be a gift for tabloid headline writers.
You mean D-Day?
Yup.
Aside from fun for the tabloid headline writers the 80th anniversary of D-Day is probably not a good day to hold an election.
Joyous news! They're rereleasing The Phantom Menace for the May 4th weekend. Celebrate a time when Star Wars was written by a man with an overall vision which made sense and peaked as intended in Revenge of the Sith. Pod race! Darth Maul with legs! Yoda puppet! Peter Serafinowicz! Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. DUEL OF THE FATES!
Joyous news! They're rereleasing The Phantom Menace for the May 4th weekend. Celebrate a time when Star Wars was written by a man with an overall vision which made sense and peaked as intended in Revenge of the Sith. Pod race! Darth Maul with legs! Yoda puppet! Peter Serafinowicz! Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. DUEL OF THE FATES!
Trying to work out whether June or July is the one to go for. Both are at 14 on BX so offer some value.
He likely calls it when he gets a flight off the ground (if) so I reckon July
The only flight he's bothered about is his own to LAX once he's out of Number 10.
SFO. We don’t want his pastiche tech-bro nonsense in SoCal
Sorry to be a pendant, but technically San Francisco is in Southern California.
"Technically" as in, by a pseudo-geographical construct worthy of the writers of the "IT Crowd"?
San Francisco has always been considered - and considers itself - the Cosmopolis of NORTHERN California.
Or Upper Alto California, por favor. Whereas El Lay is the Great Wen of Lower Alto Cali = Southern CA.
If you draw a line, east to west, across the geographical middle of California, you will discover that San Francisco is slightly - but definitely - in the South.
It depends how you define California. Arguably the dividing line is roughly where San Diego is.
If you draw an east-west line that splits the state in half by population, it would be well below the Bay Area.
I'm probably naïve, but I always thought the whole point and justification of privatisation was to encourage efficiency and improve quality through competition between competing suppliers in a free, capitalist market.
I have no choice but to get my water through Southern Water.
I fear you are going to be subject to more rightsplaining from the PB Libertarians. Watch out!
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
Iridium and OneWeb are classic examples of investors and debtors loses their shirts, business continues without missing a step.
Joyous news! They're rereleasing The Phantom Menace for the May 4th weekend. Celebrate a time when Star Wars was written by a man with an overall vision which made sense and peaked as intended in Revenge of the Sith. Pod race! Darth Maul with legs! Yoda puppet! Peter Serafinowicz! Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. DUEL OF THE FATES!
Florida has this week passed a law to ban children under 14 from using social media. It’s unclear whether the ban will work as tech bosses seek to challenge the legislation in court. But what is clear is that here in Britain we too must act to rescue our children from a phenomenon that is robbing them of their childhood.
On Tuesday, renowned US psychologist Jonathan Haidt published The Anxious Generation. In the book Haidt charts how the Western experience of growing up has been transformed over the last forty years from an outdoor, real-world, “play-based childhood” to a “phone-based childhood” in which kids now live their lives indoors and online through tiny screens.
It certainly gives rise to the view that technological developments over the last 10 to 15 years have been a net negative for society. The only winners are the big tech companies.
And this. Many parents share a growing sense of anger that super-rich and internationally powerful Big Tech has been given a free pass to push an unsafe and addictive product on our children. At a recent speech in the House of Lords, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told parliamentarians that if social media was a pharmaceutical drug, it would be withdrawn for safety reasons.
I'm probably naïve, but I always thought the whole point and justification of privatisation was to encourage efficiency and improve quality through competition between competing suppliers in a free, capitalist market.
I have no choice but to get my water through Southern Water.
I fear you are going to be subject to more rightsplaining from the PB Libertarians. Watch out!
Time to revisit the town taken over by Libertarians then bears in New Hampshire.
There is no reason that administrators or liquidators can't be called in, but with the administrator/liquidator under instructions that continuity of service comes first and the creditors come second.
I think that's what is supposed to happen, but if none of the other water companies want to take on the obligation (even after the bondholders are wiped out), or if this is precluded for competition reasons, then the government would have to recapitalise Thames Water, or set up a new water company from scratch to take the assets.
A new company from scratch would take the assets, not the liabilities.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
I agree - they should go pop. Though there are two issues: 1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and 2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
1 is not a problem. The issue is not the profitable provision of water, but the fact that these entities were loaded up with massive amounts of debt, such that when interest rates rose they were suddenly... what's the word? fucked.
And 2, yes some pension funds will lose money. But that's capitalism.
And if its foreign investment firms and foreign pension funds losing money, then they can answer to their clients/voters there why they made such a bad investment.
It's mostly Maquarie Infrastructure Fund, I believe.
According to Wiki:
As of July 2023, the company listed its shareholders as: OMERS (32%), the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS - 20%), Infinity Investments (a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority) (10%), British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (9%), Hermes Investment Management (manager of the BT Pension Scheme) (9%), the China Investment Corporation (9%), Queensland Investment Corporation (5%), Aquila GP Inc. (5%), and Stichting Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (2%). Shareholders have not taken a dividend since 2017, though the company has paid internal dividends from the operational business to holding companies to be able to service its debt obligations
OMERS is Canadian, I believe.
It is. Ontario - it’s the municipal equivalent of Teachers.
It is time to accept that privatisation of utilities and the railways has been an unmitigated disaster.
Depends whether you class telecoms as a utility? That has been a success IMO.
Energy FAIL Rail FAIL Water MASSIVE FAIL Telecoms SUCCESS
...is my scorecard.
I don't have an inherent fervour for nationalisation, so as a blanket policy for anything I'm not in favour. But water and energy? People need to work much harder to persuade me just how good we apparently have it.
Water has been a massive success
Come on BR. Water is a disaster.
Anyway, let’s get back on topic?
Water is the main privatisation that I feel was pointless. What innovation is possible in water supply?
Plenty.
If you discharge you get fined.
If you get fined you lose money.
Therefore there's a profit motive to not discharge, to not get fined.
Innovation.
Water levels improved dramatically post-privatisation. Rivers and beaches when water was nationalised were far, far, worse. This is an objective fact.
The government fines itself all the time. This should happen more.
I agree that pollution was worse in ye olden days, and the current figures might have more to do with measurement than an actual increase. There are also problems with increased building and the need for improved facilities and investment to cope - which is out of the water companies' hands.
But I don't see that these improvements could not have occurred in a nationalised system - indeed, water supply improved massively whilst nationalised. It's complex.
Either way there is plenty of scope for both innovation and accountability with a privatised utility,.
The good thing is that there will be a long exile in the political wilderness for these kinds of views (in this country).
Most of the rest of the country know the country is a shambles at the moment and we hold utility companies up as examples of the mess.
So you claim, yet not a single person refutes the basic fact that the waterways are leaps and bounds better than they were pre-privatisation.
I do and so does everyone I know. They are a thousand times worse.
They are in atrocious state now. Have you actually talked to anyone in the EA? Or surfers? (See for example, Surfers Against Sewage)
By the way, do you use trains? I do every week, often multiple times. Another example of a complete shambles at present. No BR wasn’t brilliant but the point is that after 14 years of Conservative Government these utilities should all be soooooooooooooooo much better.
There are no excuses left for them.
They are not. We have only been measuring these kind of incidents for the last few years. Thirty years ago rivers like the Thames were dead zones, hardly and fish etc. Vastly improved now. Yes we have a specific problem, partly related to climate change, partly to poorly built new housing developments and, whisper it quietly, all those tarmacked over drives.
Plus intense agriculture. The Wye is very much poisoned by chicken farms
Because we all love cheap chicken.
Because we all need to eat.
Whatever happened to the chlorinated chicken? Have I been eating it? It was all remainers talked about for around 18 months
I'm probably naïve, but I always thought the whole point and justification of privatisation was to encourage efficiency and improve quality through competition between competing suppliers in a free, capitalist market.
I have no choice but to get my water through Southern Water.
Water was about getting someone else to pay for the leaky pipes. And in the first decade or so they did a good job.
We are seeing two malign influences playing:
ZIRP is biting us hard as debt that was put in place at the time is not remotely sustainable
Infra funds chasing yield have been buying operating assets and fucking them up. Private equity can be good owners. Infra is not. It’s just pure financial engineering.
Trying to work out whether June or July is the one to go for. Both are at 14 on BX so offer some value.
He likely calls it when he gets a flight off the ground (if) so I reckon July
The only flight he's bothered about is his own to LAX once he's out of Number 10.
SFO. We don’t want his pastiche tech-bro nonsense in SoCal
Sorry to be a pendant, but technically San Francisco is in Southern California.
"Technically" as in, by a pseudo-geographical construct worthy of the writers of the "IT Crowd"?
San Francisco has always been considered - and considers itself - the Cosmopolis of NORTHERN California.
Or Upper Alto California, por favor. Whereas El Lay is the Great Wen of Lower Alto Cali = Southern CA.
If you draw a line, east to west, across the geographical middle of California, you will discover that San Francisco is slightly - but definitely - in the South.
It depends how you define California. Arguably the dividing line is roughly where San Diego is.
If you draw an east-west line that splits the state in half by population, it would be well below the Bay Area.
Comments
(do your own puns)
our riversthem.The Seattle Times did some good investigative reporting on that one. But the silence from the public AND from prominent/active local environmentalists was deafening.
As far as the later group is concerned, reckon one reason for lack of public (or even much private) outrage, is because they do NOT want to attack Democratic officeholders whom they regard as pro-environment, especially with respect to policy, funding and message . . . if NOT always when it comes to management.
Worth noting that our local Metro regional government, which runs public transit AND waste management, was founded over half-century ago, for express purpose of cleaning up Lake Washington, which had a SERIOUS pollution problem due to exploding post-WW2 growth of Seattle region.
This effort was led in first instance by moderate (at least by current standards!) business-based & backed GOPers (what I call "country club Republicans) exemplified by then-Governor Dan Evans (still a WA State icon) and . . . wait for it . . . John Erlichman, a local lawyer who ended up as Richard Nixon's domestic policy czar (and fellow Watergate co-conspirator) who spearheaded number of very important pro-enviro measures, for example establishment of federal EPA = Environmental Protection Agency.
If rail is efficient, it will cope.
And there's little reason why private firms couldn't do that, not just a state firm.
And there's also no reason the state couldn't get the assets for cheap, burn the creditors, then float the new firm and make a profit on that too restoring the profit motive on following the regulations while wiping out the liabilities.
The point is there should be no firm too big to fail. Big firms can fail and they need to know they can fail too, if you want to have a healthy economy. If Thames fails, then tough shit for their creditors, they're piss out of luck.
The only way to pretend otherwise is to pretend congestion is an externality on roads, then pretend its not one on rail, which would be news to anyone who ever travels on the WCML or many others.
This goes for all forms if public transport, cycle lanes, pavements. Each Lothian Bus takes up to 80 cars off the road (1.25 car occupancy rate), equivalent to a traffic jam a quarter of a mile long.
If you dug up pipes and tried to resell them, you wouldn't get more than 5 cents in the dollar.
1. Finding private sector investors willing to get involved with a replacement company which will need to spend £gazillions in a heavily regulated framework, and
2. The impact on people's pensions if much of the investor money was from them
Towns were 99% of transportation mileage is on the road aren't having their commutes improved whatsoever by subsidising the train journeys of others into cities.
Roads take up over 90% of our passenger transportation mileage and 95% of our freight mileage, we absolutely could cope without public transport existing let alone being subsidised for the less than 10% and less than 5% of each it takes.
On the other hand, the rails can't even cope with their existing minimal demand they're so heavily congested, now imagine of the roads didn't exist and everyone was forced onto the rails instead - they would completely break down.
2 that's their problem.
And 2, yes some pension funds will lose money. But that's capitalism.
Many pension schemes will have invested in water and utilities and to suddenly see their investment disappear ' down the drain' is not good for thousands, even millions of our future pensioners
Mind you I very much think the shareholders should lose out but for anyone thinking nationalisation is an easy fix it is not and the customer will pay anyway with 40% rises in water bills already being suggested
San Francisco has always been considered - and considers itself - the Cosmopolis of NORTHERN California.
Or Upper Alto California, por favor. Whereas El Lay is the Great Wen of Lower Alto Cali = Southern CA.
There is also some value in backing a June/July election for reasons other than that Sunak might have his hand forced or throw in the towel. Specifically, energy price base effects mean that inflation is due to increase significantly when the July CPI is published in August 2024.
The CPI index for overall gas, electricity and misc energy is almost entirely governed by lumpy movements in the energy price cap which make it very predictable well in advance. The index rose to 232.7 in October 2022, stayed almost unchanged all the way through until June 2023 when it was 231.8, fell abruptly to 196.2 in July 2023 and is currently (Feb 2024) at 191.4. When the July 2024 CPI is published in August 2024, the base 12 months earlier against which energy inflation is measured will fall by 16% compared to a month earlier. And in turn that should add about 0.8% to the whole CPI.
Sunak will be aware of this. If he calls an election date for October 2024, he knows that energy prices will have pushed the CPI up by roughly 0.8% overall compared to if he had chosen July (when only June 2024 CPI will have been published.) Although there are of course other reasons pushing him towards delaying, the need to call an election before inflation starts to rise again is one significant reason why he will be tempted to go this Summer.
Backing June and July at odds of 22 and 20 respectively does indeed look like massive value.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/dk9u/mm23
Sophy Ridge
@SophyRidgeSky
·
50m
“Those pesky peers in the House of Lords are continuing to block any attempts to get the Rwanda policy off the ground”
“But you abstained in the Rwanda vote, didn’t you?”
https://twitter.com/SophyRidgeSky/status/1773084652305072491
Make a bad investment, that's your fault, nobody else's responsibility.
Those who lose money as they invested in Thames Water deserve the same amount of sympathy as those who had invested in Wilkinsons, Debenhams, BHS, Thomas Cook, C&A, Toys R Us or any other business that's ever failed.
The owners are playing a game of "Call Our Bluff".
Yes, call it.
I took out the Octopus 12 month fox from last October - I have had the benefit of lower prices than market over winter, plus the insurance value in case prices spiked. The question now is whether I will be left high and dry over summer, though TBF I use 2/3 less energy for both gas and electric in summer vs winter so the odds should be on my side.
Who invited this thoughtless prat on Peston?
Also early July for many private schools.
If Sunak goes for a July election he's even sillier than I thought.
Edit: they are already cranking up the panic to call it an emergency election because of the catastrophe of the Starmer/Khan dictatorship.
As of July 2023, the company listed its shareholders as: OMERS (32%), the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS - 20%), Infinity Investments (a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority) (10%), British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (9%), Hermes Investment Management (manager of the BT Pension Scheme) (9%), the China Investment Corporation (9%), Queensland Investment Corporation (5%), Aquila GP Inc. (5%), and Stichting Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (2%). Shareholders have not taken a dividend since 2017, though the company has paid internal dividends from the operational business to holding companies to be able to service its debt obligations
Steven Swinford
@Steven_Swinford
EXCLUSIVE:
Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner praise Boris Johnson's vision for levelling up the nation as they accuse Rishi Sunak of killing it at birth
They claim that Johnson's analysis of regional inequality was 'good' but that Sunak failed to back the policy and 'give regions the levers to make it happen'
Starmer & Rayner are playing directly into Tory in-fighting over levelling up - Johnson has criticised Sunak over levelling up while Andy Street, West Midlands mayor, has accused govt of creating 'begging bowl culture" over levelling up funding
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1773071408471421438
But that's missing the point. My point is that after energy prices have initially pulled the CPI rate down further, the CPI published in August 2024 will see a big hike because the energy component will add about 0.8% upward pressure to the the whole index at that point. And in fact, the fact that energy costs will exert further downward pressure on the CPI index before then gives Sunak a brief inflationary window of opportunity in which to call the election.
Neither of us were prepared for it to be snowing HARD!
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a27a0197-b8dd-4346-827d-5ef425fd973d?shareToken=018b2c7eabf52dd2d9469cbd6ce00967
From the perspective of now, it's really obvious that nationalised water companies should have been investing more in repairing and expanding infrastructure than they did. But they didn't, which was one of the arguments for privatisation, to get more capital in.
That being the case, it's really obvious that private equity, reducing the capital base even more, were terrible owners for water companies. And anyone buying a company that had been PEd was a fool.
Trouble is that all that happened, and the lower taxes and profits from those mistakes have been taken and spent. We're not getting it back.
And that's why I wonder if some of these firms are worth less than nothing. That the cost of clearing the works backlog is so high that no plausible income stream can cover it, even if you wipe out the share and bond holders utterly. It's certainly mathematically possible. And then free market economics doesn't really give an answer.
See also the PE ownership of childrens' homes.
The trouble is, the people who profited and those left footing the bill are separated by generations.
But apart from that he was spot on.
From France: '“For thirty years, silence has been my driving force.” Last month, in a room in which you could have heard a pin drop, actress Judith Godrèche denounced the sexist violence in which French cinema has been an accomplice for decades. Godrèche’s speech at the César Awards — the French equivalent of the Oscars — was both highly anticipated and unprecedented, and met with a standing ovation. After years in which the American #MeToo movement gained traction while in France it languished, this reception signaled that perhaps the larger culture here is finally ready to push back.'
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/27/france-me-too-film-actresses/
From the hip-hop community in the US: "Armored trucks, helicopters, and swarms of federal agents and police descended upon Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Los Angeles home on Monday — part of a bicoastal raid carried out by the Department of Homeland Security, which also searched his Miami residence. A law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the searches are part of a sex trafficking investigation."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2024/03/26/diddy-sean-combs-sex-trafficking-lawsuits-raid/
I hope, like every decent person, that these incidents are part of a larger change for the better, in both places.
Street bears prime responsibility for that as he was on Johnson's review board which had the potential to stop HS2 in its tracks, but still gave the go ahead in 2020. As an HS2 cheerleader, his appointment of all people to that board showed that Johnson was never serious about potentially halting the project.
https://news.sky.com/story/record-number-of-migrants-cross-english-channel-so-far-this-year-13102663
"A record number of migrants have crossed the English Channel so far this year, according to provisional Home Office figures.
Some 4,644 have made the journey in 2024 - a record for the first three months of a calendar year."
The best possible news for the Democrats was that she is the candidate to contest Arizona in the Senate.
And that would, in turn, have actually allowed the capacity to develop transport links in the North and Midlands which now won't be physically possible.
I have no choice but to get my water through Southern Water.
He'll get damn few others.
And, as @BartholomewRoberts has suggested, no one is prepared to take them over for $1 (and no debt), the government can acquire them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcuMEijNsR0
Labour have no plan.
AFAICT only three times in the past 100 years has a LOTO won a GE against a younger PM:
1929 MacDonald beat Baldwin (10 months his junior)
1951 Churchill beat Attlee (8 years his junior)
1974 Wilson beat Heath (4 months his junior)
- and all of these LOTOs had been PM before.
Starmer is 18 years older than Sunak and 13 years older than Mordaunt.
In fact in every case the party with most seats got fewer votes than another party.
Florida has this week passed a law to ban children under 14 from using social media. It’s unclear whether the ban will work as tech bosses seek to challenge the legislation in court. But what is clear is that here in Britain we too must act to rescue our children from a phenomenon that is robbing them of their childhood.
On Tuesday, renowned US psychologist Jonathan Haidt published The Anxious Generation. In the book Haidt charts how the Western experience of growing up has been transformed over the last forty years from an outdoor, real-world, “play-based childhood” to a “phone-based childhood” in which kids now live their lives indoors and online through tiny screens.
Many parents share a growing sense of anger that super-rich and internationally powerful Big Tech has been given a free pass to push an unsafe and addictive product on our children. At a recent speech in the House of Lords, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told parliamentarians that if social media was a pharmaceutical drug, it would be withdrawn for safety reasons.
I hope…
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling
We are seeing two malign influences playing:
ZIRP is biting us hard as debt that was put in place at the time is not remotely sustainable
Infra funds chasing yield have been buying operating assets and fucking them up. Private equity can be good owners. Infra is not. It’s just pure financial engineering.