The new job

A new guy starts work as an executive at [privatised water company]

"Good morning. Welcome to the executive team at [privatised water company], do you have any questions?"

"Well … erm … how does this business actually operate? I only got the job because daddy went to [£30k a year private school] with [Chief Executive], so I don’t really know much about it" [smug chuckle]

"It’s quite simple actually. Do you know what a natural monopoly is?"

[blank stare]

"It’s when the customer doesn’t have any choice. They’re just stuck with a provider and have to pay what they charge, and they have to accept whatever level of service they’re provided, no matter how poor. That’s what we do!"

”Wow! That seems beneficial!"

"It absolutely is. To us at least. Not our customers, ha ha ha!"

"How is that even possible?"

"Well, in the 1980s Margaret Thatcher decided to privatise the publicly operated not-for-profit local water boards, so she used public cash to wipe out all of their debts, and then flogged them off for an absolutely tiny fraction of what all that water infrastructure would have cost to build from scratch, and we’re the guys who got a nice big chunk of it."

"That’s a lucky break! What did you do next?"

"Well obviously we started jacking up prices, because it’s not like our customers could get their water anywhere else." [laugh and a wink]

"So there’s really no competition at all?"

"Absolutely none. Amazing right?"

"What else did you do?"

"Obviously we decided to hike up our salaries. We’re not public sector workers!" [disdainful smirk]

"Nice!"

"That’s not the best bit though. We’ve also artificially inflated the value of the company shares, and paid ourselves great big bonuses in those shares."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, we immediately cut spending on stuff like maintenance and infrastructure upgrades, so that we could make more profits; pay ourselves huge executive salaries; and pay out massive shareholder dividends. The whole system is falling to bits after 36 years of this, ha ha ha!"

"Doesn’t anyone complain?"

"Yeah, our customers hate it, and the environmental bushwhacker types are always whining about the shit pumping thing, but there’s fuck all they can do about it though, because we’ve got the politicians and regulators in our pocket." [glows with smug satisfaction]

"What do you mean by the shit pumping thing?"

"You don’t even know about that!" [laughing] "Daddy really did hand you this job on a plate didn’t he?"

[Awkward silence]

"Well, we figured that it would be more profitable to not bother spending money on sewage treatment, and just pump billions of litres of raw untreated shit into England’s rivers, lakes, and coastal waters."

"Aren’t there rules against that kind of thing?"

"I mean on paper, yes. But I told you that we’ve got the regulators and politicians in our pocket, so the fines we have to pay for sewage dumping are a mere drop in the ocean compared to the money we save by not building and maintaining sewage treatment facilities. Or a turd in the ocean to be more accurate." [laughing at own joke until tears start rolling]

"How do you have the regulators and politicians in your pocket?"

"You really don’t know anything about privatised monopolies do you?"

[Awkwardly looks down at the floor]

"You know about revolving doors and backhanders, right?"

[More awkward silence]

"We make sure that anyone with the power to properly punish us knows that there’s a cushy highly-paid job in it for them if they don’t, and we buy off the politicians with donations and junkets."

"Junkets?"

"Yeah, we invite them to lavish parties and bankroll their silly little lobby groups and parliamentary play games" … "Have you heard of Angela Smith?"

"No"

"She’s the one who said that Black and Asian Brits have a ‘funny tinge’ then quit the Labour Party to sabotage Jeremy Corbyn. She was one of ours."

"Sabotage Jeremy Corbyn?"

"Yeah, he wanted to renationalise the water industry and run it as a not-for-profit public service again, so he had to go."

"So what do we do now, apart from collecting money, buying people off, and polluting the environment?"

"Well there is kind of a debt problem now."

"What do you mean? I thought you said Thatcher paid off all the debts before she flogged us all this stuff on the cheap?"

"She did, but we figured that we’d be able to pay even higher shareholder dividends and executive salaries if we loaded the company up with £billions in debt. But that’s turned into a bit of a problem."

"How so?"

"Well, we kind of assumed that the government and the Bank of England were going to keep on running the UK as a zombie economy by keeping interest rates at near zero indefinitely."

"And interest rates went up?"

”Yep, the Liz Truss effect, ha ha ha."

"So what are we going to do?"

"Put up bills and make the customers pay of course."

"How are we going to get away with that?"

"Natural monopoly mate, weren’t you listening?"

"But people will be angry, surely?"

"It doesn’t matter. They have no power; we own the politicians and regulators; and we’ll just tell the public some bullshit about prices needing to go up to pay for much-needed infrastructure improvements".

"The infrastructure improvements that we’ve spent nearly four decades not making, in order to artificially inflate our profits, shareholder dividends, and executive salaries?"

"Exactly, now you’re getting it!" [Friendly pat on the shoulder]

"So what’s my job?"

"First I want you to dig some dirt on any of the Labour lefties that our lad Starmer hasn’t purged from the party yet. We can’t have them demanding water renationalisation, it’s a dangerously popular idea, and it needs to be stopped."

"What else?"

"Could you come up with some bullshit statement about how we need to raise water bills by 30% this year in order to pay for 'infrastructure upgrades'? Put some greenwash in there too, about the importance of protecting the environment."

"Sure thing boss. I think I’m going to like working here!"