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Hi ,

Boo! Happy Halloween from Thames Water!* We hope this email finds you scared. Of us. 
 

Horror! At the idea the government will do nothing about this.

Scream! With frustration that you can't even change your water supplier.

 
We at Thames are officially the worst supplier of water in England and boy, is that stiff competition. Not one of the English or Welsh water companies hit their targets for reducing sewage dumping incidents last year and eight out of nine were rated as "poor" by the Environment Agency. But Thames Water is different: we're also leaky, dirty, and begging regulators to let us get away with whatever we like until 2040. 
 
And we need to be let off from any regulation for the next 15 years because that's the only way our business model can work. You see, there basically hasn't been any enforcement of laws or regulations around water companies since privatisation. Even before this crisis began, we've been illegally dumping sewage and hiding that from regulators for decades. It doesn't matter! We've been able to happily pay ourselves billions in shareholder dividends anyway.
 
But now the billions in debt we took on has caught up with us, and we've tried everything to keep the gravy river flowing. We tried blaming customers for shortages because they keep showering and storing photos on the cloud. We've tried putting up your bills by hundreds of pounds. We've tried.... actually, it's just those two things.
 
But the trick is, you've got to let our treats continue. We're the canary in the coalmine for all privatised essentials.  Because it isn't just us at Thames Water who've failed you, it's every water company. It's every privatised utility. The public have paid £200 billion at least to shareholders in privatised industries since 2010 alone. 
 
If we get nationalised – if the government is forced to accept that our system is so broken that a business model of taking water out of the ground and selling it you for whatever price we like is unsustainable – then who knows what might be next? The whole idea of privatisation would come into question. It would be almost impossible for us to argue against common ownership of water, power, transport, housing, or communications. 
 
Don't let that happen. Support your local privatised water company. Not that you really have a choice about that.
 
*This is a joke, obviously, I'm not Thames Water. I've dumped next to no sewage in our waterways and have a little less debt.
Child poverty and the socio-economic duty

Child poverty in the UK rose faster than any other developed nation, according to Unicef analysis, driven by policies like the two-child benefit cap. At the time it was implemented in 2017, experts warned it would push hundreds of thousands of children into poverty and, sure enough, it did. 

What if governments didn't make choices like that? What if, when new governments took power, they made better ones? Maybe even had some kind of duty?

Writing for the University of Bristol's Transforming Society, our Senior Project Officer Vanessa Boon joined Lee Gregory from the University of Nottingham and Dave Beck from the University of Salford to analyse how the socio-economic duty could help authorities make better decisions around child poverty. Policies like the two-child cap, they point out, arguably breach the duty. 
Read more
 

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Weekly Poll: What should be done with your water company? 
 

Is your water supplier better or worse than the average, and what would you do with it? Plus: what would you like us to focus on in our budget campaign?

The results will be reported next week!
 
VOTE NOW

How do we get large multinational businesses to contribute their fair share to society? You said:

  • "Have more people working in HMRC. Follow Richard Murphy from taxresearch.org.uk. He planned country by country reporting."

  • "Keep Companies House records strictly up-to-date. Require auditing findings to be scrutinized more carefully. Require companies based abroad to place deposits with our government ahead of publication of Annual Reports. Insist on Annual Reports being made public in all countries to which goods or services are exported."

  • "Adequately fund and resource HMRC, with specific sections to focus on global tax havens, most of which are British territories and should be transparent and accessible."

  • "Naming and shaming isn’t working. Perhaps a day of helping ourselves to their goods. Leave IOU notes saying I will pay when you pay tax."

  • "The idea that was floated around in the 90s /00s before globalisation was that more should be forced to become co-ops. We are in charge of the earths resources and the laws - or we should be - not corporations. These human creations designed to absorb wealth up society from the many to the very few at the top cannot be allowed to destroy entire societies. We made them and we must destroy the whole concept of multi national corporations."

  • "They have circumvented national governments regulation therefore it needs a global effort to reign them in. I think companies should be taxed wherever they operate not just where their HQ is. And it should be based on turnover, not profits."
Inequality in Numbers

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In The News
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Event: Birmingham since "bankruptucy", 18 Nov

Ever since Birmingham City Council declared bankruptcy in 2023, public assets have been disposed in huge numbers, often at significant losses. The impact on Birmingham has been huge, but campaign group Save Birmingham has been able to carve out some wins with successful campaigns to give some assets to community trusts, saving them from closure. They're inviting you to join them on 18 November at Oddingley Hall, one of the saved venues, to hear about the successes they, how other community groups across Brum have reached similar wins, and what you should do if a community asset near you is at risk.  
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Inequality gets under the skin 

New research published last month from the University of York and King's College London shows that income inequality physically reshapes children's brains - and this affects both rich and poor children alike. 

MRI scans of over 10,000 children from across the United States revealed altered brain structure in more unequal areas, and this was also linked to significantly worse mental health 18 months later. 

Professor Kate Pickett, from the University of York's Department of Health Sciences and Equality Trust Patron said "Inequality creates a toxic social environment that literally shapes how young minds develop, with consequences for mental health and impacts that can last a lifetime," 
Read more 

The Equality Trust
Square Root Business Centre
Windmill Road
Croydon CR0 2XQ

+44 (0)20 3637 0324

info@equalitytrust.org.uk