Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.
Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?
Nah, the Teddy boys were a bit before then and the football casuals a bit after.
This was 1975 but I think it could qualify as an attempted public beheading (ending in death in this case). Maybe because it was in the Irish part of the UK it doesn't count.
'Murphy repeatedly told Crossin: "I'm going to kill you, you bastard", before the taxi stopped at an entry off Wimbledon Street. Crossin was dragged into an alleyway and Murphy, brandishing a butcher's knife, cut his throat almost through to the spine.'
Two of them got whole life tariffs but one of those was released under the GFA. While I can take the rough with the smooth, I support the GFA, that one stuck in the craw a bit.
The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.
Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?
Nah, the Teddy boys were a bit before then and the football casuals a bit after.
Casual violence has declined, which is a good thing.
Terrorism has probably declined too, tbh, which is also a good thing.
That doesn't mean we should brush aside horrific attacks like Belfast because we want to hold on to cherished beliefs about the enrichment immigration offers us, which is all @bondegezou cares about.
The pogrom that happened afterwards is more horrific in my opinion. There will always be a few nutters carrying out random acts of violence, unfortunately. But organised gangs of "normal" people burning children out of their homes is a much more dangerous thing. We shouldn't brush that aside because we want to hold onto cherished beliefs about the British being fundamentally decent people who don't do that sort of thing.
Musk has more wealth than three quarters of the world’s nations.
And I bet it still doesn’t make him happy.
Point of order ( I’m not defending it): if he is a $ trillionaire that’s his wealth on a given day. The figures the media are bandying about that he’s as “wealthy as Switzerland or Saudi” are an apples and pears situation, in that they are comparing Swiss and Saudi GDPs which are income not the stock of Swiss and Saudi net assets which are wealth.
Perhaps of interest, using total economy net worth (sum of public and private assets and liabilities)
Rank
Country
National Net Wealth (US$ trillions, approx.)
1
United States
156
2
Japan
25
3
Germany
20
4
United Kingdom
17
5
France
16
6
Canada
13
7
Italy
12
8
South Korea
11
9
Australia
10
10
Spain
9
11
Netherlands
6
12
Switzerland
5
13
Belgium
3
14
Sweden
3
15
Denmark
2.5
16
Norway
2.4
17
Poland
2
18
Austria
2
19
Israel
1.8
20
Turkey
1.7
21
Portugal
1.5
22
New Zealand
1.4
23
Ireland
1.2
24
Czech Republic
1.1
25
Finland
0.9
26
Greece
0.8
27
Hungary
0.5
28
Slovakia
0.4
29
Slovenia
0.3
30
Lithuania
0.3
Indeed.
But that’s a bit too nuanced for much of the meeja (!) “Bit richer than Finland@ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Then again, “Personally richer than Finland” is fairly startling in its own way
Oh crikey yes, completely bonkers given Finland is not exactly your average impoverished Third World country of 5 million or so is it?
It’s just one of my bugbears, when the media present apples and pears type numbers, or numbers without context like “the trade defect last month was two billion” without the information of what two billion represents as say a percentage of U.K. GDP.
ICYMI: yesterday was a very dark day for the UK justice system.
Four people sentenced for a crime they were not convicted of, after a trial where the judge deliberately concealed that possibility from the jury and prevented the media from reporting on it.
I’ve not doubt they would have been acquitted had the jury been made aware of what crime they were convicting them off, so in effect trial by jury has ended in the UK.
The only logical response for jurors is to always acquit in the future.
How’s the WPC one of them bludgeoned and accused of being complicit in a Genocide ?
None of the 4 sentenced yesterday bludgeoned anybody.
The person who did that has already been dealt with not as a terrorist
You are completely lost if you think deliberately hiding motivation from a jury then reintroducing it after the verdict is OK
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
I think that we have both very successful privatisation and disastrous privatisation is great because we are forced to discuss the mechanisms rather than revert to ideology.
FWIW, I want to see more market liberalisation in energy (nodal pricing, bin the ridiculous price cap), and the opposite in water. The fundamentals are different and the approach should be different.
Musk has more wealth than three quarters of the world’s nations.
And I bet it still doesn’t make him happy.
Point of order ( I’m not defending it): if he is a $ trillionaire that’s his wealth on a given day. The figures the media are bandying about that he’s as “wealthy as Switzerland or Saudi” are an apples and pears situation, in that they are comparing Swiss and Saudi GDPs which are income not the stock of Swiss and Saudi net assets which are wealth.
Perhaps of interest, using total economy net worth (sum of public and private assets and liabilities)
Rank
Country
National Net Wealth (US$ trillions, approx.)
1
United States
156
2
Japan
25
3
Germany
20
4
United Kingdom
17
5
France
16
6
Canada
13
7
Italy
12
8
South Korea
11
9
Australia
10
10
Spain
9
11
Netherlands
6
12
Switzerland
5
13
Belgium
3
14
Sweden
3
15
Denmark
2.5
16
Norway
2.4
17
Poland
2
18
Austria
2
19
Israel
1.8
20
Turkey
1.7
21
Portugal
1.5
22
New Zealand
1.4
23
Ireland
1.2
24
Czech Republic
1.1
25
Finland
0.9
26
Greece
0.8
27
Hungary
0.5
28
Slovakia
0.4
29
Slovenia
0.3
30
Lithuania
0.3
Indeed.
But that’s a bit too nuanced for much of the meeja (!) “Bit richer than Finland@ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Then again, “Personally richer than Finland” is fairly startling in its own way
It is. And the original statement "has more wealth than three quarters of the world's nations" still holds, doesn't it?
The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.
Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?
Who knows, because back in 1977 we didn't have phones and CCTV to film all this stuff and make it as 'newsworthy'. That's what's different now - the amount captured on film and distributed on social media.
However, data shows that the rate of violent crime was higher in 1977 than it is now.
I think we knew on public murders, because cameras and newspapers still existed even if they didn't capture in "real time".
FWIW, this is @bondegezou usual one-man-rebuttal-unit bullshit again. The graph he's referring to is here and the murder rate was higher than in 1977 less than 2 years ago:
There's a big spike in 2003. Initially my mind jumped to the 7/7 terror attacks, but they were in 2005 and those are probably captured differently.
2003 was when all Shipman's victims went on the books.
Ah, of course.
In your link there's a whole list of multiple homicides for various years, including the London bombs in 2005.
The deaths at Hillsborough are recorded in the year 2017, because that's when they were recorded as being homicide. This sort of thing muddies the water, so there's a separate trend that measures the number of homicide incidents (so Shipman only counts once). This series only starts in 2001, and the latest year is the lowest since 2018.
And then, one reason for us hearing a lot about knife attacks in the news is that the police have done a good job at getting guns off the streets, and so they're aren't so many gun attacks to report on.
ICYMI: yesterday was a very dark day for the UK justice system.
Four people sentenced for a crime they were not convicted of, after a trial where the judge deliberately concealed that possibility from the jury and prevented the media from reporting on it.
I’ve not doubt they would have been acquitted had the jury been made aware of what crime they were convicting them off, so in effect trial by jury has ended in the UK.
The only logical response for jurors is to always acquit in the future.
How’s the WPC one of them bludgeoned and accused of being complicit in a Genocide ?
None of the 4 sentenced yesterday bludgeoned anybody.
The person who did that has already been dealt with not as a terrorist
You are completely lost if you think deliberately hiding motivation from a jury then reintroducing it after the verdict is OK
From the BBC report of yesterday:
Corner was jailed for seven years and eight months for criminal damage and inflicting grievous bodily harm on a police sergeant. The judge, Mr Justice Johnson, said Corner had had no justification for the "extreme and gratuitous force" used.
On topic. This looks like the worst possible result: Burnham scraping home thanks to Restore. It would be better if he either loses and a strengthened Starmer focuses on getting the job done, or he romps home and engenders a new sense of renewal and optimism.
However, with this kind of result Burnham's legitimacy will be in question from the start and I can foresee his ratings plummeting as he tries to lead a directionless and confused government (there's already considerable lack of clarity over what his approach will be to tax and spend).
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
I think that we have both very successful privatisation and disastrous privatisation is great because we are forced to discuss the mechanisms rather than revert to ideology.
FWIW, I want to see more market liberalisation in energy (nodal pricing, bin the ridiculous price cap), and the opposite in water. The fundamentals are different and the approach should be different.
Yes. The energy market can be opened up to much greater competition, which would help to improve efficiency, and mean that new technology wouldn't be delayed until it was approved by committee.
It all leaves Labour MPs in a state of total despair. Starmer looks finished but Burnham has no obvious plan and keeps making basic mistakes that foreshadow another troubled premiership, one said
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.
Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?
Nah, the Teddy boys were a bit before then and the football casuals a bit after.
This was 1975 but I think it could qualify as an attempted public beheading (ending in death in this case). Maybe because it was in the Irish part of the UK it doesn't count.
'Murphy repeatedly told Crossin: "I'm going to kill you, you bastard", before the taxi stopped at an entry off Wimbledon Street. Crossin was dragged into an alleyway and Murphy, brandishing a butcher's knife, cut his throat almost through to the spine.'
Two of them got whole life tariffs but one of those was released under the GFA. While I can take the rough with the smooth, I support the GFA, that one stuck in the craw a bit.
I believe they could only get the ring leader, Murphy, on firearms charges and he served six years. He restarted the auld murdering almost immediately after his release. A pretty miserable episode all round.
The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.
Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?
Nah, the Teddy boys were a bit before then and the football casuals a bit after.
Casual violence has declined, which is a good thing.
Terrorism has probably declined too, tbh, which is also a good thing.
That doesn't mean we should brush aside horrific attacks like Belfast because we want to hold on to cherished beliefs about the enrichment immigration offers us, which is all @bondegezou cares about.
The pogrom that happened afterwards is more horrific in my opinion. There will always be a few nutters carrying out random acts of violence, unfortunately. But organised gangs of "normal" people burning children out of their homes is a much more dangerous thing. We shouldn't brush that aside because we want to hold onto cherished beliefs about the British being fundamentally decent people who don't do that sort of thing.
Those complicit in encouraging the Pogrom by their loose words who are of mixed race should be forced to endure the barbaric scenes. To evidence what would have happened to them.
I'm specifically talking about Yusuf, Braverman and equally as loose with her mouth Badenoch.
Loose words cost lives
Every action has a reaction and these right wing shit stirrers need to realise that.
It all leaves Labour MPs in a state of total despair. Starmer looks finished but Burnham has no obvious plan and keeps making basic mistakes that foreshadow another troubled premiership, one said
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
All way better now than they used to be.
Not perfect sure, and the regulators and management have in many cases screwed up, but we forget that rivers and beaches used to be terribly polluted.
Same with investment levels, Thames have been replacing Victorian sewers and leaky pipes for decades now, because there’s never any investment when the competition is skools’n’ospitals.
It all leaves Labour MPs in a state of total despair. Starmer looks finished but Burnham has no obvious plan and keeps making basic mistakes that foreshadow another troubled premiership, one said
This should be great for Labour MPs. They've had a chance to see Burnham in action in an election campaign. They don't like what they see. So they don't have to make him leader. They can find someone else.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Sorry, Sandpit, but that's just rubbish. There is simply no correspondence at all between a telecoms company and a water utility.
I'm also quite old enough to recall the 80s. Privatisation was well merited for BT, and a disaster for water utilities.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
AI technology is going to be the next nuclear technology and countries with models in their control will be the next superpowers. We really fucked up letting Google buy DeepMind.
It all leaves Labour MPs in a state of total despair. Starmer looks finished but Burnham has no obvious plan and keeps making basic mistakes that foreshadow another troubled premiership, one said
This should be great for Labour MPs. They've had a chance to see Burnham in action in an election campaign. They don't like what they see. So they don't have to make him leader. They can find someone else.
If they had working critical faculties, yes. But I think they have already made up their mind to install him as soon as possible
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
There is no competition in the supply of mains water.
On topic. This looks like the worst possible result: Burnham scraping home thanks to Restore. It would be better if he either loses and a strengthened Starmer focuses on getting the job done, or he romps home and engenders a new sense of renewal and optimism.
However, with this kind of result Burnham's legitimacy will be in question from the start and I can foresee his ratings plummeting as he tries to lead a directionless and confused government (there's already considerable lack of clarity over what his approach will be to tax and spend).
Democracy under FPTP means if he wins by 1 vote he is legitimately going to be our next PM.
If Reform win its Rayner.
In either of those 2 scenarios Makerfield will be won by Lab in GE2029
Peak Farage was months ago and its all downhill once SKS is binned
The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.
Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?
Nah, the Teddy boys were a bit before then and the football casuals a bit after.
Casual violence has declined, which is a good thing.
Terrorism has probably declined too, tbh, which is also a good thing.
That doesn't mean we should brush aside horrific attacks like Belfast because we want to hold on to cherished beliefs about the enrichment immigration offers us, which is all @bondegezou cares about.
The pogrom that happened afterwards is more horrific in my opinion. There will always be a few nutters carrying out random acts of violence, unfortunately. But organised gangs of "normal" people burning children out of their homes is a much more dangerous thing. We shouldn't brush that aside because we want to hold onto cherished beliefs about the British being fundamentally decent people who don't do that sort of thing.
Worse than someone having their head cut off with a rusty knife in real-time whilst alive in the middle of a street?
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
This old bollocks again. What freed phones was not privatisation but technology, including new phones and System X developed by a nationalised GPO/BT.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Your older than I thought if you were ordering new phione lines in the 80s , unless you were doing it in a piping treble voice.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Telegraph reporting that Miliband is expecting to be CoE under Burnham.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
There is no competition in the supply of mains water.
Point taken for competition, but the reason for privatisation was decades of underinvestment in infrastructure, caused by governments always having something more politically attractive to do with their money.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Sorry, Sandpit, but that's just rubbish. There is simply no correspondence at all between a telecoms company and a water utility.
I'm also quite old enough to recall the 80s. Privatisation was well merited for BT, and a disaster for water utilities.
There's also our old friend, correlation ≠ causation. The technical ability to do a better, cheaper phone service happened about the same time as privatisation. The improvements that followed may have been slower, because of the whole capital investment thing, but it seems silly to say that they wouldn't have happened at all.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
ICYMI: yesterday was a very dark day for the UK justice system.
Four people sentenced for a crime they were not convicted of, after a trial where the judge deliberately concealed that possibility from the jury and prevented the media from reporting on it.
I’ve not doubt they would have been acquitted had the jury been made aware of what crime they were convicting them off, so in effect trial by jury has ended in the UK.
The only logical response for jurors is to always acquit in the future.
It does appear to be a fundamental breach of habeas corpus where someone is sentenced for a crime they weren't convicted of in court. It seems disingenuous for these to be aggravating factors rather than crimes in their own right that need explicitly to be tried.
For what it's worth this lawyer thinks the definition of terrorism is too vague to be useful in sentencing and reckons it will end up in the Supreme Court. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes to Strasbourg on the habeas corpus concern but I'm not a lawyer.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
This old bollocks again. What freed phones was not privatisation but technology, including new phones and System X developed by a nationalised GPO/BT.
Without privatisation we'd have had no choice in the market, even if technology enabled that to happen more readily.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Telegraph reporting that Miliband is expecting to be CoE under Burnham.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Your older than I thought if you were ordering new phione lines in the 80s , unless you were doing it in a piping treble voice.
I’m old enough to remember my parents having to use a neighbour’s phone to get news about my dying grandfather, because it took BT three months to install the line after they moved house.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
Welsh water whilst a private company is similar in that it does not have shareholders and reinvest it's profits in it's water
However, private or public, multiple billions of investment is needed and that has to be found from somewhere and more taxes or borrowing is not a solution when money is urgently required for defence
It will be interesting to hear Burnham's response to where he will find the 15 billion shortfall in Starmer's present defence review
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Telegraph reporting that Miliband is expecting to be CoE under Burnham.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Telegraph reporting that Miliband is expecting to be CoE under Burnham.
Someone was saying about the bond markets...
Oh shit
The Telegraph
Prefer The Beano on political accuracy
It is widely reported across the media, not just the telegraph which seems to be catnip to you
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
That's a balanced post.
I think Water would be "crap" if nationalised or privatised.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
The general point is that improvements to water infrastructure are entirely funded by the customers in the end. Those improvements increase the value of the assets, which the owners effectively charge a rent on.
Such a setup for a pure monopoly, essential utility should be owned by the public, not overseas rentiers.
There is no convincing evidence that water utilities are better run by the private sector, and less than no evidence that any theoretical increase in efficiency justifies the rent extracted.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Telegraph reporting that Miliband is expecting to be CoE under Burnham.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Telegraph reporting that Miliband is expecting to be CoE under Burnham.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
On the whole I agree with your point, except to note that Thames Water has not paid dividends in ten years, and in the previous decade most of its dividends seem to have been paid with borrowed money (which is why it's in its current disastrous state).
Musk has more wealth than three quarters of the world’s nations.
And I bet it still doesn’t make him happy.
Point of order ( I’m not defending it): if he is a $ trillionaire that’s his wealth on a given day. The figures the media are bandying about that he’s as “wealthy as Switzerland or Saudi” are an apples and pears situation, in that they are comparing Swiss and Saudi GDPs which are income not the stock of Swiss and Saudi net assets which are wealth.
Perhaps of interest, using total economy net worth (sum of public and private assets and liabilities)
Rank
Country
National Net Wealth (US$ trillions, approx.)
1
United States
156
2
Japan
25
3
Germany
20
4
United Kingdom
17
5
France
16
6
Canada
13
7
Italy
12
8
South Korea
11
9
Australia
10
10
Spain
9
11
Netherlands
6
12
Switzerland
5
13
Belgium
3
14
Sweden
3
15
Denmark
2.5
16
Norway
2.4
17
Poland
2
18
Austria
2
19
Israel
1.8
20
Turkey
1.7
21
Portugal
1.5
22
New Zealand
1.4
23
Ireland
1.2
24
Czech Republic
1.1
25
Finland
0.9
26
Greece
0.8
27
Hungary
0.5
28
Slovakia
0.4
29
Slovenia
0.3
30
Lithuania
0.3
Source? Since no China, Russia, I am assuming OECD, can you confirm?
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Sorry, Sandpit, but that's just rubbish. There is simply no correspondence at all between a telecoms company and a water utility.
I'm also quite old enough to recall the 80s. Privatisation was well merited for BT, and a disaster for water utilities.
There's also our old friend, correlation ≠ causation. The technical ability to do a better, cheaper phone service happened about the same time as privatisation. The improvements that followed may have been slower, because of the whole capital investment thing, but it seems silly to say that they wouldn't have happened at all.
There's good evidence that the state monopoly would have benefitted from competition, as the Hull phone company which existed at the same time was markedly superior in terms of service.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
Which could also be a criticism of gas/leccy given the oligopoly of the market.
Musk has more wealth than three quarters of the world’s nations.
And I bet it still doesn’t make him happy.
Point of order ( I’m not defending it): if he is a $ trillionaire that’s his wealth on a given day. The figures the media are bandying about that he’s as “wealthy as Switzerland or Saudi” are an apples and pears situation, in that they are comparing Swiss and Saudi GDPs which are income not the stock of Swiss and Saudi net assets which are wealth.
Perhaps of interest, using total economy net worth (sum of public and private assets and liabilities)
Rank
Country
National Net Wealth (US$ trillions, approx.)
1
United States
156
2
Japan
25
3
Germany
20
4
United Kingdom
17
5
France
16
6
Canada
13
7
Italy
12
8
South Korea
11
9
Australia
10
10
Spain
9
11
Netherlands
6
12
Switzerland
5
13
Belgium
3
14
Sweden
3
15
Denmark
2.5
16
Norway
2.4
17
Poland
2
18
Austria
2
19
Israel
1.8
20
Turkey
1.7
21
Portugal
1.5
22
New Zealand
1.4
23
Ireland
1.2
24
Czech Republic
1.1
25
Finland
0.9
26
Greece
0.8
27
Hungary
0.5
28
Slovakia
0.4
29
Slovenia
0.3
30
Lithuania
0.3
Source? Since no China, Russia, I am assuming OECD, can you confirm?
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
The general point is that improvements to water infrastructure are entirely funded by the customers in the end. Those improvements increase the value of the assets, which the owners effectively charge a rent on.
Such a setup for a pure monopoly, essential utility should be owned by the public, not overseas rentiers.
There is no convincing evidence that water utilities are better run by the private sector, and less than no evidence that any theoretical increase in efficiency justifies the rent extracted.
Water is one of those industries that ideally can be run by consumer cooperatives ie a middle ground between a political state and private money making
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
Which could also be a criticism of gas/leccy given the oligopoly of the market.
Electricity is rather difference, since however imperfect the UK setup (and it's a semi-rational mess), there is significant competition, both in generation and supply. A company like Octopus, for example, is a welcome development, and drives innovation which might not otherwise happen.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
Which could also be a criticism of gas/leccy given the oligopoly of the market.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Telegraph reporting that Miliband is expecting to be CoE under Burnham.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Sorry, Sandpit, but that's just rubbish. There is simply no correspondence at all between a telecoms company and a water utility.
I'm also quite old enough to recall the 80s. Privatisation was well merited for BT, and a disaster for water utilities.
There's also our old friend, correlation ≠ causation. The technical ability to do a better, cheaper phone service happened about the same time as privatisation. The improvements that followed may have been slower, because of the whole capital investment thing, but it seems silly to say that they wouldn't have happened at all.
There's good evidence that the state monopoly would have benefitted from competition, as the Hull phone company which existed at the same time was markedly superior in terms of service.
Within months of privatisation, the rules about only allowing GPO handsets and many other things were swept away.
They had been running as if it was the 1950s
I worked with a fair number of IT contractors who were ex-GPO. They told many tales of people not doing anything all day. One chap, they spoke of, had a thriving business, building electric guitars. Which he ran from the company workshops.
I'm fairly sure if the Israelis had targeted the SNP they would have been much more effective than the bungling processes that have made them look like either crooks or morons.
(Other parties of Scotland - please note that the voters still consider them better than you. What does this say that they prefer people who are crooks or morons to you?)
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Sorry, Sandpit, but that's just rubbish. There is simply no correspondence at all between a telecoms company and a water utility.
I'm also quite old enough to recall the 80s. Privatisation was well merited for BT, and a disaster for water utilities.
There's also our old friend, correlation ≠ causation. The technical ability to do a better, cheaper phone service happened about the same time as privatisation. The improvements that followed may have been slower, because of the whole capital investment thing, but it seems silly to say that they wouldn't have happened at all.
There's good evidence that the state monopoly would have benefitted from competition, as the Hull phone company which existed at the same time was markedly superior in terms of service.
Within months of privatisation, the rules about only allowing GPO handsets and many other things were swept away.
They had been running as if it was the 1950s
I worked with a fair number of IT contractors who were ex-GPO. They told many tales of people not doing anything all day. One chap, they spoke of, had a thriving business, building electric guitars. Which he ran from the company workshops.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
Which could also be a criticism of gas/leccy given the oligopoly of the market.
Except you can choose the latter.
Less so since the price cap stuff, but a bit.
The consumer-facing bit is less important in terms of competition - all the supply companies are buying from the same wholesale market.
The important bit for competition is access to the grid for generation (and now storage) companies.
You can make a case that National Grid is the weakest link of the whole setup, and, as with water, or the railway tracks, it's the bit where no competition is possible.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
It may be worth pointing out the not great assessment of Scottish Water's environmental performance by its regulator is still a massive improvement on the utterly dire assessments of its counterparts south of the border. Different regulator so it may not be like for like.
It's ultimately a political decision whether you invest for environmental improvements with consequently larger customer bills or you minimise investment to keep bills low. The decision tends to come down on the side of lower investment and lower bills.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
Which could also be a criticism of gas/leccy given the oligopoly of the market.
Except you can choose the latter.
Less so since the price cap stuff, but a bit.
I remember the early days post-privatisation, when the best deal involved buying your leccy from the gas board and your gas from the leccy board.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Sorry, Sandpit, but that's just rubbish. There is simply no correspondence at all between a telecoms company and a water utility.
I'm also quite old enough to recall the 80s. Privatisation was well merited for BT, and a disaster for water utilities.
There's also our old friend, correlation ≠ causation. The technical ability to do a better, cheaper phone service happened about the same time as privatisation. The improvements that followed may have been slower, because of the whole capital investment thing, but it seems silly to say that they wouldn't have happened at all.
There's good evidence that the state monopoly would have benefitted from competition, as the Hull phone company which existed at the same time was markedly superior in terms of service.
Within months of privatisation, the rules about only allowing GPO handsets and many other things were swept away.
They had been running as if it was the 1950s
I worked with a fair number of IT contractors who were ex-GPO. They told many tales of people not doing anything all day. One chap, they spoke of, had a thriving business, building electric guitars. Which he ran from the company workshops.
Quite. Abuses of all kinds tend to happen more in monopolies, as there are fewer checks on them.
I'm fairly sure if the Israelis had targeted the SNP they would have been much more effective than the bungling processes that have made them look like either crooks or morons.
(Other parties of Scotland - please note that the voters still consider them better than you. What does this say that they prefer people who are crooks or morons to you?)
"Crooks or morons they may be, but they're our crooks or morons."
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
Which could also be a criticism of gas/leccy given the oligopoly of the market.
Except you can choose the latter.
Less so since the price cap stuff, but a bit.
The consumer-facing bit is less important in terms of competition - all the supply companies are buying from the same wholesale market.
The important bit for competition is access to the grid for generation (and now storage) companies.
You can make a case that National Grid is the weakest link of the whole setup, and, as with water, or the railway tracks, it's the bit where no competition is possible.
At the margins, you do have private wire supply from generators to adjacent industrial customers.
We are likely to see more of this with data centres.
For generation, the competition comes in when bidding for subsidy. Lowest bids win, and you then have your slot in the merit order, and trouser the availability payments.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Sorry, Sandpit, but that's just rubbish. There is simply no correspondence at all between a telecoms company and a water utility.
I'm also quite old enough to recall the 80s. Privatisation was well merited for BT, and a disaster for water utilities.
There's also our old friend, correlation ≠ causation. The technical ability to do a better, cheaper phone service happened about the same time as privatisation. The improvements that followed may have been slower, because of the whole capital investment thing, but it seems silly to say that they wouldn't have happened at all.
There's good evidence that the state monopoly would have benefitted from competition, as the Hull phone company which existed at the same time was markedly superior in terms of service.
Within months of privatisation, the rules about only allowing GPO handsets and many other things were swept away.
They had been running as if it was the 1950s
I worked with a fair number of IT contractors who were ex-GPO. They told many tales of people not doing anything all day. One chap, they spoke of, had a thriving business, building electric guitars. Which he ran from the company workshops.
Quite. Abuses of all kinds tend to happen more in monopolies, as there are fewer checks on them.
Which is why capitalists are very keen to generate monopolies- and if that's not possible, oligarchies.
The one thing that's worse than a state monopoly is a private monopoly.
Starting to think Burnham is going to be a bit like Labour's Boris. Someone with a personal brand who can attract voters turned off by the party. Ideologically flexible. And someone who is fairly dependent on the team around him.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
Which could also be a criticism of gas/leccy given the oligopoly of the market.
Electricity is rather difference, since however imperfect the UK setup (and it's a semi-rational mess), there is significant competition, both in generation and supply. A company like Octopus, for example, is a welcome development, and drives innovation which might not otherwise happen.
True, thought that requires Ed Miliband to listen to them on market reform rather than the status quo.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Your older than I thought if you were ordering new phione lines in the 80s , unless you were doing it in a piping treble voice.
I’m old enough to remember my parents having to use a neighbour’s phone to get news about my dying grandfather, because it took BT three months to install the line after they moved house.
My parents didn't have a phone and neither did I until after I left university. We wrote letters to one another about once a week.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
It may be worth pointing out the not great assessment of Scottish Water's environmental performance by its regulator is still a massive improvement on the utterly dire assessments of its counterparts south of the border. Different regulator so it may not be like for like.
It's ultimately a political decision whether you invest for environmental improvements with consequently larger customer bills or you minimise investment to keep bills low. The decision tends to come down on the side of lower investment and lower bills.
Hmm, I think there are some serious question marks about that. The one thing England gets right is exceptionally good monitoring on pollution so that the private companies can get hammered by the wild swimmers and Gone Fishing crowd.
It just strikes me that if the kind of pollution we get at Wardie Bay and Portobello existed in England people would be out in the streets, but Scottish Water get a pass because they are public.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
It may be worth pointing out the not great assessment of Scottish Water's environmental performance by its regulator is still a massive improvement on the utterly dire assessments of its counterparts south of the border. Different regulator so it may not be like for like.
It's ultimately a political decision whether you invest for environmental improvements with consequently larger customer bills or you minimise investment to keep bills low. The decision tends to come down on the side of lower investment and lower bills.
But St Feargal of Sharkey has spoken, it’s just as (full of) crap north of the border. Admittedly he seemed to think Grangemouth was on the Spey so his expertise may not be all that.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
The issue was that there was a huge amount of capital spending needed to improve sewage treatment and the Treasury didn’t want to pay for it. But it was politically impossible for public companies to put up bills & the accountants wouldn’t let them borrow any more to do it.
So you privatised it, the treasury got some cash and the customers paid the bills. It would have worked fine until Macquarie outsmarted some naive regulators
Holyrood’s new health committee convener has been criticised after a recently surfaced video shows her drawing a comparison between pregnant women seeking abortions and “feral cats”.
Ms McDade, Reform UK MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, who was elected convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Health, Care and Sport Committee this week, also described the move to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales as "appalling".
That is an extremely misleading headline. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you did not read the full remarks.
For those of us who don’t have a Herald sub, can you say why it’s misleading?
It is misleading for two reasons.
1. There was never a comparison drawn between women seeking abortion and feral cats. There were two interesting points made to illustrate McDade's feelings on abortion, one of which was a formative experience during which as a vet she had to abort pregnancies in cats, which was evidently an extremely visceral and a horrid task. The headline implies an incredibly crass and insensitive insult.
2. Beneath the headline, the sentence appears to indicate that McDade opposes all abortion and regrets the 1967 act. This is untrue - she has condemned the recent 2026 act that legalised full term abortions arranged without medical oversight. She is concerned that labour could be forced almost at full term, with the result that a living/viable baby is born 'gasping for air'. I think that's a horrific scenario that would concern anyone with a shred of human feeling, but maybe that's just me.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Telegraph reporting that Miliband is expecting to be CoE under Burnham.
On topic. This looks like the worst possible result: Burnham scraping home thanks to Restore. It would be better if he either loses and a strengthened Starmer focuses on getting the job done, or he romps home and engenders a new sense of renewal and optimism.
However, with this kind of result Burnham's legitimacy will be in question from the start and I can foresee his ratings plummeting as he tries to lead a directionless and confused government (there's already considerable lack of clarity over what his approach will be to tax and spend).
That’s the best possible result… for the Tories
Labour confused and Burnham undermined. Reform focused on Restore…
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
Which could also be a criticism of gas/leccy given the oligopoly of the market.
Except you can choose the latter.
Less so since the price cap stuff, but a bit.
The consumer-facing bit is less important in terms of competition - all the supply companies are buying from the same wholesale market.
The important bit for competition is access to the grid for generation (and now storage) companies.
You can make a case that National Grid is the weakest link of the whole setup, and, as with water, or the railway tracks, it's the bit where no competition is possible.
Maybe so but if I can choose my package and price at the end point as a consumer, I'm happier.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.
The issue was that there was a huge amount of capital spending needed to improve sewage treatment and the Treasury didn’t want to pay for it. But it was politically impossible for public companies to put up bills & the accountants wouldn’t let them borrow any more to do it.
So you privatised it, the treasury got some cash and the customers paid the bills. It would have worked fine until Macquarie outsmarted some naive regulators
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
This is what Chat GPT says: (1 of 3)
Big picture
Before privatisation (1970s–1989): publicly owned regional water authorities, chronic underinvestment, poor environmental standards.
After privatisation (1989–today): massive early investment and improvements, but growing problems since ~2000s (sewage, debt, dividends, ageing infrastructure).
1) Sewage dumping / pollution
Before privatisation: Rivers and beaches were heavily polluted. Raw sewage discharge was common and many waterways were biologically “dead.” The UK failed to meet rising European environmental standards.
Today: Huge controversy: record levels of sewage discharge. In 2024 alone: 3.6 million hours of sewage dumping into waterways. Beaches and rivers still regularly receive pollution warnings.
Bottom line: Improved a lot in the 1990s–2000s, but Recently worsened or stagnated, now a major political issue.
2) Leaks and water loss
Before privatisation:Infrastructure was old and poorly maintained. Leakage levels were high due to decades of underfunding.
Today: Leakage Fell significantly after privatisation (~⅓ reduction since 1990s). But still substantial: billions of litres lost daily in some estimates. Critics argue companies haven’t fixed ageing Victorian pipe networks.
Bottom line: Better than before, but still far from solved
3) Investment levels
Before privatisation: Investment was strictly limited by government budgets: Around £2 billion/year cap in the 1980s. Result: crumbling infrastructure and failure to meet standards.
After privatisation: Early period (1990s–2000s) Massive increase: ~£160–£190 billion invested since privatisation. Driven by: EU environmental rules and Ability to borrow and raise private capital
Later period (2000s–2020s): Investment slowed or became inefficient; Regulatory pressure to keep bills low reduced spending.
Meanwhile: £70–£88+ billion paid out in dividends Debt rose to tens of billions
Bottom line Huge improvement initially, But increasingly criticised as: financialised (debt + dividends) not enough reinvestment in infrastructure
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
4) Drinking water & environmental quality
Before privatisation Drinking water quality: often below modern standards Rivers and beaches: Many polluted Few safe bathing waters
Today Major improvements: “World-class drinking water” standards Clean beaches: 5) Costs, debt, and financial model
Before privatisation No dividends Funded through taxation + public borrowing Low bills politically prioritised → underinvestment Today Bills up ~40% in real terms since privatisation Key features: High debt (tens of billions) Large dividend payouts Complex ownership (often foreign investors) Criticism: Money going to: dividends debt servicing instead of infrastructure
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Conclusion (me not Chat)
A lot better than it was, but has got worse since the mid to late 2000s driven by excessive leverage and dividends resulting in less resources for investment.
So that seems to be the failure of regulation that allowed Macquarie to loot the industry not the ownership model
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
It may be worth pointing out the not great assessment of Scottish Water's environmental performance by its regulator is still a massive improvement on the utterly dire assessments of its counterparts south of the border. Different regulator so it may not be like for like.
It's ultimately a political decision whether you invest for environmental improvements with consequently larger customer bills or you minimise investment to keep bills low. The decision tends to come down on the side of lower investment and lower bills.
Hmm, I think there are some serious question marks about that. The one thing England gets right is exceptionally good monitoring on pollution so that the private companies can get hammered by the wild swimmers and Gone Fishing crowd.
It just strikes me that if the kind of pollution we get at Wardie Bay and Portobello existed in England people would be out in the streets, but Scottish Water get a pass because they are public.
Looking further into this both Scotland and England implement the EU Bathing Water directive and both have similar results overall - around 85% good or excellent on objective monitoring. England does have big regional variation where some regions do much better than others. Cornwall does particularly well, presumably because its beaches are important for tourism.
Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.
No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.
On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.
Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.
Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.
We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.
Good morning
I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy
Utilities were publicly owned
Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.
Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum
Power to the People
Bringing accountability back
Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.
Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.
Now do water
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
The general point is that improvements to water infrastructure are entirely funded by the customers in the end. Those improvements increase the value of the assets, which the owners effectively charge a rent on.
Such a setup for a pure monopoly, essential utility should be owned by the public, not overseas rentiers.
There is no convincing evidence that water utilities are better run by the private sector, and less than no evidence that any theoretical increase in efficiency justifies the rent extracted.
The issue is an accounting one - the bean counters insist on consolidating publicly owned water company debt into the national debt figures even if they are legally non recourse because no one believes that the government wouldn’t bail them out if needed
Comments
It’s just one of my bugbears, when the media present apples and pears type numbers, or numbers without context like “the trade defect last month was two billion” without the information of what two billion represents as say a percentage of U.K. GDP.
The person who did that has already been dealt with not as a terrorist
You are completely lost if you think deliberately hiding motivation from a jury then reintroducing it after the verdict is OK
FWIW, I want to see more market liberalisation in energy (nodal pricing, bin the ridiculous price cap), and the opposite in water. The fundamentals are different and the approach should be different.
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
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7m
Restore supporters starting to arrive for today’s Makerfield canvassing session. Quite a significant queue building.
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/2065715056516399126
The deaths at Hillsborough are recorded in the year 2017, because that's when they were recorded as being homicide. This sort of thing muddies the water, so there's a separate trend that measures the number of homicide incidents (so Shipman only counts once). This series only starts in 2001, and the latest year is the lowest since 2018.
And then, one reason for us hearing a lot about knife attacks in the news is that the police have done a good job at getting guns off the streets, and so they're aren't so many gun attacks to report on.
Corner was jailed for seven years and eight months for criminal damage and inflicting grievous bodily harm on a police sergeant. The judge, Mr Justice Johnson, said Corner had had no justification for the "extreme and gratuitous force" used.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce950111xk7o
However, with this kind of result Burnham's legitimacy will be in question from the start and I can foresee his ratings plummeting as he tries to lead a directionless and confused government (there's already considerable lack of clarity over what his approach will be to tax and spend).
BBC News - What is Welsh Water and how does it work?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67155314
But water is very different.
https://x.com/alexwickham/status/2065705814002651431
Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.
A pretty miserable episode all round.
I'm specifically talking about Yusuf, Braverman and equally as loose with her mouth Badenoch.
Loose words cost lives
Every action has a reaction and these right wing shit stirrers need to realise that.
Not perfect sure, and the regulators and management have in many cases screwed up, but we forget that rivers and beaches used to be terribly polluted.
Same with investment levels, Thames have been replacing Victorian sewers and leaky pipes for decades now, because there’s never any investment when the competition is skools’n’ospitals.
There is simply no correspondence at all between a telecoms company and a water utility.
I'm also quite old enough to recall the 80s. Privatisation was well merited for BT, and a disaster for water utilities.
The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.
If Reform win its Rayner.
In either of those 2 scenarios Makerfield will be won by Lab in GE2029
Peak Farage was months ago and its all downhill once SKS is binned
Get out of here.
Someone was saying about the bond markets...
For what it's worth this lawyer thinks the definition of terrorism is too vague to be useful in sentencing and reckons it will end up in the Supreme Court. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes to Strasbourg on the habeas corpus concern but I'm not a lawyer.
https://bsky.app/profile/legalclaret.bsky.social/post/3mo4etnm2ek2b
It's one of the most obviously successful ones.
However, private or public, multiple billions of investment is needed and that has to be found from somewhere and more taxes or borrowing is not a solution when money is urgently required for defence
It will be interesting to hear Burnham's response to where he will find the 15 billion shortfall in Starmer's present defence review
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/78073
Prefer The Beano on political accuracy
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/cabinet-wooing-burnham-top-jobs-miliband-chancellor-4426136?ito=link_share_article-top
I think Water would be "crap" if nationalised or privatised.
The problem is, as you say, insufficient investment. However, having said that, there is £50bn+ of investment going in at the moment, so it's not nothing: https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/regulated-companies/major-water-infrastructure-programme/
They don't distribute ice cream, it's lilets
Those improvements increase the value of the assets, which the owners effectively charge a rent on.
Such a setup for a pure monopoly, essential utility should be owned by the public, not overseas rentiers.
There is no convincing evidence that water utilities are better run by the private sector, and less than no evidence that any theoretical increase in efficiency justifies the rent extracted.
A company like Octopus, for example, is a welcome development, and drives innovation which might not otherwise happen.
Less so since the price cap stuff, but a bit.
Kevin Maguire
@Kevin_Maguire
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17h
Wow!
https://x.com/Kevin_Maguire/status/2065456941531386275?s=20
They had been running as if it was the 1950s
I worked with a fair number of IT contractors who were ex-GPO. They told many tales of people not doing anything all day. One chap, they spoke of, had a thriving business, building electric guitars. Which he ran from the company workshops.
(Other parties of Scotland - please note that the voters still consider them better than you. What does this say that they prefer people who are crooks or morons to you?)
The important bit for competition is access to the grid for generation (and now storage) companies.
You can make a case that National Grid is the weakest link of the whole setup, and, as with water, or the railway tracks, it's the bit where no competition is possible.
It's ultimately a political decision whether you invest for environmental improvements with consequently larger customer bills or you minimise investment to keep bills low. The decision tends to come down on the side of lower investment and lower bills.
Abuses of all kinds tend to happen more in monopolies, as there are fewer checks on them.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/11/burglar-passport-photo-belgravia-crime-scene/ (£££)
Educated under a Tory government, obviously.
We are likely to see more of this with data centres.
For generation, the competition comes in when bidding for subsidy. Lowest bids win, and you then have your slot in the merit order, and trouser the availability payments.
The one thing that's worse than a state monopoly is a private monopoly.
NEW THREAD
Hopefully a bit less corrupt/law breaking.
We wrote letters to one another about once a week.
It just strikes me that if the kind of pollution we get at Wardie Bay and Portobello existed in England people would be out in the streets, but Scottish Water get a pass because they are public.
So you privatised it, the treasury got some cash and the customers paid the bills. It would have worked fine until Macquarie outsmarted some naive regulators
1. There was never a comparison drawn between women seeking abortion and feral cats. There were two interesting points made to illustrate McDade's feelings on abortion, one of which was a formative experience during which as a vet she had to abort pregnancies in cats, which was evidently an extremely visceral and a horrid task. The headline implies an incredibly crass and insensitive insult.
2. Beneath the headline, the sentence appears to indicate that McDade opposes all abortion and regrets the 1967 act. This is untrue - she has condemned the recent 2026 act that legalised full term abortions arranged without medical oversight. She is concerned that labour could be forced almost at full term, with the result that a living/viable baby is born 'gasping for air'. I think that's a horrific scenario that would concern anyone with a shred of human feeling, but maybe that's just me.
All the right wing thickos are lumping on
Labour confused and Burnham undermined. Reform focused on Restore…
Big picture
Before privatisation (1970s–1989): publicly owned regional water authorities, chronic underinvestment, poor environmental standards.
After privatisation (1989–today): massive early investment and improvements, but growing problems since ~2000s (sewage, debt, dividends, ageing infrastructure).
1) Sewage dumping / pollution
Before privatisation: Rivers and beaches were heavily polluted. Raw sewage discharge was common and many waterways were biologically “dead.” The UK failed to meet rising European environmental standards.
Today: Huge controversy: record levels of sewage discharge. In 2024 alone: 3.6 million hours of sewage dumping into waterways.
Beaches and rivers still regularly receive pollution warnings.
Bottom line: Improved a lot in the 1990s–2000s, but Recently worsened or stagnated, now a major political issue.
2) Leaks and water loss
Before privatisation:Infrastructure was old and poorly maintained. Leakage levels were high due to decades of underfunding.
Today: Leakage Fell significantly after privatisation (~⅓ reduction since 1990s). But still substantial: billions of litres lost daily in some estimates. Critics argue companies haven’t fixed ageing Victorian pipe networks.
Bottom line: Better than before, but still far from solved
3) Investment levels
Before privatisation: Investment was strictly limited by government budgets: Around £2 billion/year cap in the 1980s. Result: crumbling infrastructure and failure to meet standards.
After privatisation: Early period (1990s–2000s)
Massive increase: ~£160–£190 billion invested since privatisation. Driven by: EU environmental rules and Ability to borrow and raise private capital
Later period (2000s–2020s): Investment slowed or became inefficient; Regulatory pressure to keep bills low reduced spending.
Meanwhile:
£70–£88+ billion paid out in dividends
Debt rose to tens of billions
Bottom line
Huge improvement initially,
But increasingly criticised as:
financialised (debt + dividends)
not enough reinvestment in infrastructure
Before privatisation
Drinking water quality: often below modern standards
Rivers and beaches:
Many polluted
Few safe bathing waters
Today
Major improvements:
“World-class drinking water” standards
Clean beaches:
5) Costs, debt, and financial model
Before privatisation
No dividends
Funded through taxation + public borrowing
Low bills politically prioritised → underinvestment
Today
Bills up ~40% in real terms since privatisation
Key features:
High debt (tens of billions)
Large dividend payouts
Complex ownership (often foreign investors)
Criticism:
Money going to:
dividends
debt servicing
instead of infrastructure
A lot better than it was, but has got worse since the mid to late 2000s driven by excessive leverage and dividends resulting in less resources for investment.
So that seems to be the failure of regulation that allowed Macquarie to loot the industry not the ownership model
Doubt the facts will change your mind though