The water billionaires need drying out

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
6 March 2007

The latest increase in the cost of necessities - without which none of us can live - applies to water. The rise in water bills is this year is more than twice the current 4.2% rate of inflation - between 6% and 10%. An average bill will increase by 7% to £312.

Did wages rise by this much? Of course not. Indeed, Brown told public sector workers last week that they could only have a rise of 1.9%!

So on top of energy bills which went through the roof last year and council tax bills - which will go up again by another 4.2% - the very stuff of life, water, is to be charged at a greater premium!

It is hard enough to keep up with paying all these increases if you have a permanent full-time job. But what about the 11.4 million people including 2m pensioners who live below the poverty line in today's "booming" Britain?

The truth is, of course, that it is only booming - and at record levels - for the rich shareholders who are making profits hand over fist at everyone else's expense! Didn't the banks just post record profits of £40bn thanks to holding the working class in hock to the tune of over one trillion pounds?

As for the government's "regulators" which are supposed to police these companies and banks, "Ofwat" is a prime example. In fact Ofwat agreed to a 5-year plan for the water companies in 2004, saying it was fine for them to make more profits than other regulated sectors like gas and electricity.

And water companies have been doing just that. Collectively the industry made £3 billion last year! This was after they were supposed to have invested £4.3bn to replace and repair leaking pipes. But they only invested £3.4 billion. And it was not as if they even were doing a good job. Thames had to be forced to do extra work to meet leakage targets and Severn Trent and Southern were fined for failures.

One company, Pennon, is typical. Last year its profits were up by 17% even after it gave customers rebates of £20. Then it still paid £200 million out to its shareholders in dividends...

The water company bosses tell us this has nothing to do with greed. Wessex Water boss, Colin Skellett, defended his company's price rise (9.4%) saying "The sole reason for the price rise is to pay for investment programmes."

Spin us another one!