Comment on Water Boss Handed £270k Bonus Despite Parasite Outbreak

• Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I would be satisfied if I didn’t need to do research every time I want to go for a swim to see if they have filled it with sewage recently or not.

  source
• tenebrisnox@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Or that we receive a decent water supply for the incredibly high prices we pay. Five years ago I was paying £33 a month for water. I now pay £72 a month. In the last 12 months we’ve had a leak at the end of the road that wasn’t fixed, a major leak (that was), three periods of not having water and now a ban on using hose pipes and filling up paddling pools in the heat.

  You might sneer at people being fed up with this but things DO need to change and a good first step would be calling the bosses and owners of these companies to account.

  source

  • FishFace@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I don’t think it’s possible to hold bosses to account by looking at atomised things like “something bad went wrong but they got a bonus.” You need far more information than that.

    Were you representative of a typical customer of your water company, or did you get unlucky? How was the water company in the article on leaks over the relevant period - did they improve them or not? What about their prices?

    It’s important to realise that, in the UK, we have been fleeced by water companies. Note the perfect tense: have been. They already did it. We’re not being fucked, it happened in the past. The people responsible are in Australia, laughing at us. The infrastructure is now broken, and the money that was supposed to prevent it breaking is being used to buy yachts. The question now is, how are we, the people who have been fucked, going to pay for that, and how are we going to prevent it from happening again? Roughly speaking, we can:

    • nationalise the water companies. Everyone pays, through taxation; or
    • keep the water companies private. Their customers pay, through bills

    Both are hugely unpopular. What we cannot do is:

    • Get the people who fucked us to pay (because they are in Australia, and did nothing illegal at the time); or
    • Get private companies in the UK to pay out of their own pocket (because why would they).

    That is the fundamental thing, not bonuses. Not paying out bonuses won’t fix the water system. It won’t bring your bills down (not measurably, anyway), or fix leaks, or prevent sewage discharges. Bonuses should be paid out based on sensible targets being delivered, with a suitable way to deter short-term decision making (such as clawbacks). They shouldn’t be at the whim of “something went wrong and the overall system is shit, so fuck ‘em”.

    source

    • tenebrisnox@feddit.uk ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Were you representative of a typical customer of your water company, or did you get unlucky? How was the water company in the article on leaks over the relevant period - did they improve them or not? What about their prices?

      I’m not sure if you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years but I’m far from being the only one experiencing this type of service from water (and other monopolies, too). But you recognise that we’ve been “fleeced” so I guess you have some awareness.

      We need a political and economic system where people are ACCOUNTABLE. Politicians who lie or carry out policies to enrich themselves or their associates at the detriment of others or businessmen who run utility companies need to face legal and financial redress. Not only should the CEO of Southern Water (for example) lose his bonus but he shoudl be personally fined for the chronic lack of water in parts of Kent in the recent months that have adversely affected people’s lives (to the point of illness and death in the cases of the elderly people without water during an intensely hot 3 days).

      We need a return to the types of progressive tax regimes that existed between roughly 1945 and 1970 when the burden of taxation genuinely fell on the shoulders of those who could afford it. Tax the richest and use it to bring utilities back into common ownership. We don’t need CEOs on £3.3 million; we need well-paid engineers and on-the-ground hands-on managers who can run them effectively in our interests. The neoliberal koolaid has been drunk by so many that it’s hard to get most people to realise there are alternatives to targets and incentives and bonuses.

      source
    • Fluke@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      “Something went wrong” with the system they’re ultimately responsible for, the system that they’ve stripped to the bone in search of growth in a saturated naturally monopolistic market.

      Loss of bonuses should be the least of their fucking worries. -.-

      source

      • FishFace@piefed.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The headline isn’t “Susan Davy to get bonus in spite of having stripped Southwest Water to the bone and taken on massive debt to pay dividends to shareholders”. She started in 2023, after the water companies were stripped to the bone and went into massive debt for exactly that purpose.

        I think you’re mad because someone ought to pay, and so you want this person to pay, whether she was responsible for the thing you’re mad about or not. I’m mad about it too, but that’s not fair.

        source

        • -> View More Comments