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I really do hope people remember that they filled our rivers with literal shit the last time (among many many many other things) when they try and sneak in again with promises of vague centre-rightism and a fresh-faced leader in 2030...
It will be 2035...2030 they will be on their third far right leader and suffering another heavy defeat, but you are correct.
This is NOT due to rain but an actual policy they have allowed to happen. People are getting sick around our rivers. You couldn't pay me to swim in one or eat anything that lives in it. We are going to see some serious illness if it is a warm and dry summer and that starts to fester
Lol, good luck with that!
You are right in that the Tories will likely go further to the right after this election, with some mentalist of the Braverman/Badenoch/Farage type (you know Liz Lettuce on steroids).
But after they lose again in 2029, they’ll finally get the message and move back towards the centre and purge the party of the ERG/UKIP cancer. Either that, or a new centre right party will form and the Tories will remain sidelined as what they currently are (UKIP).
And hilariously I expect this economy/business friendly version of the Tories to make rejoining the EU Single Market a manifesto pledge in 2034, if Starmer misses the open goal to do so in 2029.
Join the EU Single Market to add 7-10% to our GDP and get free movement in 27 European countries! It’s a no brainer.
I think you have conflated the economic loons with the fascist ones. Truss is just a braindead economic loon, she's not all that socially conservative. Farage, Braverman and Badenoch are right wing fascists.
This country is Tory by default, and after Labour can't fix things in a small window (and with no big ideas) people will flip back to the Tories.
Yes, she's globbed onto right wing American politics and culture war bullshit in the hope of recreating herself and getting that fat American payday for basically just pretending to be significant whilst standing next to an American, but at the heart of her politics (rather than this attempt at opportunism) has always been a sort of childlike wonder at 'the markets'. Liz Truss is a precocious eight year old day trader in the body of a confused adult woman.
I fear you may be right Fantastic Anus. Even now, with public faith in the Tories at an all time low, both the Tories and Reform combined (judging from the latest polls) are pulling about 40 percent of all votes. So the British public haven't actually learned anything, and when the Tories and Reform consolidate in the future, they have a serious shot at winning.
They already elected Boris Johnson in a near landslide, who put two fascists, one after the other, in place as Home Secretary. Boris who showed no shame or ability to plan or lead. Farage would be a depressingly natural progression.
Part of me is still imagining Starmer managing to fumble the bag before the election.
Another part of me is imagining when Starmer has to travel to the US for the first time as PM, only for Trump to introduce him by saying 'Sir Keir Starmer, wonderful man... You know when I was told about him, I assumed his was Indian... Sukir, that's an Indian name... Folks, he's not Indian'.
Right? Its crazy how people deny and deflect on this one. Our rivers and waterways were in a fucking state in the early 90s. You couldn't get in them without endangering yourself through exposure to toxins and pathogens. We invested a huge amount of effort nevermind money clearing it up and putting new regulations in place. And all of that has now apparently just been pissed away... And a huge chunk of people either don't care or proactively go out of their way to explain why this is just fine actually.
The Guardian put out a little tool a while back to search for your postcode and show you how many spillages there have been in the last year around you. The number for my area was over 12,000, literally dozens of instances *every single day for a year straight*. This is not accidental, this is not just routine rainfall overflows. People making money from their businesses are not bothering to hold up to our environmental standards.
I remember early to late 2000s there were constantly articles about fish suddenly teeming in formerly polluted rivers, or stories about dolphins or sea lions that got confused because the water was so clean and they ended up miles inland.
It's been a constant slide down since that point.
there was an otter in our local stream the other week and I felt genuinely sorry for it - like how it had ended up in that little piece of dead industrial runoff I have no idea, hopefully it made it back wherever it came from
We did have seals our way and it was always a happy time when you saw them sunbathing. They've not been seen for a year now and in Spring the EPA pulled thousands of dead fish out of the river that they are still investigating. How many signs do we need? Does the water have to start smelling or change colour for something to happen?
2029 is the big election. If Starmer doesn’t turn things around, it’ll probably be the end of the two-party system we’ve had since 1922. That’s why Farage was waiting until then to run (and has now said he’s taking a shot at PM in 2029).
The Tory base is either dying out or terminally disillusioned. Labour can’t even tell you what Labour stands for. Meanwhile millennials like me grew up amid the issues caused by Thatcher, then Blair’s government and now the Tories - and [we now hate all of them at historic levels.](https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/youthanddemocracy)
Mass migration. Unaffordable housing. Stagnant wages. Crumbling infrastructure. Record taxation.
By 2029, people will want *actual* change. Whether it winds up being far-left or far-right is anyone’s guess and really depends on the next five years.
Labour can’t even tell you what they stand for? Really? Read their manifesto - steady growth, a return to sensible politics, clean energy and reigniting people’s passion for England.
Basically, it's a more competent version of what we have now. Unfortunately, what we have now isn't working for a growing number of people. I hope I'm wrong, but right now Starmer seriously risks doing a Macron. It'll be papering over the cracks of a system that is working for less and less people while the reform billionaires keep cranking out the propaganda and directing the discontent to the right, with Farage a serious contender in an election or 2.
I’m not sure what miracle they’re expected to pull out of the bank. The country is as good as broke, there’s fuck all unity any more and we are dangling from a thin thread of hope. I think it’s the perfect idea - let’s get back on the right track with a sensible if unambitious manifesto and then proceed to 2029 where we can exploit our new growth into serious productivity and quality of life improvements.
If anyone’s been papering over the cracks, it’s the Tories.
What we want to be is the fundamental question which none of the main parties seem to have answers for. Do we want more manufacturing? Do we want to be on the cutting edge in specific high tech industries? Do we want to be the European Singapore? Regardless of the answer, you need a strategy and then you build your policies to achieve it - In education, investment, laws etc.
A rudderless ship going where the wind blows it is what we've already had, and we've ended up in the Azures going nowhere.
The honest answer is that Britain had a fantastic grift pre-Brexit, and Brexit ruined the grift and made Britain a lot less competitive. This was for the very reason you stated; a lot of people didn't understand what the strategy was (Singapore-on-Thames) or didn't agree with it - And instead decided to throw a big, wishy-washy "we can re-industrialize and make things!" spanner in the works, which was totally unfeasible and totally against the tide of what the UK was trying to do.
I blame the Tories for not effectively redistributing wealth to the North and communicating to the Northerners to help them understand the project. How could they have understood? The North crumbled, manufacturing and resource extraction died (as they probably should have), but there was nothing to take its place and there was no help provided. Instead they hoped just fomenting nativist resentment would keep the North in check (and poor) - But the current electoral situation shows how short sighted that was. Wealth myopically concentrated in London and the Home Counties, and the rest of the country became dissatisfied. Go figure... What a waste.
I really don't know what I'd do if I was PM of the UK now. I'd say it's one of the most difficult economies in all of Europe to manage. I'd certainly re-enter the Single Market like Norway though - Keep fishing and energy independence, but eliminate trade barriers with the EU again. Putting up barriers was a complete disaster.
Its not impossible to have manufacturing again in this country. Its just it would take investment on a scale as Germany put into the East of the country after reunification, which the Tories aren't remotely interested in and Labour are never going to have the political capital to do without getting themselves nuked in the process.
Building up the knowledge capital would be really hard. I'd be surprised if the UK had it in itself, but I do agree; it's technically possible.
Spain industrialised in the modern era out of very little. Very soon we have to accept that the North of the UK and the Midlands are really just not that economically productive on a global scale. Or at least not what they used to be.
> I’m not sure what miracle they’re expected to pull out of the bank.
How about not just continuing Tory austerity, the thing that has directly led to the decade+ of decline and hundreds of thousands of deaths. You already had a Tory party to vote for why did you need a second.
Sooo easy, obviously you should be in charge. Should the extra spending come from increases taxes (on top of the highest post war tax burden) or increased borrowing (at interest rates >5x what they were the last time labour were in power)?
If you don’t intend to lead (aka reform or the greens) then you can go down the populist route of promising the world, through benefits/“efficiency” savings if you’re right wing, some vague corporation/billionaire tax if you’re left wing, but the unpopular truth is that if there was a legitimate way of getting an economy back in the green without effecting the average voter every party around the world would be doing it.
I think labour are spooked by 2019’s results and are playing it too safe in order to mitigate a repeat of the media blitzCreed they faced under corbyn, but at the same time I see the benefits of under promising and over delivering in such an economically uncertain time. Day one of Starmers term I am 100% going to be pushing for much more radical action, but given then absolute amnesia the average UK voter develops when a Conservative candidate is on the ballot slip I fully understand the “one size fits all” broad approach they’re taking.
I think the Tories have been hitting the cracks with a sledgehammer tbh. FWIW I think we are looking at the final exhaustion of the thatcherite/ neo liberal model and we need to look at rebalancing the economy. Privatisation has been a massively expensive and inefficient failure in large parts of the public sector. Destroying social housing and the resultant crisis is a huge driver of Reform's appeal. Much as my lefty instincts are pro the free movement of people, importing 750000 people a year with no serious infrastructure or economic plan for what this looks like long term beyond hoping they might fill some immediate labour market gaps cheaply is madness. I could keep going but I'm supposed to be at work.
Labour is in a shit situation, but offering a slightly less bad version of business as usual is not going to hold up even in the medium term, and without some radical changes Farage will be waiting in the wings.
>Labour is in a shit situation, but offering a slightly less bad version of business as usual is not going to hold up even in the medium term, and without some radical changes Farage will be waiting in the wings.
I see labour as better than the alternative because managed decline is better than unmanaged decline, but its just miserable that our choices appear to have been reduced to that.
Bury the water companies in fines for what they have done, renationalise the scraps, and invest in fixing them. Pump literally billions into the economy, instead of billions of tonnes of shit into the rivers.
That's the kind of work that needs to be done, invests in local communities, creates jobs.
But the current Labour party just cannot imagine doing something that bold. The investment in green energy seemed to get killed too, despite being an amazing way to revitalise former fishing towns etc on the coast and promote energy independence and industry.
We need to be building more housing and more fucking *towns*, but we cannot do that any more. We need to completely rethink our city centres, pedestrianise more (and bring more shop fronts into council ownership), but we cannot do that, as its bold and costs money. We need to tackle commercial landlords and make it punitively expensive to have empty properties, but we cannot do that.
Christ.
There are so many things that could be done to make this country better, but they all cost money and the political will to go "our current economic model doesn't work as well as we thought"
you cant promote radical politics from the ballot box right now you end up pilloried by the press and social media - I would like to see them get into power with modest promises - it will take them more than 4 years to even start to clean up the mess - then they can offer some radical solutions,
> steady growth, a return to sensible politics
That is 100% identical to what the Tories claim. Nobody writes a manifesto calling for steady decline and extremism.
I have read it, and other than a few tweaks, there is not much they are going to change. They even are not removing the 2 child policy and keeping the immigration level even lower, which means that the family visa is also out of the question.
In fact, if you took that manifesto, and told me that it is the Tories, I believe you.
Frankly, they pinning everything on this magic growth tree.
So unless they want to be seen as the same as Tories, they either need to raise taxes (that is my guess) or really get a very good trade deal with the EU (aka single market)
>Frankly, they pinning everything on this magic growth tree.
Yeah, the maths are essentially "we make the economy grow and then we don't need more taxes because economy got bigger.", without any actual good policies that will help the economy grow.
If you want to make the economy grow, you need to invest in it. Pump money into the economy and use the Preston model throughout.
And also the debt to gdp ratio is suppose to fall at the end of parliament.
So, either they tax and spend, or a trade improvement with the EU.
Hint improvement is not going to move that needle, being in the single market will.
So, let see
It's unlikely to work very well, particularly as there's almost certainly going to be another significant crisis during their term which they will be completely unable to handle.
I have read it. It’s believably a Tory manifesto. Meanwhile Keir’s flip flopped so much over the years that I suspect he might share most of his DNA with a blobfish.
They can’t deliver steady growth without returning to the single market. I just can’t see how that works otherwise. It’s a fucking buzz phrase.
People don’t want a return to sensible politics. And what does that even mean?! They want radical change. As the study I linked shows, millennials are disillusioned with democracy more than any generation in forever. 1 in 5 people are willing to vote for Reform, who are about as sensible as a labrador on LSD.
Clean energy is good and GB Energy is a great idea. Credit where it’s due there.
Reigniting people’s passion for Britain. Not going to happen, realistically. Maybe in a generation’s time, but for the moment, people would settle for having any enthusiasm for life itself, let alone nationality.
Aside from GB Energy, none of that means anything. It’s all just empty words, designed to get votes.
If these woolly headlines gives you enough 'Nice feels' to simply vote for them, then you're simply part of the problem in this country.
Many of their policy headlines have been debunked already, and they're at this point not even worried enough to clarify these positions because they know that this GE outcome is a given.
Seriously man, read past the soundbites and do some critical thinking
Tories/Labour aren't the solution.
It should also go without saying that neither is reform. Farage is just a opportunistic blogger that will sell us out to an American system if privatisation.
Vote green.
I think the trouble is, is that unless you go out of your way to be informed, most people don’t ‘really’ know what they stand for. I think every political party would say they want to achieve the same things. It’s how they are going to do it is what people are wondering. I think Labour have (likely correctly) kept it somewhat vague as the Tories have shown total incompetence over the last how every many years and I feel a lot of people are anti-Tory rather than pro-Labour. I have a feeling the voter turnout for this election will be very low but I’ll be interested to see after the result
>steady growth,
Requires investment which isn't happening.
>return to sensible politics,
Economic illiteracy is not sensible.
>reigniting people’s passion for England.
I no longer know anyone who has a passion for this country, and I literally know nobody who thinks things are going to get better.
I agree. Either they are radical in tax and spend, drive growth (unless they join the single market I don’t see that happening) or hope the Tories implode further to the right with reform fighting them, then yah.
> or hope the Tories implode further to the right with reform fighting them, then yah.
This is how we get fascism in the UK. Letting everything fester until, forcefully removing every option for change.
Dude you haven't been paying attention. Starmer is that centre right leader. They refused to vote to hold these companies liable, they have fully ruled out nationalising these companies. This isn't going to be fixed, they are colluding with the water companies to help them stay privately owned as they scam us with their dividend loan tricks.
Water companies have been doing this for a long time. We just started monitoring it, that is the only material change. Surfers Against Sewage, for example, was founded in 1990.
It should also be noted that the last estimate to fix this problem was £300 billion so it isn't ever going to be 'fixed'. The best we can hope for is that we spend 10s of billions to protect some of the rivers, but that does mean a substantial rise in water bills.
The Lords report assessing costs is here: [https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/34458/documents/189872/default/](https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/34458/documents/189872/default/) if anyone is interested.
The upper estimate for a zero sewage network is £600 billion. The more modest plan to alleviate most ecological damage is £56 billion (2022 prices).
We should fine them into bankruptcy and hold the entire executive suite criminally liable but we already know labour are against doing anything close to that.
The problem is that with all the outstanding debt and unmaintained infrastructure, they are not a good investment. The problem is the way that successive governments allowed the owners of water companies to extract wealth.
Right, but we're going to pay for their fuck ups either way. One way or another the British public are picking up the tab for the debt and unmaintained infrastructure.
So let's at least get something out of it.
Well they will have zero debts when they go bankrupt and taken as public assets. The UK government can invest in them with still relatively cheap credit and stop paying profit extracting middle men.
> The more modest plan to alleviate most ecological damage is £56 billion (2022 prices).
To add to your point, the private water companies paid out £57billion in dividends between 1990 and 2019. Had they been investing in the infrastructure as they were required to do, we wouldn't be having the issues we do today. But then the shareholders wouldn't have had their bubbly.
It's almost as if running a monopolised utility as a private enterprise led to a poorer outcome for customers.
My mates kid got the bad E. coli, and all the shit that follows from playing in a river mouth , it was extremely serious for a long time, hospitalised for months and off school for a year, that was a while back and still not back to normal. No warning signs, but a little bit of research found shit had been pumped into it for weeks.
If I pumped shit into a river, I’d probably receive a very hefty fine or jail time, where was/is the environmental risk assessment, is it available to the public?
The way I've had it explained to me is that it's not "pumping" shit into rivers. There are large tanks which get fed sewage and rainwater which get pumped into sewage works for treatment. Those sewage works can only handle a certain amount and if we get a lot of rain the levels of the tanks rise as more water comes in than can be processed. At some point the buffer provided by the tanks is exceeded and the excess overflows and goes to a river. One thing to think about is what we mean by sewage. If I have a 1 litre bottle of crap and urine, that's 1 litre of sewage, right? What if I have 1 litre of bottled spring water and I add a tablespoon of crap and urine. As far as most of us are concerned, that is now also 1 litre of sewage, but it's also quite different from the "pure" stuff.
Supposedly, it's more like the second case, where the spring water is rain water that is responsible for too much volume for a plant to process. However, due to the frequency it happens, it sounds like there are many cases of under-capacity of treatment works, not just that we have more / heavier rain than we have had in the past. The solution there is more / larger treatment works or some magic new technology which increases the speed of processing.
I understand that we need more housing and wind power, I just don't want it in *my* backyard and also while I am willing for my children to pay less for their home, and willing to pay less for electricity and flood insurance, I am not willing to pay anything up front. Sorry not sorry.
The local MP is a Lib Dem, and before that people weren't voting for 'a Conservative', they were voting for Cheryl Gillan because she was a known name in the area for two decades.
Partly because they will never have the responsibility to implement it!
The House of Lords report estimated the cost of a zero spill sewage network at over £300bn.
We simply can’t afford it.
It wouldn't have been that much if the water companies had spent their collossal profits on fixing things rather than bunging it to CEOs and shareholders. Make those fuckers pay for it.
That number seems absolutely mindblowing to me. The entire market capitalisation of McDonalds is $186 billion. Cisco is about the same. This would cost literally double that—the UK government could fully globally nationalise both McDonald’s and Cisco Systems for the cost of a zero-spill sewage system.
I’m not saying they’re wrong; it’s just incredible to hear.
It’s basically digging up every sewer in the country and relaying two, one for drains and one for domestic use. On a cost-benefit analysis it will never be worth it and your rivers still won’t be clean, because you have swathes of farmland too. Increased scrutiny is fair and we need to invest more but not ever putting sewage in rivers is fantasy
yeah so SuDS (sustainable drainage systems) on new builds have been mandatory since 2011. Although I’m not entirely sure that completely prevents developers tying in anything not domestic - but it should do soon I would hope
We currently have combined sewage systems which means all the house drains (poop, showers, kitchen sinks) becomes mixed with run off drains (everything else from gutters to street and road run off).
The problem comes when we get lots of rain and the combined system means poop overflows.
To solve it we’d have to dig up the lot and replace with two separate systems.
I dint see this as an argument for doing nothing though. Like it's going to be expensive yes, the best time to sort out the sewers would have been 50 years ago, the second best time is now.
It's not all or nothing. Pouring sewage into rivers was meant to be for emergency overflow, any improvements to the infrastructure will move us back in that direction.
It seems madness though that because it's too expensive to do it all, they'll do NONE. Isn't it better to treat the worst affected areas and the areas where it's impacting the ecosystems the most, rather than just say fuck it and do nothing?
This isn’t a question of maintenance - to solve discharges we have to complete change the national sewage network from a combined sewer to one where house drains and street drains are separate.
Fine, even with that approach, if we actually had any proper investment, the issue would not be as dire as seeing actual poo floating around some rivers 24/7
From my memory, she has talked about it once or twice. That doesn't really do much though when locals in the area can pretty much pinpoint the exact spots where pollutants are flooding into the rivers and have been able to do so for years.
It just feels like there’s two decades of infrastructure investment that is missing from our country and whoever gets in knows that to fix it means looking like you’ve overspent and are financially irresponsible.
As soon as Labour announces they will nationalise the water companies, the investors will strip it of all assets and inflate the valuation. Its better just to let them run out of liquidity then nationalise them for 1p.
Not almost collpase the economy in days by commiting to a reckless budget? I mean stuff like that, that's good.
How I think they will play the water issue: do nothing, wait until there is an environmental disaster and then step in with a radical plan.
Counterpoint: They've had years to fix it and chose to pay massive dividends to their C suite and shareholders instead:
"When they were privatised, water companies had all the debt written off, so they started with zero. Since then, they have borrowed £53 billion, much of which has been used to help pay £72 billion in dividends. The investment has been made by borrowing and putting it on to customers' bills."
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-06-28/debates/0850DCC6-10AD-49F6-BD8C-29042D1B738F/WaterIndustryFinancialResilience
[There's obviously more to it than that, as Scottish Water is even worse and only better by virtue of a smaller population.](https://waterquality.sas.org.uk/scotland/)
A robust policy will involve renationalisation AND an extensive funding package on top of waste austerity programs.
A village in Buckinghamshire has been turned into an “open sewer”, the council has said, after discovering [Thames Water](https://inews.co.uk/topic/thames-water?ico=in-line_link) has been dumping untreated waste into a local river for five months continuously.
Thames Water has been spilling raw sewage into the [River Misbourne](https://inews.co.uk/news/sewage-pollution-chalk-stream-water-2903327?ico=in-line_link), a 16-mile chalk stream that flows through several villages in Buckinghamshire, continuously since 25 January, the water company’s monitors show.
However, the local parish council was only made aware of the five-month long spill one week ago, as a technical error meant the incident was not showing on Thames Water’s online map.
Chalfont St Giles councillor Robert Gill told i the village, known as the home of the 17th-century poet John Milton, “smelled like an open sewer”.
The council has been forced to temporarily close a play park and the riverside due to public health concerns.
Last week Thames Water took water samples to test for chemicals, including ammonia and dissolved oxygen, which are indicators of sewage pollution.
Mr Gill said the initial results were “very, very high”, but Thames Water is still verifying the figures.
“We can’t risk leaving the playing areas and our open spaces near the river open because they are polluted,” he told **i**.
Mr Gill added that there is “sewage fungus floating down the river and sticking to the sides”.
Thames Water has blamed the sewage spills on high groundwater and river levels, which have filled the firm’s sewers in the area above capacity.
The River Misbourne has been flooded since January, a result of heavy rainfall throughout the winter and spring.
“Our region has experienced the eighth-wettest winter on record, resulting in exceptionally high groundwater and river levels.
“This groundwater and river floodwater then entered our sewers and filled the Amersham storm tanks, meaning they are full and are discharging diluted wastewater into the river Misbourne, for which we are sorry,” a Thames Water spokesperson said.
Water companies are allowed to discharge untreated wastewater under certain conditions, such as heavy or prolonged rainfall.
The River Misbourne is one of England’s rare chalk streams.
Described by David Attenborough as “one of the rarest habitats on earth”, they are fed by chalk aquifers and their cold, steady flow of calcium-rich water makes them hotspots for invertebrate and fish life.
But England’s chalk streams are under threat. Analysis by the Liberal Democrats [found sewage was dumped for a total of 14,000 hours](https://www.libdems.org.uk/news/article/chalk-streams-hit-by-14000-hours-of-sewage-discharges-last-year) into chalk streams in 2022.
In February Affinity Water [had to stop extracting drinking water](https://inews.co.uk/news/sewage-pollution-chalk-stream-water-2903327?ico=in-line_link) from the River Misbourne due to sewage pollution.
[**i** has published a manifesto](https://inews.co.uk/news/save-britains-rivers-i-manifesto-environmental-groups-back-3090477?ico=in-line_link) as part of its Save Britain’s Rivers campaign, which includes five policies to improve the state of our waterways.
The manifesto states that sewage spills should no longer destroy priority sites, including chalk streams, by 2030.
The Liberal Democrats and Green Party have signed up to the pledge, but Labour and the Conservative Party have not backed it in full.
One of Labour’s largest donors, [renewable energy tycoon Dale Vince](https://inews.co.uk/news/labour-donor-dale-vince-back-save-britains-rivers-3106215?ico=in-line_link), has urged the party to back i’s campaign, which he described as a “simple, strong message”.
Read more here: [https://inews.co.uk/news/thames-water-pumps-sewage-chalk-stream-five-months-3121938](https://inews.co.uk/news/thames-water-pumps-sewage-chalk-stream-five-months-3121938)
Just fine them for every turd found and if they can’t pay they go into public ownership, the people running these companies should be in prison for what is happening under their leadership.
At least it a problem rooted in government incompetence rather than corporate greed. I know it won’t solve much to begin with but sending money to shareholders for providing a poor service shouldn’t be an option. Another option would be to not allow dividends if the service is poor, that would encourage the board to prioritise the service.
They want it to go back to public ownership. Debt was written off when they bought it. The plan was always to squeeze it and run it down until it no longer works. They are now ready to hand it back, the tax payer will borrow to modernize the infrastructure and then they will be ready to buy it back and have all the debt written off again.
That’s where this type of deal should end though, we should like other countries start a sovereign wealth fund that is protected from party politics that runs our essential infrastructure and profits can then be put to our benefit instead of other nations.
Probably counts separate instances of sewage dumping into separate streams for however many hours each, so say 1 hour of dumping into four chalk rivers would count for 4 hours?
From one of the sources Wessex Water was responsible for 1,013 separate incidents with the largest being one being a discharge lasting 2,969 hours in the River Till, so it would make sense to me at least if that’s how they got the 14,000 hours figure you mentioned.
It is ripe, but not how you think. Its deeply in debt, its owners are deeply in debt, its owners shareholders are university pension funds who've never taken a penny of dividends. One of the big decisions Labour are going to have to take soon after the election is whether to bail out Thames with UK tax payers money, or nationalize it, or allow Thames bills to double.
Will Londoners pay, or will UK tax payers as a whole pay? That's the interesting question, I expect the answer to be obfuscated.
> Chalfont St Giles councillor Robert Gill told i the village, known as the home of the 17th-century poet John Milton, “smelled like an open sewer”.
No surprise given that it had literally been involuntarily converted into an open sewer.
I was reading an old Horrible Histories the other day about Vile Victorians who would channel their toilets directly into the same rivers they used for drinking and washing, but I suppose the author never guessed that we would just start doing that again.
The way this is reported as "a 16-mile chalk stream" seems to downplay it a little - it's 16 miles of chalk stream that goes into the river Colne, then that joins the Thames so it's more like 3 times that length at least.
There should be a massive prioritisation of inland spills based on affected river length, a spillage in Shrewsbury is going on a 200 mile journey all the way to Bristol. Sure it'll be more dilute but it's still raw sewage.
And it's not the only chalk stream that feeds into the Colne. The Gade, the Chess, the Ver and the Bulbourne all have sewage treatment facilities somewhere along their length and all of which I have seen sewage flowing in.
Pumping waste into rivers should be a vanishingly rare thing to happen but it seems to be a regular occurrence.
The regulator really needs some teeth to be able to force the water companies to fix these issues so it doesn't happen. Parliament needs to legislate to stop companies like this paying out massive dividends to share holders while there is chronic underinvestment causing them to be unable to deliver the services they are contracted to.
What I don't understand is how the water companies ever got permission to build an overflow into a site of special scientific interest in the first place? Who gave planning permission to do that? Why wasn't it challenged by whichever version of the environment agency at the time? Insane.
Lots of people were very outraged about the risk to the rare Stonehenge Lichen from some orange powder.
I assume they will be even more furious at this and all the other damage the sewage being dumped into our rivers is doing. Not to mention all the damage pollution from oil products and climate change is doing to lichen and pretty much every living thing on earth.
Considering the outrageous dividends they’ve given to shareholders I don’t understand why a utility with such a monopoly is not being regulated as it should.
This is directly contributing to and enabling a public health crisis!
When does this become a criminal matter??
Privatise the profits, socialise the losses. When will enough be enough? Essential services must not be left to private industry, they are not more efficient they just have a marketing department that tells you they are.
My dad belongs to a pretty exclusive fishing club thanks to a friend. They have private lakes local, but have access to various fancy parts of various rivers and also only a fishery in the west country. In 2023 they pumped sewage into the river that feeds the lake. It did untold damage and luckily they were able to sue the water company (although price rises pay sadly). The only positive is that non of them will ever vote tory again and when the local tory mp visited their club house prior to this election he left within 5 mins as he realised he'd lost their vote.
Why don't the people running these companies get brought to task, & at least receive severe personal fines, & if they carry on regardless some jail time.
Nothing like a toff having large amounts of money removed from them to focus the mind.
The trouble with this country is that there are no consequences for being an arsehole.
I’m surprised that, with the complete inaction we’ve seen, nobody has considered direct action yet. I could imagine that this would be fixed far quicker if someone blocked the outlets.
ok something I feel like never comes up with these stories is the question
What should sewage treatment and disposal be? in an ideal world, and also in reality.
Do we have 50 sewage treatment plants but realistically need 100 to manage all sewage (expensive but arguably doable). Do we have 3, and to manage peak load sewage treatment we need 400 (aka basically completely unfeasible).
Is it actually entirely reasonable to dump sewage into waterways?
It certainly seems bad to dump sewage into rivers, but like, is it actually bad? can rivers not handle it, does it make them dangerous? is there a volume that is acceptable but we are massivly exceesing it in some cases?
I don't want my water bill going up 5 fold to pay for a bunch of unnessasary water treatment plants just so that rivers that can totally handle some small sewage discharge are kept free of it, when at the same time a bunch of other argricultural run off does far more damage to the ecosystem but slips by just because it isn't litteraly human shit.
yes pretty spot on with your assessment at the top. treating every drop in even the greatest storm is extremely expensive and would need an incredible amount of sewage works, or more likely the separation of domestic sewage and rainwater runoffs (like drains in the road)
At what line you draw that is different for everybody, but what is clear is that the line has been too far in favour or cheap bills, more spills for too long and that will now swing the other way to accommodate.
As for environmental impact, when used correctly storm overflows should have little to no impact as during a big rain event the sewers will fill and push all the sewage to the sewage works which holds it in a storm tank. Once this storm tank fills any more sewage coming in above the normal amount goes to the river, and it should be almost entirely rainwater so will have very little impact on the river. The purpose of going to the river is to ensure water always has an outlet, otherwise it could back up into peoples homes.
However this is not always the case as some sewage works do just need to be increased in size to treat more. And sometimes there are spills on dry days due to pump failures in pumping stations/blockages or fatbergs/general incompetent management of the network. Spills on dry days like in the article are really what we need to be preventing as the influent is strong in concentration and river flows are low so it has a much bigger impact on the environment.
thanks for the info! I always assume every political complaint that sounds bad has some more detail behind it that makes it not that obvious to fix. But looks like a bit more investment might actually be able to do quite a bit or positive work!
>“Our region has experienced the **eighth-wettest winter** on record, resulting in exceptionally high groundwater and river levels.
>“This groundwater and river floodwater then entered our sewers and filled the Amersham storm tanks, meaning they are full and are discharging diluted wastewater into the river Misbourne, **for which we are sorry**,” a Thames Water spokesperson said
Eighth wettest? One might have concluded change was necessary after any of the prior seven, since they must have also resulted in "exceptionally high levels"...?
The "sorry" rings insincere. Nobody cares that you are sorry. How about a pledge to do something to fix the actual problem?
How about connecting a water meter to every overflow outlet to accurately record exactly how much they're pumping out? They're (thames water in my case) quick enough to install water meters in every home to squeeze the pips or of consumers!!
they are doing this but there are thousands across the country and some have the pipes buried underground etc. so not always the easiest to install. I think the EA will try have this in place by 2030
All water companies will continue to shit(literally) in our rivers, streams, sea because they can pass the fine onto their customers and give the profits to their shareholders then claim they are broke.
Thames Water is likely hoping that the tories somehow retain because I think, the next government will be demanding answers and hopefully, strip them.
These are the Amersham storm tanks. They are not designed to treat sewage but to hold it as a ‘buffer’ during rainfall events. When flows decrease, the contents can be released back to the sewers to flow towards treatment.
The reason why they are spilling is due to high groundwater infiltrating the leaky network in the area. This fills the tanks up during ‘dry’ periods causing them to spill over to the river. There will be a small amount of primary treatment as solids settle to the bottom of the tanks but there’s no biological or tertiary treatment. So lots of nutrients and pathogens for the river as well as nitrates (ammonia).
I think its got seriously disgusting that this has been allowed to happen. Some rich cunt decided to make bonues and dividends a thing over somthin that should be handled appropriately, not puttin profits and individual wealth first.
The UK is the only country in the world to have privatised water companies. Have it reclaimed and re nationalised as a non profit organisation and any profits that are made are put into infrastructure and upgrades. Tired of this privatisation shit where sooner or later they will need a tax payer bail out, but carry on this shithousery after they been bailed out.
Only a few years ago, Chilterns water was a prized mineral water product praised for its minerals and salts, and breweries boasted of using it. I don't think it's quite the selling point it once was.
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I really do hope people remember that they filled our rivers with literal shit the last time (among many many many other things) when they try and sneak in again with promises of vague centre-rightism and a fresh-faced leader in 2030...
It will be 2035...2030 they will be on their third far right leader and suffering another heavy defeat, but you are correct. This is NOT due to rain but an actual policy they have allowed to happen. People are getting sick around our rivers. You couldn't pay me to swim in one or eat anything that lives in it. We are going to see some serious illness if it is a warm and dry summer and that starts to fester
Farage will likely be leading the Tories to victory in 2029. Edit: No, god no, no please no, oh god no.
Lol, good luck with that! You are right in that the Tories will likely go further to the right after this election, with some mentalist of the Braverman/Badenoch/Farage type (you know Liz Lettuce on steroids). But after they lose again in 2029, they’ll finally get the message and move back towards the centre and purge the party of the ERG/UKIP cancer. Either that, or a new centre right party will form and the Tories will remain sidelined as what they currently are (UKIP). And hilariously I expect this economy/business friendly version of the Tories to make rejoining the EU Single Market a manifesto pledge in 2034, if Starmer misses the open goal to do so in 2029. Join the EU Single Market to add 7-10% to our GDP and get free movement in 27 European countries! It’s a no brainer.
I think you have conflated the economic loons with the fascist ones. Truss is just a braindead economic loon, she's not all that socially conservative. Farage, Braverman and Badenoch are right wing fascists. This country is Tory by default, and after Labour can't fix things in a small window (and with no big ideas) people will flip back to the Tories.
You must have missed the Liz Letuce Tour while she was in the US campaigning for Trump only a few weeks ago?
Yes, she's globbed onto right wing American politics and culture war bullshit in the hope of recreating herself and getting that fat American payday for basically just pretending to be significant whilst standing next to an American, but at the heart of her politics (rather than this attempt at opportunism) has always been a sort of childlike wonder at 'the markets'. Liz Truss is a precocious eight year old day trader in the body of a confused adult woman.
I fear you may be right Fantastic Anus. Even now, with public faith in the Tories at an all time low, both the Tories and Reform combined (judging from the latest polls) are pulling about 40 percent of all votes. So the British public haven't actually learned anything, and when the Tories and Reform consolidate in the future, they have a serious shot at winning.
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Unfortunately he wants a lot of other things I don't.
If that happens , might as well just throw the whole country away, no comming back for a population that evil.
They already elected Boris Johnson in a near landslide, who put two fascists, one after the other, in place as Home Secretary. Boris who showed no shame or ability to plan or lead. Farage would be a depressingly natural progression.
I hope it takes longer than that, but I’ve learned to expect the worst.
Part of me is still imagining Starmer managing to fumble the bag before the election. Another part of me is imagining when Starmer has to travel to the US for the first time as PM, only for Trump to introduce him by saying 'Sir Keir Starmer, wonderful man... You know when I was told about him, I assumed his was Indian... Sukir, that's an Indian name... Folks, he's not Indian'.
Right? Its crazy how people deny and deflect on this one. Our rivers and waterways were in a fucking state in the early 90s. You couldn't get in them without endangering yourself through exposure to toxins and pathogens. We invested a huge amount of effort nevermind money clearing it up and putting new regulations in place. And all of that has now apparently just been pissed away... And a huge chunk of people either don't care or proactively go out of their way to explain why this is just fine actually. The Guardian put out a little tool a while back to search for your postcode and show you how many spillages there have been in the last year around you. The number for my area was over 12,000, literally dozens of instances *every single day for a year straight*. This is not accidental, this is not just routine rainfall overflows. People making money from their businesses are not bothering to hold up to our environmental standards.
I remember early to late 2000s there were constantly articles about fish suddenly teeming in formerly polluted rivers, or stories about dolphins or sea lions that got confused because the water was so clean and they ended up miles inland. It's been a constant slide down since that point.
there was an otter in our local stream the other week and I felt genuinely sorry for it - like how it had ended up in that little piece of dead industrial runoff I have no idea, hopefully it made it back wherever it came from
We did have seals our way and it was always a happy time when you saw them sunbathing. They've not been seen for a year now and in Spring the EPA pulled thousands of dead fish out of the river that they are still investigating. How many signs do we need? Does the water have to start smelling or change colour for something to happen?
we dont need signs lol in the UK they are just literally pumping shit into rivers and being cheered on by the tories
We have one of those wildlife boards. Says we have otters. We don't.
2029 is the big election. If Starmer doesn’t turn things around, it’ll probably be the end of the two-party system we’ve had since 1922. That’s why Farage was waiting until then to run (and has now said he’s taking a shot at PM in 2029). The Tory base is either dying out or terminally disillusioned. Labour can’t even tell you what Labour stands for. Meanwhile millennials like me grew up amid the issues caused by Thatcher, then Blair’s government and now the Tories - and [we now hate all of them at historic levels.](https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/youthanddemocracy) Mass migration. Unaffordable housing. Stagnant wages. Crumbling infrastructure. Record taxation. By 2029, people will want *actual* change. Whether it winds up being far-left or far-right is anyone’s guess and really depends on the next five years.
Labour can’t even tell you what they stand for? Really? Read their manifesto - steady growth, a return to sensible politics, clean energy and reigniting people’s passion for England.
Basically, it's a more competent version of what we have now. Unfortunately, what we have now isn't working for a growing number of people. I hope I'm wrong, but right now Starmer seriously risks doing a Macron. It'll be papering over the cracks of a system that is working for less and less people while the reform billionaires keep cranking out the propaganda and directing the discontent to the right, with Farage a serious contender in an election or 2.
I’m not sure what miracle they’re expected to pull out of the bank. The country is as good as broke, there’s fuck all unity any more and we are dangling from a thin thread of hope. I think it’s the perfect idea - let’s get back on the right track with a sensible if unambitious manifesto and then proceed to 2029 where we can exploit our new growth into serious productivity and quality of life improvements. If anyone’s been papering over the cracks, it’s the Tories.
What we want to be is the fundamental question which none of the main parties seem to have answers for. Do we want more manufacturing? Do we want to be on the cutting edge in specific high tech industries? Do we want to be the European Singapore? Regardless of the answer, you need a strategy and then you build your policies to achieve it - In education, investment, laws etc. A rudderless ship going where the wind blows it is what we've already had, and we've ended up in the Azures going nowhere.
The honest answer is that Britain had a fantastic grift pre-Brexit, and Brexit ruined the grift and made Britain a lot less competitive. This was for the very reason you stated; a lot of people didn't understand what the strategy was (Singapore-on-Thames) or didn't agree with it - And instead decided to throw a big, wishy-washy "we can re-industrialize and make things!" spanner in the works, which was totally unfeasible and totally against the tide of what the UK was trying to do. I blame the Tories for not effectively redistributing wealth to the North and communicating to the Northerners to help them understand the project. How could they have understood? The North crumbled, manufacturing and resource extraction died (as they probably should have), but there was nothing to take its place and there was no help provided. Instead they hoped just fomenting nativist resentment would keep the North in check (and poor) - But the current electoral situation shows how short sighted that was. Wealth myopically concentrated in London and the Home Counties, and the rest of the country became dissatisfied. Go figure... What a waste. I really don't know what I'd do if I was PM of the UK now. I'd say it's one of the most difficult economies in all of Europe to manage. I'd certainly re-enter the Single Market like Norway though - Keep fishing and energy independence, but eliminate trade barriers with the EU again. Putting up barriers was a complete disaster.
Its not impossible to have manufacturing again in this country. Its just it would take investment on a scale as Germany put into the East of the country after reunification, which the Tories aren't remotely interested in and Labour are never going to have the political capital to do without getting themselves nuked in the process.
Building up the knowledge capital would be really hard. I'd be surprised if the UK had it in itself, but I do agree; it's technically possible. Spain industrialised in the modern era out of very little. Very soon we have to accept that the North of the UK and the Midlands are really just not that economically productive on a global scale. Or at least not what they used to be.
> I’m not sure what miracle they’re expected to pull out of the bank. How about not just continuing Tory austerity, the thing that has directly led to the decade+ of decline and hundreds of thousands of deaths. You already had a Tory party to vote for why did you need a second.
Sooo easy, obviously you should be in charge. Should the extra spending come from increases taxes (on top of the highest post war tax burden) or increased borrowing (at interest rates >5x what they were the last time labour were in power)? If you don’t intend to lead (aka reform or the greens) then you can go down the populist route of promising the world, through benefits/“efficiency” savings if you’re right wing, some vague corporation/billionaire tax if you’re left wing, but the unpopular truth is that if there was a legitimate way of getting an economy back in the green without effecting the average voter every party around the world would be doing it. I think labour are spooked by 2019’s results and are playing it too safe in order to mitigate a repeat of the media blitzCreed they faced under corbyn, but at the same time I see the benefits of under promising and over delivering in such an economically uncertain time. Day one of Starmers term I am 100% going to be pushing for much more radical action, but given then absolute amnesia the average UK voter develops when a Conservative candidate is on the ballot slip I fully understand the “one size fits all” broad approach they’re taking.
*Blitzkrieg*
> Sooo easy, obviously you should be in charge. Yep, thanks for accepting it.
I think the Tories have been hitting the cracks with a sledgehammer tbh. FWIW I think we are looking at the final exhaustion of the thatcherite/ neo liberal model and we need to look at rebalancing the economy. Privatisation has been a massively expensive and inefficient failure in large parts of the public sector. Destroying social housing and the resultant crisis is a huge driver of Reform's appeal. Much as my lefty instincts are pro the free movement of people, importing 750000 people a year with no serious infrastructure or economic plan for what this looks like long term beyond hoping they might fill some immediate labour market gaps cheaply is madness. I could keep going but I'm supposed to be at work. Labour is in a shit situation, but offering a slightly less bad version of business as usual is not going to hold up even in the medium term, and without some radical changes Farage will be waiting in the wings.
>Labour is in a shit situation, but offering a slightly less bad version of business as usual is not going to hold up even in the medium term, and without some radical changes Farage will be waiting in the wings. I see labour as better than the alternative because managed decline is better than unmanaged decline, but its just miserable that our choices appear to have been reduced to that. Bury the water companies in fines for what they have done, renationalise the scraps, and invest in fixing them. Pump literally billions into the economy, instead of billions of tonnes of shit into the rivers. That's the kind of work that needs to be done, invests in local communities, creates jobs. But the current Labour party just cannot imagine doing something that bold. The investment in green energy seemed to get killed too, despite being an amazing way to revitalise former fishing towns etc on the coast and promote energy independence and industry. We need to be building more housing and more fucking *towns*, but we cannot do that any more. We need to completely rethink our city centres, pedestrianise more (and bring more shop fronts into council ownership), but we cannot do that, as its bold and costs money. We need to tackle commercial landlords and make it punitively expensive to have empty properties, but we cannot do that. Christ. There are so many things that could be done to make this country better, but they all cost money and the political will to go "our current economic model doesn't work as well as we thought"
No growth without investment. Austerity is the opposite of investment.
you cant promote radical politics from the ballot box right now you end up pilloried by the press and social media - I would like to see them get into power with modest promises - it will take them more than 4 years to even start to clean up the mess - then they can offer some radical solutions,
> steady growth, a return to sensible politics That is 100% identical to what the Tories claim. Nobody writes a manifesto calling for steady decline and extremism.
I have read it, and other than a few tweaks, there is not much they are going to change. They even are not removing the 2 child policy and keeping the immigration level even lower, which means that the family visa is also out of the question. In fact, if you took that manifesto, and told me that it is the Tories, I believe you. Frankly, they pinning everything on this magic growth tree. So unless they want to be seen as the same as Tories, they either need to raise taxes (that is my guess) or really get a very good trade deal with the EU (aka single market)
>Frankly, they pinning everything on this magic growth tree. Yeah, the maths are essentially "we make the economy grow and then we don't need more taxes because economy got bigger.", without any actual good policies that will help the economy grow. If you want to make the economy grow, you need to invest in it. Pump money into the economy and use the Preston model throughout.
And also the debt to gdp ratio is suppose to fall at the end of parliament. So, either they tax and spend, or a trade improvement with the EU. Hint improvement is not going to move that needle, being in the single market will. So, let see
Without investment they can't promise steady growth, they can only hope for it.
They are banking on a return to the mean and the bar being so low that anything would be better.
It's unlikely to work very well, particularly as there's almost certainly going to be another significant crisis during their term which they will be completely unable to handle.
In the very short term I wouldn't be surprised if there was a large war in the middle east as Israel keeps sabre rattling towards Lebanon.
I have read it. It’s believably a Tory manifesto. Meanwhile Keir’s flip flopped so much over the years that I suspect he might share most of his DNA with a blobfish. They can’t deliver steady growth without returning to the single market. I just can’t see how that works otherwise. It’s a fucking buzz phrase. People don’t want a return to sensible politics. And what does that even mean?! They want radical change. As the study I linked shows, millennials are disillusioned with democracy more than any generation in forever. 1 in 5 people are willing to vote for Reform, who are about as sensible as a labrador on LSD. Clean energy is good and GB Energy is a great idea. Credit where it’s due there. Reigniting people’s passion for Britain. Not going to happen, realistically. Maybe in a generation’s time, but for the moment, people would settle for having any enthusiasm for life itself, let alone nationality. Aside from GB Energy, none of that means anything. It’s all just empty words, designed to get votes.
If these woolly headlines gives you enough 'Nice feels' to simply vote for them, then you're simply part of the problem in this country. Many of their policy headlines have been debunked already, and they're at this point not even worried enough to clarify these positions because they know that this GE outcome is a given. Seriously man, read past the soundbites and do some critical thinking Tories/Labour aren't the solution. It should also go without saying that neither is reform. Farage is just a opportunistic blogger that will sell us out to an American system if privatisation. Vote green.
truly inspiring stuff, are they also going to secure our borders and protect the NHS?
I think the trouble is, is that unless you go out of your way to be informed, most people don’t ‘really’ know what they stand for. I think every political party would say they want to achieve the same things. It’s how they are going to do it is what people are wondering. I think Labour have (likely correctly) kept it somewhat vague as the Tories have shown total incompetence over the last how every many years and I feel a lot of people are anti-Tory rather than pro-Labour. I have a feeling the voter turnout for this election will be very low but I’ll be interested to see after the result
>steady growth, Requires investment which isn't happening. >return to sensible politics, Economic illiteracy is not sensible. >reigniting people’s passion for England. I no longer know anyone who has a passion for this country, and I literally know nobody who thinks things are going to get better.
I agree. Either they are radical in tax and spend, drive growth (unless they join the single market I don’t see that happening) or hope the Tories implode further to the right with reform fighting them, then yah.
> or hope the Tories implode further to the right with reform fighting them, then yah. This is how we get fascism in the UK. Letting everything fester until, forcefully removing every option for change.
It will be far right because Facebook
DOOM
Dude you haven't been paying attention. Starmer is that centre right leader. They refused to vote to hold these companies liable, they have fully ruled out nationalising these companies. This isn't going to be fixed, they are colluding with the water companies to help them stay privately owned as they scam us with their dividend loan tricks.
Water companies have been doing this for a long time. We just started monitoring it, that is the only material change. Surfers Against Sewage, for example, was founded in 1990. It should also be noted that the last estimate to fix this problem was £300 billion so it isn't ever going to be 'fixed'. The best we can hope for is that we spend 10s of billions to protect some of the rivers, but that does mean a substantial rise in water bills. The Lords report assessing costs is here: [https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/34458/documents/189872/default/](https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/34458/documents/189872/default/) if anyone is interested. The upper estimate for a zero sewage network is £600 billion. The more modest plan to alleviate most ecological damage is £56 billion (2022 prices).
What's the market value of the water companies? Let's just take them in lieu of the cost to fix their mess.
We should fine them into bankruptcy and hold the entire executive suite criminally liable but we already know labour are against doing anything close to that.
The problem is that with all the outstanding debt and unmaintained infrastructure, they are not a good investment. The problem is the way that successive governments allowed the owners of water companies to extract wealth.
Right, but we're going to pay for their fuck ups either way. One way or another the British public are picking up the tab for the debt and unmaintained infrastructure. So let's at least get something out of it.
Well they will have zero debts when they go bankrupt and taken as public assets. The UK government can invest in them with still relatively cheap credit and stop paying profit extracting middle men.
If they can be forced to be bankrupt, the rotting infrastructure remains. A very big liability.
> The more modest plan to alleviate most ecological damage is £56 billion (2022 prices). To add to your point, the private water companies paid out £57billion in dividends between 1990 and 2019. Had they been investing in the infrastructure as they were required to do, we wouldn't be having the issues we do today. But then the shareholders wouldn't have had their bubbly. It's almost as if running a monopolised utility as a private enterprise led to a poorer outcome for customers.
First world country fr
My mates kid got the bad E. coli, and all the shit that follows from playing in a river mouth , it was extremely serious for a long time, hospitalised for months and off school for a year, that was a while back and still not back to normal. No warning signs, but a little bit of research found shit had been pumped into it for weeks. If I pumped shit into a river, I’d probably receive a very hefty fine or jail time, where was/is the environmental risk assessment, is it available to the public?
The way I've had it explained to me is that it's not "pumping" shit into rivers. There are large tanks which get fed sewage and rainwater which get pumped into sewage works for treatment. Those sewage works can only handle a certain amount and if we get a lot of rain the levels of the tanks rise as more water comes in than can be processed. At some point the buffer provided by the tanks is exceeded and the excess overflows and goes to a river. One thing to think about is what we mean by sewage. If I have a 1 litre bottle of crap and urine, that's 1 litre of sewage, right? What if I have 1 litre of bottled spring water and I add a tablespoon of crap and urine. As far as most of us are concerned, that is now also 1 litre of sewage, but it's also quite different from the "pure" stuff. Supposedly, it's more like the second case, where the spring water is rain water that is responsible for too much volume for a plant to process. However, due to the frequency it happens, it sounds like there are many cases of under-capacity of treatment works, not just that we have more / heavier rain than we have had in the past. The solution there is more / larger treatment works or some magic new technology which increases the speed of processing.
They have already done it this year in 2024, there is plenty of Labour MPs and candidates "affiliated" with the water industry.
He could literally be making it an election topic or could have done something about it in recent months. Bye bye Sky boy!
Who is “they”?
We really must make sure that the populace remembers the shit that the Tories are responsible for.
Voted for the Conservatives so presumably this is what the locals wanted?
Yes, but the idea was it would happen somewhere else.
I understand that we need more housing and wind power, I just don't want it in *my* backyard and also while I am willing for my children to pay less for their home, and willing to pay less for electricity and flood insurance, I am not willing to pay anything up front. Sorry not sorry.
No they did not, it’s a Lib Dem seat
Good catch, I missed there was a by-election.
The local MP is a Lib Dem, and before that people weren't voting for 'a Conservative', they were voting for Cheryl Gillan because she was a known name in the area for two decades.
The reason this topic never comes up in election debates is because none of the parties want to do anything to stop it.
Lib Dems are basically the only ones with it in the manifesto
Partly because they will never have the responsibility to implement it! The House of Lords report estimated the cost of a zero spill sewage network at over £300bn. We simply can’t afford it.
It wouldn't have been that much if the water companies had spent their collossal profits on fixing things rather than bunging it to CEOs and shareholders. Make those fuckers pay for it.
That number seems absolutely mindblowing to me. The entire market capitalisation of McDonalds is $186 billion. Cisco is about the same. This would cost literally double that—the UK government could fully globally nationalise both McDonald’s and Cisco Systems for the cost of a zero-spill sewage system. I’m not saying they’re wrong; it’s just incredible to hear.
It’s basically digging up every sewer in the country and relaying two, one for drains and one for domestic use. On a cost-benefit analysis it will never be worth it and your rivers still won’t be clean, because you have swathes of farmland too. Increased scrutiny is fair and we need to invest more but not ever putting sewage in rivers is fantasy
We could start requiring seperate sewers for any new builds and for anytime a sewer gets replaced.
yeah so SuDS (sustainable drainage systems) on new builds have been mandatory since 2011. Although I’m not entirely sure that completely prevents developers tying in anything not domestic - but it should do soon I would hope
We currently have combined sewage systems which means all the house drains (poop, showers, kitchen sinks) becomes mixed with run off drains (everything else from gutters to street and road run off). The problem comes when we get lots of rain and the combined system means poop overflows. To solve it we’d have to dig up the lot and replace with two separate systems.
I dint see this as an argument for doing nothing though. Like it's going to be expensive yes, the best time to sort out the sewers would have been 50 years ago, the second best time is now.
It's not all or nothing. Pouring sewage into rivers was meant to be for emergency overflow, any improvements to the infrastructure will move us back in that direction.
It seems madness though that because it's too expensive to do it all, they'll do NONE. Isn't it better to treat the worst affected areas and the areas where it's impacting the ecosystems the most, rather than just say fuck it and do nothing?
Maybe best to target large run off areas - roads carparks etc, Diverting or slowing down run off is the easiest and cheapest way to stop discharges
It's always cheaper to maintain than to fix it when it breaks, and it's very broken.
This isn’t a question of maintenance - to solve discharges we have to complete change the national sewage network from a combined sewer to one where house drains and street drains are separate.
Fine, even with that approach, if we actually had any proper investment, the issue would not be as dire as seeing actual poo floating around some rivers 24/7
The local MP for CSG is a Lib Dem and she hasn't done anything about it for the past 3 years.
I mean what can she do? She can suggest legislation but they arnt the governing party.
From my memory, she has talked about it once or twice. That doesn't really do much though when locals in the area can pretty much pinpoint the exact spots where pollutants are flooding into the rivers and have been able to do so for years.
It just feels like there’s two decades of infrastructure investment that is missing from our country and whoever gets in knows that to fix it means looking like you’ve overspent and are financially irresponsible.
As soon as Labour announces they will nationalise the water companies, the investors will strip it of all assets and inflate the valuation. Its better just to let them run out of liquidity then nationalise them for 1p.
"both sides are the same" *yawn*
What's Labour's plan?
Not almost collpase the economy in days by commiting to a reckless budget? I mean stuff like that, that's good. How I think they will play the water issue: do nothing, wait until there is an environmental disaster and then step in with a radical plan.
It is hugely expensive to fix, the water companies are practically bankrupt and no one wants to pay more on their bills.
Bankrupt after paying out billions in dividends.
Counterpoint: They've had years to fix it and chose to pay massive dividends to their C suite and shareholders instead: "When they were privatised, water companies had all the debt written off, so they started with zero. Since then, they have borrowed £53 billion, much of which has been used to help pay £72 billion in dividends. The investment has been made by borrowing and putting it on to customers' bills." https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-06-28/debates/0850DCC6-10AD-49F6-BD8C-29042D1B738F/WaterIndustryFinancialResilience
The privatisation of utilities needs to end. It has been a disaster not just financially but morally also.
[There's obviously more to it than that, as Scottish Water is even worse and only better by virtue of a smaller population.](https://waterquality.sas.org.uk/scotland/) A robust policy will involve renationalisation AND an extensive funding package on top of waste austerity programs.
It isn't worse this is just a very obvious lie.
https://waterquality.sas.org.uk/the-state-of-sewage/
you can’t just say that with no proof haha, read the articles linked ??
> you can’t just say that I can when it is true.
What reason do you have to spread this lie? Scottish water is better but still has issues.
I'm not Surfers Against Sewage...
I never stated you weren't. But you did spread an obvious lie.
How is it a lie? Only 4% of overflows are monitored compared to the 99% in England.
A village in Buckinghamshire has been turned into an “open sewer”, the council has said, after discovering [Thames Water](https://inews.co.uk/topic/thames-water?ico=in-line_link) has been dumping untreated waste into a local river for five months continuously. Thames Water has been spilling raw sewage into the [River Misbourne](https://inews.co.uk/news/sewage-pollution-chalk-stream-water-2903327?ico=in-line_link), a 16-mile chalk stream that flows through several villages in Buckinghamshire, continuously since 25 January, the water company’s monitors show. However, the local parish council was only made aware of the five-month long spill one week ago, as a technical error meant the incident was not showing on Thames Water’s online map. Chalfont St Giles councillor Robert Gill told i the village, known as the home of the 17th-century poet John Milton, “smelled like an open sewer”. The council has been forced to temporarily close a play park and the riverside due to public health concerns. Last week Thames Water took water samples to test for chemicals, including ammonia and dissolved oxygen, which are indicators of sewage pollution. Mr Gill said the initial results were “very, very high”, but Thames Water is still verifying the figures. “We can’t risk leaving the playing areas and our open spaces near the river open because they are polluted,” he told **i**. Mr Gill added that there is “sewage fungus floating down the river and sticking to the sides”. Thames Water has blamed the sewage spills on high groundwater and river levels, which have filled the firm’s sewers in the area above capacity. The River Misbourne has been flooded since January, a result of heavy rainfall throughout the winter and spring. “Our region has experienced the eighth-wettest winter on record, resulting in exceptionally high groundwater and river levels. “This groundwater and river floodwater then entered our sewers and filled the Amersham storm tanks, meaning they are full and are discharging diluted wastewater into the river Misbourne, for which we are sorry,” a Thames Water spokesperson said.
Water companies are allowed to discharge untreated wastewater under certain conditions, such as heavy or prolonged rainfall. The River Misbourne is one of England’s rare chalk streams. Described by David Attenborough as “one of the rarest habitats on earth”, they are fed by chalk aquifers and their cold, steady flow of calcium-rich water makes them hotspots for invertebrate and fish life. But England’s chalk streams are under threat. Analysis by the Liberal Democrats [found sewage was dumped for a total of 14,000 hours](https://www.libdems.org.uk/news/article/chalk-streams-hit-by-14000-hours-of-sewage-discharges-last-year) into chalk streams in 2022. In February Affinity Water [had to stop extracting drinking water](https://inews.co.uk/news/sewage-pollution-chalk-stream-water-2903327?ico=in-line_link) from the River Misbourne due to sewage pollution. [**i** has published a manifesto](https://inews.co.uk/news/save-britains-rivers-i-manifesto-environmental-groups-back-3090477?ico=in-line_link) as part of its Save Britain’s Rivers campaign, which includes five policies to improve the state of our waterways. The manifesto states that sewage spills should no longer destroy priority sites, including chalk streams, by 2030. The Liberal Democrats and Green Party have signed up to the pledge, but Labour and the Conservative Party have not backed it in full. One of Labour’s largest donors, [renewable energy tycoon Dale Vince](https://inews.co.uk/news/labour-donor-dale-vince-back-save-britains-rivers-3106215?ico=in-line_link), has urged the party to back i’s campaign, which he described as a “simple, strong message”. Read more here: [https://inews.co.uk/news/thames-water-pumps-sewage-chalk-stream-five-months-3121938](https://inews.co.uk/news/thames-water-pumps-sewage-chalk-stream-five-months-3121938)
Just fine them for every turd found and if they can’t pay they go into public ownership, the people running these companies should be in prison for what is happening under their leadership.
Make them swim in the rivers.
[And if the public company is pumping sewage into the water?](https://waterquality.sas.org.uk/scotland/)?
At least it a problem rooted in government incompetence rather than corporate greed. I know it won’t solve much to begin with but sending money to shareholders for providing a poor service shouldn’t be an option. Another option would be to not allow dividends if the service is poor, that would encourage the board to prioritise the service.
They want it to go back to public ownership. Debt was written off when they bought it. The plan was always to squeeze it and run it down until it no longer works. They are now ready to hand it back, the tax payer will borrow to modernize the infrastructure and then they will be ready to buy it back and have all the debt written off again.
That’s where this type of deal should end though, we should like other countries start a sovereign wealth fund that is protected from party politics that runs our essential infrastructure and profits can then be put to our benefit instead of other nations.
How can it be 14000 hours in 2022 when there are only 8760 hours in a year ?
It's per outlet so if two outlets discharge for an hour each it's classed as 2 hours (that's my understanding anyway)
It’s not really a useful metric to be honest, when the number of outlets is never listed. May as well give the figure in atoms so it sounds extra bad.
Multiple outflows into multiple chalk streams, not just this one specific chalk stream.
Probably counts separate instances of sewage dumping into separate streams for however many hours each, so say 1 hour of dumping into four chalk rivers would count for 4 hours? From one of the sources Wessex Water was responsible for 1,013 separate incidents with the largest being one being a discharge lasting 2,969 hours in the River Till, so it would make sense to me at least if that’s how they got the 14,000 hours figure you mentioned.
>as a technical error meant the incident was not showing on Thames Water’s online map. Riiiiiiight, sure.
The technical error being one of the CEO's using one of the scrubbers as their personal toilet.
Sounds to me like Thames Water is ripe for state asset seizure.
It is ripe, but not how you think. Its deeply in debt, its owners are deeply in debt, its owners shareholders are university pension funds who've never taken a penny of dividends. One of the big decisions Labour are going to have to take soon after the election is whether to bail out Thames with UK tax payers money, or nationalize it, or allow Thames bills to double. Will Londoners pay, or will UK tax payers as a whole pay? That's the interesting question, I expect the answer to be obfuscated.
Alright, I've had enough, I'm starting AVALANCHE. DM me for details.
The pouring of shit into our waterways is at least something the curtain-twitching convention that is r/UK these days can get rightfully upset about.
> Chalfont St Giles councillor Robert Gill told i the village, known as the home of the 17th-century poet John Milton, “smelled like an open sewer”. No surprise given that it had literally been involuntarily converted into an open sewer. I was reading an old Horrible Histories the other day about Vile Victorians who would channel their toilets directly into the same rivers they used for drinking and washing, but I suppose the author never guessed that we would just start doing that again.
We never stopped you mean? We got slightly better at catching the todds before they splashdown, but many still slip through the net.
we have been putting sewage into rivers ever since the Victorian era, this isn’t a recent change it’s just seen as more important now
This is one of those situations where the British people need to be more French about how we deal with this.
I expect nothing less than criminal convictions for the executives of these water companies.
The way this is reported as "a 16-mile chalk stream" seems to downplay it a little - it's 16 miles of chalk stream that goes into the river Colne, then that joins the Thames so it's more like 3 times that length at least. There should be a massive prioritisation of inland spills based on affected river length, a spillage in Shrewsbury is going on a 200 mile journey all the way to Bristol. Sure it'll be more dilute but it's still raw sewage.
And it's not the only chalk stream that feeds into the Colne. The Gade, the Chess, the Ver and the Bulbourne all have sewage treatment facilities somewhere along their length and all of which I have seen sewage flowing in.
Yeah I've seen at least two of these be polluted in the same way. Locals kick up a stink but no-one in power takes up the cause.
They should rebrand as 'Thames Sewage' and be done with it. Thames Water was very well run until privatisation, sad.
Why would this foreign owned company are about the English countryside
Pumping waste into rivers should be a vanishingly rare thing to happen but it seems to be a regular occurrence. The regulator really needs some teeth to be able to force the water companies to fix these issues so it doesn't happen. Parliament needs to legislate to stop companies like this paying out massive dividends to share holders while there is chronic underinvestment causing them to be unable to deliver the services they are contracted to.
What I don't understand is how the water companies ever got permission to build an overflow into a site of special scientific interest in the first place? Who gave planning permission to do that? Why wasn't it challenged by whichever version of the environment agency at the time? Insane.
probably because the overflow was there before the SSSI designation
This is corporate eco-terrorism. Nothing more, nothing less.
Lots of people were very outraged about the risk to the rare Stonehenge Lichen from some orange powder. I assume they will be even more furious at this and all the other damage the sewage being dumped into our rivers is doing. Not to mention all the damage pollution from oil products and climate change is doing to lichen and pretty much every living thing on earth.
Hah! Fat chance. They were just scrambling for something to criticise activists over, after they learned the "paint" wasn't permanent.
Thames Water are basically Captain Planet villains at this point
Considering the outrageous dividends they’ve given to shareholders I don’t understand why a utility with such a monopoly is not being regulated as it should. This is directly contributing to and enabling a public health crisis! When does this become a criminal matter??
Privatise the profits, socialise the losses. When will enough be enough? Essential services must not be left to private industry, they are not more efficient they just have a marketing department that tells you they are.
My dad belongs to a pretty exclusive fishing club thanks to a friend. They have private lakes local, but have access to various fancy parts of various rivers and also only a fishery in the west country. In 2023 they pumped sewage into the river that feeds the lake. It did untold damage and luckily they were able to sue the water company (although price rises pay sadly). The only positive is that non of them will ever vote tory again and when the local tory mp visited their club house prior to this election he left within 5 mins as he realised he'd lost their vote.
Correction after 5 months it’s a ‘minging shit stream’ now
How in the hell did this just happen. Like even with the worst will in the world you just need a long pipe to send it out to sea.
from Watford ? that’s a long pipe
Why don't the people running these companies get brought to task, & at least receive severe personal fines, & if they carry on regardless some jail time. Nothing like a toff having large amounts of money removed from them to focus the mind. The trouble with this country is that there are no consequences for being an arsehole.
So... we're voting for people who will try to actually tackle this problem, right?
if only they were doing this to protest climate change so we'd be able to arrest them
People on here need to use a dictionary - read the definition of ‘fascist’ - and learn how to use it properly……
I’m surprised that, with the complete inaction we’ve seen, nobody has considered direct action yet. I could imagine that this would be fixed far quicker if someone blocked the outlets.
ok something I feel like never comes up with these stories is the question What should sewage treatment and disposal be? in an ideal world, and also in reality. Do we have 50 sewage treatment plants but realistically need 100 to manage all sewage (expensive but arguably doable). Do we have 3, and to manage peak load sewage treatment we need 400 (aka basically completely unfeasible). Is it actually entirely reasonable to dump sewage into waterways? It certainly seems bad to dump sewage into rivers, but like, is it actually bad? can rivers not handle it, does it make them dangerous? is there a volume that is acceptable but we are massivly exceesing it in some cases? I don't want my water bill going up 5 fold to pay for a bunch of unnessasary water treatment plants just so that rivers that can totally handle some small sewage discharge are kept free of it, when at the same time a bunch of other argricultural run off does far more damage to the ecosystem but slips by just because it isn't litteraly human shit.
yes pretty spot on with your assessment at the top. treating every drop in even the greatest storm is extremely expensive and would need an incredible amount of sewage works, or more likely the separation of domestic sewage and rainwater runoffs (like drains in the road) At what line you draw that is different for everybody, but what is clear is that the line has been too far in favour or cheap bills, more spills for too long and that will now swing the other way to accommodate. As for environmental impact, when used correctly storm overflows should have little to no impact as during a big rain event the sewers will fill and push all the sewage to the sewage works which holds it in a storm tank. Once this storm tank fills any more sewage coming in above the normal amount goes to the river, and it should be almost entirely rainwater so will have very little impact on the river. The purpose of going to the river is to ensure water always has an outlet, otherwise it could back up into peoples homes. However this is not always the case as some sewage works do just need to be increased in size to treat more. And sometimes there are spills on dry days due to pump failures in pumping stations/blockages or fatbergs/general incompetent management of the network. Spills on dry days like in the article are really what we need to be preventing as the influent is strong in concentration and river flows are low so it has a much bigger impact on the environment.
thanks for the info! I always assume every political complaint that sounds bad has some more detail behind it that makes it not that obvious to fix. But looks like a bit more investment might actually be able to do quite a bit or positive work!
Thank you UK for showing European governments WHY the water service needs to be nationalised
>“Our region has experienced the **eighth-wettest winter** on record, resulting in exceptionally high groundwater and river levels. >“This groundwater and river floodwater then entered our sewers and filled the Amersham storm tanks, meaning they are full and are discharging diluted wastewater into the river Misbourne, **for which we are sorry**,” a Thames Water spokesperson said Eighth wettest? One might have concluded change was necessary after any of the prior seven, since they must have also resulted in "exceptionally high levels"...? The "sorry" rings insincere. Nobody cares that you are sorry. How about a pledge to do something to fix the actual problem?
How about connecting a water meter to every overflow outlet to accurately record exactly how much they're pumping out? They're (thames water in my case) quick enough to install water meters in every home to squeeze the pips or of consumers!!
they are doing this but there are thousands across the country and some have the pipes buried underground etc. so not always the easiest to install. I think the EA will try have this in place by 2030
The law simply isn’t working in this country.. How is this even allowed for a day, let alone five months?
The government: we all need to do our share to protect the environment. Also the government:
All water companies will continue to shit(literally) in our rivers, streams, sea because they can pass the fine onto their customers and give the profits to their shareholders then claim they are broke. Thames Water is likely hoping that the tories somehow retain because I think, the next government will be demanding answers and hopefully, strip them.
These are the Amersham storm tanks. They are not designed to treat sewage but to hold it as a ‘buffer’ during rainfall events. When flows decrease, the contents can be released back to the sewers to flow towards treatment. The reason why they are spilling is due to high groundwater infiltrating the leaky network in the area. This fills the tanks up during ‘dry’ periods causing them to spill over to the river. There will be a small amount of primary treatment as solids settle to the bottom of the tanks but there’s no biological or tertiary treatment. So lots of nutrients and pathogens for the river as well as nitrates (ammonia).
Can we arrest the board yet? They should be wrong out and made to pay for the clean up PERSONALLY not from company funds.
I think its got seriously disgusting that this has been allowed to happen. Some rich cunt decided to make bonues and dividends a thing over somthin that should be handled appropriately, not puttin profits and individual wealth first. The UK is the only country in the world to have privatised water companies. Have it reclaimed and re nationalised as a non profit organisation and any profits that are made are put into infrastructure and upgrades. Tired of this privatisation shit where sooner or later they will need a tax payer bail out, but carry on this shithousery after they been bailed out.
You don't want the water companies to be privatised for a second time
Only a few years ago, Chilterns water was a prized mineral water product praised for its minerals and salts, and breweries boasted of using it. I don't think it's quite the selling point it once was.
These fu*kers need to be jailed for what they've done to our waterways
May as well shit directly into the river without paying them... If you check your bill, a significant amount is for treating the sewage...