The great British public keeps being forced to bail out our incompetent political class

Telegraph

23-07-2025

To the surprise of nobody, our water industry has been found wanting. An ineffective regulator allowed self-serving companies to enrich shareholders and directors at the expense of the public interest for decades.
Instead of investing in our creaking Victorian infrastructure, water companies were saddled with debt by their private owners to pay out dividends.
Billions of pounds were funnelled from Thames Water alone, funded largely through then-owner, Macquarie, which more than tripled the utility provider's debt burden to £10.8bn in just 11 years.
Most recently, the firm paid 21 senior staff £2.5m in bonuses in April as a reward for taking on an eye-watering loan, partly to plug the gaps of said wealth extraction.
Thames Water is not alone in this. Over the past decade, more than £112m has been paid in bonuses to senior staff at water utility firms, despite their consistent failures as either public good or private enterprise.
These businesses dumped raw sewage into the nation's waterways for 3.6 million hours in 2024 because their ancient systems, left unimproved for decades, are overwhelmed by modern requirements.
But of course it is we, the British public, who are being charged for cleaning up someone else's mess yet again.
The eternal mugs, and doormats for the incompetent, we will be saddled with a hefty increase in our water bills to fund the ever-worsening services we enjoy. Don't forget, this comes on the back of a roughly 30-50pc rise three months ago, depending on your provider.
But we can't be surprised they've taken us for fools again. This is just the latest kick in the teeth in a dense history of tooth-kicking.
If there's one thing the British public can rely upon, it's paying for the privilege of decline.
Draw an infrastructure project out of the hat, and you'll find a spiralling bill and a bumbling bunch of executives soon to be called in front of a committee hearing explaining why there's no sign of what was promised – and why they couldn't possibly return their fee.
Promised to open in 2026 for a cost of £31bn, HS2 was set to connect London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds on high speed rail. Now, it will open no earlier than 2036 for a cost of more than £100bn, and will only run from London to Birmingham. If we're lucky.
For more than triple the cost, we're set for a third of the railway to be delivered in double the time. And who'll be footing the bill? You guessed it.
Even on our current tracks, we're being taken for a ride. Rail fares rose yet again this year, but only 68pc of services depart on time.
We're finally set for a new nuclear power plant a decade from now in the form of Sizewell C at a bargain cost of just £38bn. Excellent news, but nobody mention the fact it was supposed to be operational by now for a total cost of £20bn.
Don't forget our crumbling services.
Councils continue to raise taxes while they shift our bin collections to once every three weeks. Yes, the burden of funding care costs leaves a large dent in local authority finances, but pouring £665m into an (alleged) sham can't help.
It's not just the failed investments and obscene borrowing that our local councillors are learning from the water sector. They also enjoy golden parachutes for bankrupting their organisations, and saddling us with the bill.
Not to mention how difficult it is to get a GP appointment (no wonder record numbers now use private healthcare) or an NHS dentist, find a local school or have the police investigate a burglary.
At some point, the gravy train of incompetence will come to a juddering halt. Whether that's because we start to hold those responsible to account or simply run out of money to burn in its engines is anybody's guess.