I have already discussed the failure of the UK to invest this morning. The FT highlights another aspect of this today.
Having noted our rather wet summer, it also notes that many rivers in the UK are running dry, and ask why. Its suggestion is that:
Changing climate patterns are part of the picture. But a key culprit in the UK is an over-reliance on abstraction — where companies take water from rivers and natural underground reservoirs called aquifers — and a neglected water and sewage network, some of which hasn't been upgraded in decades.
This includes water distribution pipes that leak a fifth of the water they carry, a failure to build new storage capacity such as reservoirs, and the contamination of waterways with unknown quantities of raw sewage that depletes the stock of clean water.
In other words, the problem is underinvestment, yet again.
Unless and until we get our heads around the fact that we have been living off the depletion of our national capital for some time, almost all of which needs to be replenished and updated now, then we are in very deep economic trouble in the UK.
Will we change in time? I don't know. But I do know we need to change our national accounting and tax systems to make this possible. In the process, we need to reject thinking based on the idea that time does not matter, which is implicit in almost all modern economics, and that low taxation is a sign of national virtue when that is very clearly not the case.
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The thing is for me is that there is so much sustainable growth to be had by putting things right and walking towards green.
The big issue is all about this false narrative of the State being the source of too much of the GDP if the state instigates change, allied to the tax question. Most people I talk to want change but fear being charged for it an an already expensive country.
We live in a Gordian knot of lies promulgated by Neo-liberal politicians and media hacks, financed by Neo-lib profiteers.
We need exceptional leadership at the moment but all we get is the likes of Starmer and Reeves.
We can only count on things having to get worse to shake us out of the cage we impose on ourselves.
Picking up on the under investment in water & sewage and fantasising for a moment,
if gov were to invest in the work needed, most (all?) of the work would be undertaken by Uk companies, using material and people from the UK. All would be taxed in the UK. Arguably, at worst, there would be a modest timing difference between the date of investment and the point when most of the investment was recovered as tax. However, if one accepts the economic multiplier argument, then the economic activity stimulated by the investment may well result in a larger tax taken than the original investment.
Given this, it might be nice for any vile-tories (or indeed vile-liebore) that visit this site to put forward arguments against the gov making the investment (and why much/most/all of it would not be recovered as tax).
Obvs – because taxation plays a key role in the above, one would need to make sure that, like water pipes, the system ain’t “leaky”
Your logic is sound
The “abstraction” of money to serve the interests of the few is the central issue. Investment went off to China along with Western jobs for example because the Chinese Communist Party figured out how to rig the system using capitalist greed as a driving force. Of course reading Marx made it easy M-C-M:-
https://www.quora.com/What-is-M-C-M-in-Marxian-theory-of-capitalist-exploitation
20% of (treated) water leaks away. The vile-tories & vile-liebore are keen on markets. Here we go.
Water producers are formed into separate companies. They sell water (at a regulated price) to those companies that own water pipes.
Ofwhat? allows a leakage rate of 2% (reasonable?) the cost of which water pipe companies can pass through to their “customers”.
Leakage rates above 2% are financial absorbed by the water pipe companies.
One could give them say an 18 month grace period before this kicks in.
Oh look, I’ve just re-nationalised the totality of the piped water network – at no cost, because, as sure as eggs are eggs, the current crew would be incapable of doing anything in 18 months and would face the sort of financial bleed that no company could support.
30 years of extortion – time to put the boot on the other foot.
Vile-Liebore won’t do it – of course – cos that would help UK serfs – & we can’t have that.
Neat….
Ithought that most of the water companies were not owned by British companies, so how does that fit?
https://weownit.org.uk/act-now/take-shares-not-fines
https://weownit.org.uk/public-ownership/water
If they atevt9 get the required investment they will bleed to be ntiinakisedu
Do you mean ‘If they can’t get the required investment they will need to be nationalised’? I admit I struggled with that one!
So would I have done
You got it right
It took me 30 seconds or so to realise that this says
If they are to get the required investment thay will need to be nationalised.
(If they atevt9 get the required investment they will bleed to be ntiinakisedu)
Atevt9 foxed me, I must be getting slow in my dotage.
Sorry….
I should moderate with less haste but equally I try to fit it in whenver I can
What?
Need to be nationalised?
But neither Sunak nor Starmer are going to renationalise anything, let alone water, so what next?
Wait for circumstances to overwhelm them
It is interesting to see the subject of aquifers being raised again.
In the pre-privatisation 1960s and 70s whenever there was a drought it was usually part of the conversation about what could be done that there was a replenishable rate of extraction from aquifers and that if we exceeded it, aquifers that took decades/centuries to refill would be unable to support future generations.
As a result there was a limit to the responsible rate of extraction from aquifers.
With privatisation that part of the concept of the responsible management of water resources, like so many others, appeared to completely disappear.
Aquifers across the world are being emptied far faster than they can refill. Powerful industries – irrigation agriculture and to an extent mining take the lions share. They capture governments. Strongly enforced regulations with punitive penalties, as well as make-good orders on water companies not maintaining infrastructure, need independent oversight. Some countries have old and new practices of landscape infrastructure design to capture flood flows in storages/wetlands. First find a central government instead of a racket and give local government a strong role.
The objection to high taxes is not that their high it’s that they are high for no reason.
Government officials would rather spaff money on their friends shell corps than put it to good use because doing so would make them richer in order to buy more assets that don’t solve any real problems we have and spaff more money on that.
It’s gotten to the point now that theres some sort of government official caught doing something almost every week in the news but no actual charges ever properly pressed on them.
The UK population is already paying …
30% (average) income tax
12.5% National Insurance TAX
20% VA tax as soon as they try to spend what’s left.
So with over half the nation’s earnings going to the treasury and the government is responsible for literally nothing any more besides the local council bills, and the emergency services.
So the reality is, it’s entirely solvable but until we get some genuine MPs that actually want to solve it in the commons and not just a bunch of jeering heads that love to stroke each others egos we as well just take a break.
I knew an idiot would turn up, and you duly did.
32.9 per cent of income goes in tax.
4.1% of wealth increases.
That’s not more than a half.
You gut that wrong, and clearly read nothing.
The rest of your opinions are as misplaced.
Don’t call again.