The Daily Mail reports:
Four million pounds in bonuses have been paid to the directors of water firms – despite their failure to repair leaks which allow 300million gallons to be lost every day.
All but one of the companies, which today brought in hosepipe bans for 20million customers, handed rewards to their board members in the last financial year.
These include £2million for three executives at Britain's largest water supplier Thames Water, whose highest paid director, understood to be chief executive Martin Baggs, took home £1.67million in 2010/11.
More on this story here.
It surely is time to renationalise water and end this great privatisation rip-off.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Neil Clark: Pull up on the hard shoulder, David Cameron, and think again
This article, by CPO co-founder Neil Clark, appears in The Week.
THEY'VE flogged off the Tote, the state-owned bookmaker set up by Winston Churchill in 1928. They've sold the Channel Tunnel rail link to two Canadian pension funds. The NHS faces privatisation in all but name, some police services are to be carried out by private companies, and the Royal Mail, in state hands since its inception in 1516, is to be sold, with the taxpayer left paying for the company's pension fund liabilities.
And still the serial privatisers in the ConDem coalition aren't satisfied.
The most manically pro-privatisation government in British history - one which makes even the Thatcher governments from 1979-90 look positively social democratic - now wants to hand our motorways and 'A' roads over to private companies and foreign-owned investment funds.
The whole article can be read here.
THEY'VE flogged off the Tote, the state-owned bookmaker set up by Winston Churchill in 1928. They've sold the Channel Tunnel rail link to two Canadian pension funds. The NHS faces privatisation in all but name, some police services are to be carried out by private companies, and the Royal Mail, in state hands since its inception in 1516, is to be sold, with the taxpayer left paying for the company's pension fund liabilities.
And still the serial privatisers in the ConDem coalition aren't satisfied.
The most manically pro-privatisation government in British history - one which makes even the Thatcher governments from 1979-90 look positively social democratic - now wants to hand our motorways and 'A' roads over to private companies and foreign-owned investment funds.
The whole article can be read here.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Britain's railway madness: ConDem Government wants even higher train fares at peak times
The Daily Mail reports:
Commuters travelling at the busiest times face paying super-peak fares in the biggest rail shake-up for a decade.
Train companies are also expected to be allowed to charge more for journeys immediately after the busy periods in the morning and evening.
And Network Rail will be broken up into a series of regional centres which will give privately-run train companies more control of the tracks on which their services run.
The Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the government is on completely the wrong track with its railways policy. Instead of encouraging an even more complicated pricing policy, and continuing to support the disastrous privatisation model, which has led to Britain having the highest rail fares in Europe, the government ought to be listening to the vast majority of Britons and bring the railways back into public ownership. When that is done, a simple, easy-to-understand distance-based pricing system can be introduced.
Commuters travelling at the busiest times face paying super-peak fares in the biggest rail shake-up for a decade.
Train companies are also expected to be allowed to charge more for journeys immediately after the busy periods in the morning and evening.
And Network Rail will be broken up into a series of regional centres which will give privately-run train companies more control of the tracks on which their services run.
The Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the government is on completely the wrong track with its railways policy. Instead of encouraging an even more complicated pricing policy, and continuing to support the disastrous privatisation model, which has led to Britain having the highest rail fares in Europe, the government ought to be listening to the vast majority of Britons and bring the railways back into public ownership. When that is done, a simple, easy-to-understand distance-based pricing system can be introduced.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Neil Clark: Renationalise English water
This article, by CPO co-founder Neil Clark, appears on the The Guardian newspaper website.
The obscene commodification of a natural resource has gone on long enough, ripping off ordinary people
Here we go again. In the past 12 months, we've had significant hikes in our gas and electricity bills (not reversed by recent cuts due to a fall in wholesale prices) and above-inflation increases in train fares – which are already the highest in Europe. Now it's time for the water companies to put the boot in.
Ofwat has announced that average household water and sewerage bills in England and Wales are to increase by an average of 5.7% from April. As in the case with the rail fares, we're told that the reason that prices are rising is to enable more "investment" by the water companies. But a closer inspection is highly revealing.
You can read the whole article here.
The obscene commodification of a natural resource has gone on long enough, ripping off ordinary people
Here we go again. In the past 12 months, we've had significant hikes in our gas and electricity bills (not reversed by recent cuts due to a fall in wholesale prices) and above-inflation increases in train fares – which are already the highest in Europe. Now it's time for the water companies to put the boot in.
Ofwat has announced that average household water and sewerage bills in England and Wales are to increase by an average of 5.7% from April. As in the case with the rail fares, we're told that the reason that prices are rising is to enable more "investment" by the water companies. But a closer inspection is highly revealing.
You can read the whole article here.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Seumas Milne: It's not too late to save the NHS from the barbarians
This piece by Seumas Milne appears in The Guardian:
Unless decisive action is taken in the next few weeks, the National Health Service is heading for disaster. The battle over the coalition's plans to turn England's NHS inside out has been going on so long, the details are so arcane and claims of concessions so regular, it would be easy to imagine that the worst had been averted and common sense prevailed.
.... Cameron and Lansley insist they don't plan to privatise the NHS, of course. But that's exactly what's happening on the ground even before the bill hits the statute book. The first private company to take over an NHS hospital, the Tory-linked Circle Health, won the contract to run Hinchingbrooke hospital in Cambridgeshire in November, even as it admitted it may not be able to "provide a consistent level of service to its patients".
And the government has been in talks with international health corporations about taking over 20 more, while private companies are already running local doctors' services and preparing to administer the clinical commissioning groups of GPs due to take over the purchaser role in the coalition's new market model. Facts are being created on the ground.
You can read the whole article here.
Unless decisive action is taken in the next few weeks, the National Health Service is heading for disaster. The battle over the coalition's plans to turn England's NHS inside out has been going on so long, the details are so arcane and claims of concessions so regular, it would be easy to imagine that the worst had been averted and common sense prevailed.
.... Cameron and Lansley insist they don't plan to privatise the NHS, of course. But that's exactly what's happening on the ground even before the bill hits the statute book. The first private company to take over an NHS hospital, the Tory-linked Circle Health, won the contract to run Hinchingbrooke hospital in Cambridgeshire in November, even as it admitted it may not be able to "provide a consistent level of service to its patients".
And the government has been in talks with international health corporations about taking over 20 more, while private companies are already running local doctors' services and preparing to administer the clinical commissioning groups of GPs due to take over the purchaser role in the coalition's new market model. Facts are being created on the ground.
You can read the whole article here.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Neil Clark: Help fight fare rises and push for railway renationalisation
This piece by CPO co-founder Neil Clark , appears on the Guardian's Comment is Free website.
The latest price increases show Tory serial privatisers got it very wrong in the 90s. Join the protests to put things right
“Whichever way one looks at it, privatisation is a giant asset-stripping process. It is a very efficient way of taking money out of taxpayers' pockets". Gwyneth Dunwoody, the Labour MP who uttered those words during a debate in parliament on rail privatisation in February 1995, deserves some sort of posthumous New Year honour for calling it exactly right.
While Tory ministers claimed that selling-off the railways would bring "benefits to passengers and taxpayers", and scoffed at opposition concerns, the latest above-inflation price increases in Britain's rail fares – already by far and away the highest in Europe – shows once more that the serial privatisers of John Major's Conservative government got it very, very wrong.
You can read the whole article here.
The latest price increases show Tory serial privatisers got it very wrong in the 90s. Join the protests to put things right
“Whichever way one looks at it, privatisation is a giant asset-stripping process. It is a very efficient way of taking money out of taxpayers' pockets". Gwyneth Dunwoody, the Labour MP who uttered those words during a debate in parliament on rail privatisation in February 1995, deserves some sort of posthumous New Year honour for calling it exactly right.
While Tory ministers claimed that selling-off the railways would bring "benefits to passengers and taxpayers", and scoffed at opposition concerns, the latest above-inflation price increases in Britain's rail fares – already by far and away the highest in Europe – shows once more that the serial privatisers of John Major's Conservative government got it very, very wrong.
You can read the whole article here.
Friday, December 30, 2011
"Rail fares are TEN times higher in UK than in Europe"
The Daily Mail reports:
Rail passengers in Britain pay up to ten times more for their tickets than their European neighbours, figures reveal today.
They come as passengers brace themselves for a fresh round of fare rises of up to 11 per cent from Monday, and against a background of worsening train punctuality.
Critics say consumers are being ‘ripped off’ by an alliance of greedy train companies and tax-hungry Treasury ministers while passengers on the Continent pay significantly less for their journeys.
Rail passengers in Britain pay up to ten times more for their tickets than their European neighbours, figures reveal today.
They come as passengers brace themselves for a fresh round of fare rises of up to 11 per cent from Monday, and against a background of worsening train punctuality.
Critics say consumers are being ‘ripped off’ by an alliance of greedy train companies and tax-hungry Treasury ministers while passengers on the Continent pay significantly less for their journeys.
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