Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

...while the ills of our privatised water industry have many authors – from
Margaret Thatcher, who put it into private hands in 1989, to the
rapacious venture capitalists, who have stripped its assets and loaded
it with debt, to the company chiefs, who have been responsible for the despoilation of our rivers,
and to successive governments, who have been complicit in weakening
regulation – Sir James Bevan, one-time head of the Environment Agency,
is, in many eyes, seen as emblematic of the failures in oversight of
privatised water companies, the personification of a system that has
failed us all.

But it’s best to begin this shocking tale here.

There are 195 countries
in the world. Some are big, some small. Some are highly developed,
others not so much. Some are rich. Some poor.

Now for the extraordinary
fact.

Guess how many of those countries have put its water industry
fully into private hands.

Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which experts and writers debate the issues that concern them about modern Britain.

“Keir Starmer may be resigning the office
of Prime Minister but his legacy of total
complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza
will follow him forever.

From political cover for war crimes and
the authoritarian suppression of peaceful
protest in Britain, to the countless
surveillance operations and arms exports
to Israel, despite clear evidence of the
mass murder of Palestinians, he has
aided and abetted one of the greatest
crimes in history."

"― Ned Boulting via King Lear; June 28, 2026 "

The steady decline of our right to protest is just one more indicator of a backsliding democracy.

“We are losing our civil liberties.”