1mo ago

Labour MP Steve Reed claims it'd cost "Upwards of £100bn to Nationalise Water". This is a huge lie.

This £100 billion figure is from a report funded by the Privatised Water Industry to lobby against Nationalisation.

Why is a Labour MP regurgitating industry lies?

18 comments

It's easy to nationalise
Step 1, be the government
Step 2, create a new bill or whatever
Step 3, walk in to the water companies
Step 4, fuck the shareholders and give them nothing
- I’d love this to be a 4 step plan however…
  Step 5, Watch the collapse of virtually all private pensions in the UK as their value drops due to heavy investment in various water companies.
  Step 6, Watch the gilt markets collapse as the UK government is seen as reckless and anti business as it removes assets from private investors.
  Step 7, government borrowing goes up just as debt to GDP goes flying past 100%.
  Step 8, government collapses and Nigel Farage comes swinging to the “rescue” by stuffing as many of the remaining £50 notes passing through the government into his pockets, and the pockets of his friends, while selling off the NHS and making the UK the first nation in the world to revert back into a 3rd world country.
  
  Step 5, Watch the collapse of virtually all private pensions in the UK as their value drops due to heavy investment in various water companies.
  Overstated I would say, pensions are heavily diversified.
  Step 6, Watch the gilt markets collapse as the UK government is seen as reckless and anti business as it removes assets from private investors.
  If the government continues paying interest on the bonds, why would the markets collapse?
  
  100% I’d love to see nationalised utilities more than anyone else but we need to be realistic that the choices are:
  the government spends an obscene amount of money to buy out the private interests, economy collapses and faraj gets in, or
  the government changes laws and takes ownership of the companies (and the debts) some way, needs to borrow tons to service the debts, economy collapses and faraj gets in, or
  the government just straight up steals control and the shareholders eat the losses. The above scenario plays out where pension funds collapse, the country is punished by investors withdrawing, economy collapses, faraj gets in. Free holidays to El salvador all round.
- That would be a good day (except a bunch of pension funds would take a hit).
- how to save money and win elections with this 1 easy trick billionoids don't want you to know about
- What step do you drink shareholder blood and decorate facilities with heads on spikes?
Nationalising water is free - you just go 'no it's mine now'.
The British empire used to be the world champions of stealing other people's land and now you're telling me we have to spend 100 billion buying back our own fucking water supply? From some dick heads who've done nothing but dump shit into it constantly while fleecing everyone? It's an absolutely appropriate response to willful abuse of our national infrastructure. No wonder this parasite industry spends YOUR money to bribe spineless or idiotic politicians like Reed to protect their racket while the British public gets fucked.
If we just seized these assets back, they would be getting off LIGHTLY for what they have done. It barely goes far enough, they ought to be locked up for this behavior.
why is a Labour MP regurgitating industry lies?
Real head-scratcher, that one. Reeeeal brainteaser. An honest-to-goodness Labour MP? Shilling for think-tanks? In this economy? On Christmas Eve, in the rain?
Surely not. Because that would mean...
We have no valid voting choice as people on the left who care about progress and compassion and social justice, and haven't since the 1970's. Different flavours of Thatcherite neoliberalism are the only thing anyone under 50 has ever known, and the seemingly endless inertia of that failed ideology within the class-captured, self-reinforcing, closed system of government means it's likely all we'll ever know
Probably just a coincidence.
Just fine them £100bn, and declare them forfeit when they refuse to pay.
Have the shareholders considered that their shares aren't worth even shit?
- To be fair, they have plenty of shit, so much so that they can just let it escape.
And if they’d give him the opposite line the next day, he’d have no problems repeating it, duly.
Then privatise it properly.
If I can't choose my water provider like I do with electricity and gas then it's not privatised. It's a monopoly.

18 comments