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The £3bn Thames Water bailout is a bucketload of sh*t – and YOU’RE paying for it

There’s only one thing that’s shitting us more than the profit-lined pockets of water executives right now. That’s the High Court’s truly outrageous decision to approve a £3bn Thames Water bailout for the sewage-monger-in-chief.

It’s fresh off the back of the shameless company gearing up to call for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to raise bills by a staggering 59% over the next 5 years.

The Thames Water bailout won’t make the shitty company mop up its mess

On Tuesday 18 February, the mainstream media was awash with the news that the High Court has greenlit a £3bn bailout for the debt-ridden sewage company.

Splashed across the coverage, they invariably referred to it as a “rescue loan” or “lifeline” for the company. In reality however, it’s an obscene handout to a corporation with coffers aplenty to pay stonking fat cat bonuses, but never quite enough to mop up after its own mess.

As the BBC reported:

Thames has said the £3bn in emergency funding will give it the space needed to complete a restructuring of its debts and attract a cash injection from prospective new investors.

But the proposals had to be approved by the High Court after a group of Thames Water’s creditors opposed it, arguing that the 9.75% interest rate on the loan was too costly.

In approving the lifeline, Mr Justice Leech ruled that the “relevant alternative” to the company’s plan being approved was temporary nationalisation, known as a Special Administration Regime.

Because god forbid that the corporate embodiment of all that is privatisation’s inevitable shamble face temporary nationalisation.

At the end of January, a group of MPs urged water regulator Ofwat to do just that. As the Canary reported, they argued to do otherwise:

could set a dangerous precedent in the industry, signalling that companies could mismanage operations and prioritise shareholder profits without facing meaningful consequences.

That was then, and this is now – the slimy sewage company has got what it wanted.

Shit will hit the fan again, because: privatisation

Labour Party MP Clive Lewis who led the call in January summed up the shitshow that is the High Court’s decision:

After all, handing billions to a company that’s serially mismanaged its finances is such a great idea:

To sum up: the answer to the festering profit-to-debt pipeline cesspool that is privatisation should not be – MORE privatisation. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that water privatisation has catastrophically failed. Chronic underinvestment, illegal sewage spills, and soaring bills has been its disgraceful legacy. Shit will hit the fan again when this inevitably fails too. So, in a few months, Thames Water will come crawling back for another cash injection after wasting this one on bosses’ bonuses.

And all while, water companies like Thames Water have continued to rip off and utterly fail their customers. Who’s old enough to remember Thames shutting down the ONLY bottled water station serving 10,000 people its own shoddy underinvested infrastructure had left without tap water?

Oh wait, that was only last week. As the Canary’s Steve Topple reported, the stingy shit-stirrer had also blamed customers for this.

So who’s going to pay for the Thames Water bailout? Well, that would be the customers now too, naturally:

They’re in the business of ‘fucking water’ – how hard could it be?

Ostensibly, the High Court gave Thames Water the greenlight to plumb to ever greater depths of profiteering.

As the Canary’s Maryam Jameela rightly asked:

If Thames Water keep getting fined for pumping sewage into waters, if they keep having outages, if they don’t have the infrastructure to do their jobs, then why should shareholders receive any dividends at all?

As it stands, Thames Water is on the brink of financial collapse. Why should the public have to bear the brunt of paying for them to be able to fulfil their most basic function?

That most basic function? As she noted, literally just supplying clean, safe drinking water. Or, as satirical reporter Jonathan Pie put it:

They were hardly the only ones pointing this out:

The proof is in the pollution. Private companies should not be enabled to profiteer off providing an essential human right. Thames Water’s persistent fines, and its habitual corporate capitalist creed of shitting all over its customers, and making them pay out for its mess, shows it can only be trusted to do one thing well. In short, that’s: enriching its shareholders.

Public ownership, right? RIGHT?

Two words were once again on everyone’s lips – “public ownership”:

Renationalisation would be a vital first step towards protecting customers. However, apparently, it wasn’t in the “public interest” according to High Court Justice Leech:

After taking into account the public interest in ensuring the uninterrupted provision of vital public services, I nevertheless exercise my discretion to sanction the plan

As one eagle-eyed person on X highlighted though – the judge has previously been on Thames Water’s payroll:

What’s more, Leech had also said how Ofwat and environment secretary Steve Reed were purportedly “not opposed to the plan”.

Might that be the same environment sec who previously accepted more than £1,700 in football tickets from the owner of another water company? Of course, the problem is, he’s hardly the only one.

Thames Water bailout: politicians and fat cats laughing at us all

Pre-election, the Canary identified no fewer than a dozen firms that have lobbied for the UK water sector in the last five years with significant connections to the Labour Party.

One just so happens to be former new Labour environment minister Ian Pearson. He currently sits on the board of none other than Thames Water.

Naturally, the links with Thames Water hardly stop there. Multiple candidate MPs had worked for Lexington Communications. The company had former Thames Water owner and “vampire kangaroo” investment bank Macquarie as a client. All three are now MPs.

So it’s only natural the government’s environment secretary is going to side with the slippery turd of a private water firm.

The High Court’s crappy decision on the Thames Water bailout will now saddle the public with more rip-off raises to their water bills. Maybe hand them a bucket full of shit next time and get the scummy company to bail itself out from those whopping executive bonuses, eh?

Featured image via the Canary

By Hannah Sharland

This post was originally published on Canary.