Regulator plans to cut fines to help stressed UK water companies

Fuck right off! This is abaolute carnage and why the country is going to hell in a handbasket.

Don’t forget, you, your parents and grandparents voted for this only 35 years ago.

How’s that fast buck turning out these days?

r/leopardsateourkidsfaces

What? These companies are done nothing but take value out and give it to shareholders instead of maintaining our water.

From https://bbc.com/news/articles/cw4478wnjdpo

Investors have withdrawn £85.2bn from 10 water and sewage firms in England and Wales since the industry was privatised more than 30 years ago, analysis by the University of Greenwich suggests.

The University of Greenwich examined the company accounts of the top 10 water and sewage companies in England and Wales including Thames Water, United Utilities and Severn Trent.

It said that between privatisation in 1989 and 2023, money invested by shareholders in the largest firms shrunk by £5.5bn when adjusted for inflation.

Over the same period, the amount of “retained earnings” – profits left over once things like dividends have been paid out, that can be used to invest in a business – had dropped by £6.7bn in real terms.

Meanwhile, the total amount that these firms paid out to their shareholders in dividends grew to £72.8bn, when taking inflation into account.

Taken together, the fall in shareholders’ investment and retained earnings – or profit – and rising dividend payments mean that, according to the University of Greenwich, owners have withdrawn £85.2bn.

But Mr Hall said: “You put the prices up because you can and you get more money out of the customers, and then you pass it on to the shareholders because the business you’re in is providing a good return to your shareholders.”

“That’s why the companies do what they do and we shouldn’t expect anything different.”

Well, that’s me bypassing my water meter then. Fuck these cunts and fuck the shareholders too.