BF2S Forums Where are all the whiny peaceful "Enlightened" European now?

Who would actually buy one of those books though?

Surely memes have exhausted them.

Dilbert_X wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Didn't you know that The Fountainhead is known for doing more good for humanity than any medical textbook?

Maybe it has.

Bruh have you even read it.

uziq wrote:

UK facing a drought in the short-term it seems.

another success story of privatisation.

The record of privatised water utilities:-

•No new water reservoirs in 30yrs+
•3.2bn litres of water lost every single day
•2bn litres of raw sewage dumped in the Thames in two days
•£72bn in dividends paid to shareholders
•Debt of £56bn
•Bills up by 40%

wow its almost like we had the same thing in australia! guess who was in government for the past 9 years.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Amazingly Britain has had droughts when water utilities were in public ownership.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Brit … _heat_wave

Curiously the unions were not able to make it rain.

droughts happen, it’s a fact of nature.

30+ years of underinvestment in infrastructure is a political choice, not an act of God. a choice to enrich private shareholders over the common good.

i’m not going to listen to a single thing you say about public utilities or the environment. you spend half your PC time on daddy’s computer investing in private energy companies. you’re a moral cripple.

once again, the public were sold on the lie that auctioning off all the energy/utility and transport networks that they paid for with their tax money over generations would ‘improve service and efficiency’ by introducing market principles.

instead a bunch of people were gifted effective monopolies and access to an endless money tap. over things which rightfully should be considered a public right.

having to ration heating and water whilst a bunch of rich tax-evading executives post bumper profits is not a good look for a developed country.

the story of privatisation of britain is an unmediated disaster. not one case study can be made for improvements or benefits seen from it for the country as a whole. the UK lags behind almost all her european peers badly on this front now. it’s embarrassing that british commuters get ripped off and dutch state-ran companies see the profits. it only suits … dividend reapers like you.

Last edited by uziq (2022-08-13 02:00:33)

https://twitter.com/jaacable/status/155 … VszqZYMD6Q

this UK zeitgeist thing is strange isn’t it?

daily mail commentators actually pushing back against the establishment’s bullshit. never thought i’d see this day.

great thread. bwahaha.
https://twitter.com/nicolakelly/status/ … GpfXLLCClQ

it’s water quality not water use. learn to read a basic graph.

the fact is every major river and waterway in the UK is highly polluted. and that’s because of lax environmental frameworks and tiny fines for the water companies.

the private companies don’t invest enough in maintenance and upkeep, which degrades water supply. the reservoirs are in a truly sorry and dilipidated state. ditto the storm tanks and overflow facilities. so, whether it’s too dry or too wet, the water supply goes to shit. that’s why the graph talks about ‘ecological state’ and not ‘population’.
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment … eaks-fixed

the private companies have been caught on numerous occasions dumping raw sewage and filth straight into our main rivers. that’s because they only get a tiny knock on the knuckles and continue with their effective monopolies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-l … 046320.amp

many things are really coming home to roost with the UK’s market privitisation theology, now that there are global-climate and exogenous stresses on the services. turns out the market isn’t this amazing miracle principle that responds to every crisis in a highly dynamic, competitive, and efficient way. after 30-40 years of chronic underinvestment and profit skimming, the cracks are starting so show, and badly.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr … led-regime

instead we are subsidising their survival and ensuring their profits. for the worst services in europe. in your googoo-gaagaa schoolteacher speak, this is a clear case of ‘failing to prepare and preparing to fail’.

all you seem to contribute to this thread is ‘boris was the best /troll’ and now ‘scotland has lower population so best water’. i sincerely suggest you cut back on the edibles.

Last edited by uziq (2022-08-16 18:22:01)

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

it’s water quality not water use. learn to read a basic graph.

all you seem to contribute to this thread is ‘boris was the best /troll’ and now ‘scotland has lower population so best water’. i sincerely suggest you cut back on the edibles.

If the population were lower its very likely the water quality would be higher.

You didn't post a graph, you posted a chart, who is stupid now?

Seems like we have a correlation



Also stop bullying Macbeth

i’m sorry but where do you get this crap from.

the population density of northern and southern ireland are comparable.  i wonder why specifically only a few counties under the UK’s private system there have shitty water? why does the greater liverpool–manchester area, one of the densest conurbations in the north, rank comparably okay for water quality compared to less populous counties near to it?

in terms of surface water quality, it's far more relevant to talk about where the major agricultural or industrial processes take place, i.e. eutrophification of rivers and bodies of water. it's farming processes and agricultural run-off that stresses rivers, normally, not population per se. if your rivers overflow with human waste and sewage every time it rains, it suggests your sewage and water networks are badly fucking out of date and in need of significant investment.

and, under the current system of private providers/networks, that is precisely what is happening. every time there is rain they are given carte blanche to basically start dumping raw sewage into the oceans. this happens all around the coast of the UK and makes vast stretches of coastline unsuitable for humans. you won't find this in 'high-density' population zones, either: it happens in devonshire and cornwall ffs.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FaHqNDGWQAE … name=large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FaWfrDbXoAU … name=large

there were 400,000 such incidents in 2020. there is literally zero market incentive for them to do anything about it – and the government, defra, etc. are in their pockets and keep shelving plans for more stringent environmental legislation.

make you think.

a graph doesn’t have to have two axes. i work in fucking academic publishing, lol, i think i know how to describe the various types of figures considering i’m processing them all day. 

why are you consistently in support of a private utilities and energy sector that has benefited no one except shareholders? oh, yeah. dilbert likes gloating over his dividends. funny that.

the water companies have taken billions in profits, year on year. any investments or liabilities they have assumed in the networks they have borrowed and leveraged heavily towards - meaning the end-consumer pays interest on them in their bills.

the same companies who have taken £50bn of profits over the years also have around … £50bn in loans for their (under)investment. you couldn’t make this shit up. privisation of public goods: it’s genius!

Last edited by uziq (2022-08-17 03:38:43)

all of your posts are trying to undermine and poke holes in a fairly simple and self-evident argument.

'the water in the UK is bad because of her population'. really now? that's it? we need to cut the population to improve our water services, then?

no. the argument is to renationalise because we are bleeding billions of £s from the national coffers every year and getting nothing in return. only deterioring services. reservoirs sold-off by the water companies to private developers for housing and development. avoidable droughts and rampant pollution.

nobody is claiming that a nationalised and public system would suddenly have the cleanest water in the world and deliverence unto a new utopia. but it would be under our control whether things get fixed or upgraded, and not at the behest of a bunch of corporate executives who are finagling ever-increasing bonuses out of an ever-worsening network.

scotland has every single bit as much heavy industry and agriculture as the rUK. are you seriously telling me the home of our north sea oil processing/the petroleum industry, the major industrial zones of glasgow, etc, plus their high population densities ... manage to have clean water because 'england has a higher population'? it seems badly insufficient, to me. let's take a look at who is actually in charge and assuming responsibility for these low-quality water networks, shall we? compared to scotland?



one way or another, we have neither the legislative nor political means to direct the future of our energy supply as we want. our most precious and basic public utilities are captured by a class of international execs and shareholders. if the british people are unhappy with their sewage-filled rivers and drought-struck counties, perhaps we should be able to respond to and direct our efforts there meaningfully. rather than bailing out and subsidising CEOs to the tunes of billions and then asking them nicely to do it ... ? the system isn't working.

i have little doubt that the cost-of-living crisis and the very real face of inequality that the current inflationary spiral is showing us is also changing political perceptions in a deep way.

this last summer has seen broad discussions, on daytime tv, about class warfare and class interests. mass mobilisations and strikes.

daily mail readers are complaining about private companies. talk about a zeitgeist change. they'd be the last people on earth you'd see complaining about bills and moaning about 'CEOs and their bonuses'. it's like logging onto Fox or Breitbart and seeing all the top comments being about socialist cooperatives and trans-rights.

two-thirds of tory voters agree in the need to (at least) 'temporarily renationalise' the networks. there are deep shifts occurring even within the notionally Thatcherite consensus on this stuff.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/ … firms-poll

it's been easy to bamboozle the british worker over the last 10 years and to misdirect the anger and deprivation, post-2008, onto 'europe' or 'immigrants' or some other bogeyman. but an ironic side-twist of electing one of the most privileged, Etonian, insider-dealing govts in recent memory to 'get brexit done' is that, now, in the wreckage and aftermath of 'brexit dun', we can see what a venal bunch of chancers they really are. first, partygate severely undermined BoJo's happy-go-lucky public image. and now this spiralling crisis is hitting people where it hits the most: their household budget.

people are slowly waking up to the deeper structural shifts and realities of the post-2008 status quo: that huge wealth transfers have been taking place from the little guy or the national budget sheet to a tiny coterie of private interests and the super-rich. every new bailout and every new 'crisis' just involves asking the workers to put up with more and more to ensure the profits and lifestyles of the very rich. in all of these discussions about 'belt-tightening' or 'making sacrifices', there's never once any concrete talk about the rich having to take a hit. people are wising up to it.

i've always said that if you want to bring workers to your political ideas, right-wing or left-wing, you can only make them notice when it starts to affect their own personal domestic budgets. all the rest is mere tabloid-rousing and half-interested voting. but these next 12 months could financially wipe out 40% of households. untold numbers of small- and medium-sized businesses who don't have the capacity to meet the new overheads. if the govt don't act on this quickly, it will be devastating for them at the polls.

Last edited by uziq (2022-08-17 04:03:54)

"tax the rich" isn't some punitive regime meant to harm the 'hard workers and risk takers'.

it's a simple fact that the top 10% most wealthy are almost universally engaged in regimes of tax avoidance and evasion. as soon as you get to a certain income bracket in the UK, it's de rigueur to hire a good financial advisor and to find as many ingenious and labyrinthine ways as possible of hiding and exempting your earnings. they are very, very good at it. it's been the name of the game since at least the yuppies 1980s hey-day.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/busi … 66211.html
Wealthiest in Britain paying just 20 per cent tax rate, new research shows

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 … t-tax-rate
More than 9,000 of the richest people in the UK collected more than £1m each in capital gains last year, exploiting a loophole that could result in them paying tax at a rate as low as 10%.

what do you think my chances are, as a humble freelancer making just above the national average salary, of finagling my tax returns so i only pay a 10% rate? as usual, the major asset-owning class can rely on the vast returns (relative to labour) on their assets to game the system and have everything exactly as they want.

the rich are taxed less than ever, at the individual and corporate level, in the West. and still we recycle these conversations about, 'wait a minute, increasing taxes on the rich? that's punishing success and innovation!' funny how our countries still innovated and produced successful people in the comparatively high-tax-burden eras up to now, isn't it?

we don't need to immiserate the poor, pitiable rich by hiking their taxes to 1950s levels. we could raise an immense amount of money by closing tax loopholes, ending non-dom status, cracking down on shell companies and tax havens, etc. we lose near to 10% of our annual tax income this way!

https://fullfact.org/economy/tax-dodging/
Richard Murphy, who runs the website Tax Research UK, estimated that the tax gap would be £122 billion in in 2014/15. HMRC currently estimates that the tax gap in that year was £33 billion.





speaking of, isn't it ... odd ... that Wessex Water are registered in the cayman islands? i don't recall king alfred having ties to the caymans.



this is the status quo that needs to change, pure and simple. spare us your rhetoric about 'hurting high-achieving individuals'. most people who can afford to throw money into shares for private utilities companies have made out on a great generational gold-rush. that was what the 1980s thatcherite fire sales were. a bunch of rich nobs getting in at the groundfloor on one of the greatest wealth transfer scams in generational history. sorry, but i don't have a lot of sympathy for your type, the 'at home day trader' who thinks they're the next rockefeller. the system isn't working for 90% of people. it needs change.

i have no left-wing revolutionary 'politics of envy', or a desire to see rich people suffer. i don't want to disincentivise success or risk-taking. that's just a red herring in these discussions. i want the rich to pay their fair share, as surely every worker does who is automatically docketed thru their PAYE salary each month does. no slimy schemes and no gaming the system; pay the amount you're due as a moral obligation to society. i don't even want to have to get into conversations about how the mega-wealth and profits of the rich are generated off the labour of their workers, said workers who effectively pay higher rates of tax. the lower- and middle-classes are expected to fess up to the tax system fairly (and inescapably): the rich do everything they can to flout it.

Last edited by uziq (2022-08-17 04:29:30)

when people say 'tax the rich' they almost always mean 'close tax loopholes and make them pay their fair share'. that's absolutely part of the programme. it's not all about arbitrarily rising % numbers ... when the fucking loopholes and systems of evasion are left intact. what would be the bloody point?

windfall taxes are another mechanism. the repeat crises since 2008, covid in particular, have seen immense amounts of wealth transfer and profiteering. britain's billionaires have literally increased their wealth triple in the last 5 years. was that based on 'risk taking and innovation', or was it based on the tendency, in our current capitalist system, for assets to accrue wealth beyond all relation to labour? make u think.

https://www.independent.co.uk/money/bil … 51327.html
While the economy shrunk at its fastest pace in three centuries, and millions of people were put on taxpayer-funded furlough, the number of billionaires jumped 24 per cent, and their combined wealth increased 22 per cent.

'tax the rich'. stop invoking sympathy for these people.

You can start with the Blairs, the Sunaks etc.

sure, you can talk about your favourite bugbears and cartoon villains. but your refusal to think in terms of structural inequality and class is a major deficiency in your analysis and way of thinking. it's not an opposition between 'evil warmonger blair' and 'hard-working, risk-taking billionaire entrepreneurs'. the whole fucking class need to be made to fess up more, relative to their takings. it's not just the obviously bent politicians who are engaged in seriously shady financial practices; it's endemic to that stratum of society. that involves your 'blameless engineering guru inventor who took risks and now deserves to be rewarded'.

Last edited by uziq (2022-08-17 04:35:32)