Due to lack of accountability and regulation, Southern Water has been getting away with sewage dumping, overcharging and underinvestment in its infrastructure. We don’t have to accept this, writes local activist Alan Burgess.
It is an old adage, but nevertheless true: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. In the UK, the most affluent 1% of the population own just 25% of the household wealth of the nation. A survey by the Resolution Foundation showed that this 1% had almost £800bn more wealth than suggested by official statistics, meaning that inequality is much higher than previously thought. This mass transfer of money upwards has accelerated since Thatcher and continued through Blair, Cameron and the austerity that never ends.
There are many mechanisms to extract wealth from the poor. Among them is privatising public utilities. Back before the 1970s, the basic infrastructure to support life: water, gas, electricity, the railways and the Royal Mail were publicly run institutions. They were not designed to make a profit, they were designed to run a service for ordinary people. If any profit was generated it was returned to the exchequer, for the public good.
Today, after 40-odd years of privatisation, 29.14% of all homes in the Portsmouth South constituency are in fuel poverty, a whopping 14,469. Measures to protect the elderly such as the winter fuel payment have been cut. In our city, 24,457 vulnerable pensioners were eligible for this payment. To make life even more difficult for them – and millions of others across the UK – the national regulator Ofgem has allowed a 10% rise in energy costs from 1st October.
The same problems are replicated in the water industry. When water companies were privatised in 1989, the creaky infrastructure dated back to the Victorian times and required extensive investment. In Portsmouth even now, the sewage and rainwater runoffs are disposed of in the same pipe network. When it rains heavily, the pipe capacity fails and the overflow (including high concentrations of sewage) gets dumped in Langstone Harbour. Southern Water, the private company responsible for waste water, services 92,658 homes. Each home pays an annual bill of £439, meaning that Portsmouth in total pays Southern Water £40m a year. The company receives additional income through business bills, borrowing and shareholder investments. Yet despite this handsome income, shit is still being pumped into rivers and seas. Not a good deal.
What do we do? Do we sit back and accept this injustice? Do we place our trust in a relatively new Labour government to radically reverse the tragic farce of wasted decades? Or do we take to the streets and demonstrate? If you, like me, prefer the third option, allow me to illustrate what can be done: in conjunction with Unite Community, a protest demanding public ownership of the big six energy companies. The above photograph is of Portsmouth and District Unite Community and the Grim Reaper taking on Big Energy.
There is a massive opportunity on Sunday 3rd November to join the March for Water, a national demonstration held in central London. Portsmouth and District Unite Community are organising a coach: £10 unwaged; £20 waged. Book tickets here.