Pablo Martini (Geezer)@PabloMartini@climatejustice.social
Feargal Sharkey just nailed the £100bn water industry nationalisation lie
As the rivers fill with sewage, corporate shareholders fill their pockets—and the government looks the other way. A letter in the Guardian and a powerful post by campaigner Feargal Sharkey throw into sharp relief a growing public consensus: the privatised water industry is a grotesque failure, and nothing short of full public ownership via nationalisation will end this national scandal.
Feargal Sharkey responds to a “blistering” open letter
Since water was sold off to private hands in England and Wales in 1989, companies have racked up at least £64 billion in debt, paid at least £78 billion in dividends to shareholders, and chronically under-invested in vital infrastructure. The results are toxic—literally. Raw sewage is regularly discharged into rivers and seas. Leaks waste billions of litres of water annually. Bills for households have risen by 40% in real terms.
And yet, as the Guardian letter writers Prof Becky Malby, Dr Kate Bayliss, Prof Frances Cleaver, and Prof Ewan McGaughey astutely note, “the public has already paid” many times over. We have paid through inflated bills, tax subsidies, and the costs of environmental destruction. Why should we pay again to take these failed companies back into public hands?
Read on .....
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2025/08/05/feargal-sharkey-water-industry-nationalisation/