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UK Politics: Picking Your Career


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Contingency plans being drawn up for Thames Water collapse

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Contingency plans for the collapse of Thames Water are being drawn up by the UK government and the industry watchdog amid fears that Britain’s biggest water company cannot survive because of its huge debt pile.

Ministers and the water regulator Ofwat are holding discussions about the possibility of placing Thames Water into a special administration regime (SAR) that would take the company into temporary public ownership.

In a statement to the stock market, the company said it had received an expected £500m of new funding from shareholders in March and was continuing to work constructively with them “in relation to the further equity funding expected to be required to support Thames Water’s turnaround and investment plans”.

It continued: “Ofwat is being kept fully informed on progress of the company’s turnaround and engagement with shareholders … Thames Water continues to maintain a strong liquidity position, including £4.4bn of cash and committed funding, as at 31 March.”

Thames is owned by a number of pension funds and sovereign wealth investors including the BT pension scheme, the Canadian funds Omers and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, the China Investment Corporation and the UK lecturers’ pension fund USS.

Its former owner between 2006 and 2017, the Australian bank Macquarie, was accused of asset stripping as it extracted billions in shareholder dividends while Thames’s debt soared.

The water company is struggling with a £14bn debt burden, the leakage rate from its pipes is at a five-year high and, like many of its rivals, it has been repeatedly fined over the discharge of raw sewage into rivers and missing targets on pollution and sewer flooding.

 

 

 

Edited by Spockydog
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By the by, I occasionally get Neil Oliver stuff, and ….what’s happened? Expecting some interesting historical discussion, I am unwittingly putting my foot into Conspiracy Central, with straight up monologues about how the One World Government is making us all take Vacccines which are killing us, and other such. WTF? He’s always seemed a reasonable bloke, and dealing with history, he’s often strayed into political discussion and I must have missed all the signs of impending crackpotting. Always seemed fairly reasonable, mostly grudging anti Scottish independence, which seems to be pretty standard, and I’d have put him at moderate something at worst. Is he Scotland’s Russel Brand?

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3 hours ago, James Arryn said:

By the by, I occasionally get Neil Oliver stuff, and ….what’s happened? Expecting some interesting historical discussion, I am unwittingly putting my foot into Conspiracy Central, with straight up monologues about how the One World Government is making us all take Vacccines which are killing us, and other such. WTF? He’s always seemed a reasonable bloke, and dealing with history, he’s often strayed into political discussion and I must have missed all the signs of impending crackpotting. Always seemed fairly reasonable, mostly grudging anti Scottish independence, which seems to be pretty standard, and I’d have put him at moderate something at worst. Is he Scotland’s Russel Brand?

As far as I can tell, he disappeared down a rabbit hole early on during Covid, never to be seen again.

May have been earlier, but if so, I missed it.

Edited by Which Tyler
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3 hours ago, James Arryn said:

By the by, I occasionally get Neil Oliver stuff, and ….what’s happened? Expecting some interesting historical discussion, I am unwittingly putting my foot into Conspiracy Central, with straight up monologues about how the One World Government is making us all take Vacccines which are killing us, and other such. WTF? He’s always seemed a reasonable bloke, and dealing with history, he’s often strayed into political discussion and I must have missed all the signs of impending crackpotting. Always seemed fairly reasonable, mostly grudging anti Scottish independence, which seems to be pretty standard, and I’d have put him at moderate something at worst. Is he Scotland’s Russel Brand?

He’s completely lost it.

Even his historical stuff can be controversial, particularly his commenta on the Highland Clearances

“They left their windswept crofts behind looking for adventure and the promised land”

Which woukd be like saying the Irish (and Scottish Highland) potato famine was a widespread decision to cut back on carbs.

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14 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ha ha ha! They recently received $500M from shareholders. There’s a sucker born every minute!

One of the shareholders is OMERS, who keep cutting benefits to their retirees, municipal employees in Ontario. 

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Inflation driving people into poverty, and what are the far right outraged about?

No bank wants to do business with Nigel Farage. Apparently the banks are ‘woke’ now.

 

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