It’s been raining on and off for days up ’ere in Airedale.
The giant water butt on my allotment is almost full, and puddles (remember them?) abounded. But this welcome wet doesn’t fill the empty reservoirs, especially down South where hosepipe bans come into force today.
Water company bosses have let down the public.
They fail to stem leakages of 2.4 billion litres a day, while trousering huge salaries and bonuses for running a monopoly business. They promise to halve this shocking waste – by 2050! And no sign of a grid for moving water from rainy areas to parched regions.
Tory party leadership rivals bleat about “cracking down” on the industry, but they’re the real culprits. Privatisation is their rip-off that destroyed public service in the name of private profit.
Electricity and gas were flogged off, and the cost of fuel skyrocketed, while the woefully weak regulators stand idly by and power company bosses pocket millions.
Condemned as “not fit for purpose”, the energy price cap will now surge every three months, it was announced yesterday. Whoah!
Privatised Royal Mail charges almost a quid to send a letter. The coal industry was closed by spivs who only wanted the land. British Telecom went private, and we pay through the nose for broadband and home phones.
And the railways were privatised, the biggest failure of the lot: so big that most of it is back in a cack-handed form of public ownership.
Let’s face it: Thatcher’s phoney dream of a share-owning democracy has turned into a nightmare of incompetent foreign profiteers and City slickers plundering our common wealth.
Sir Keir Starmer should stop apologising and reverse the process. And call it what it is – de-privatisation, putting right an historic wrong.
The privateers have had their day, and proved wanting. Privatisation has failed the public. A policy of taking back control of what should still be ours would be popular with voters. And I wouldn’t have to worry about having to bath in my water butt.
Rich, white unfair start
The medals table tells you everything about the Commonwealth Games.
They are an unfair, unequal contest between a minority of rich, mainly white, nations and developing countries of the former Empire.
Some 72 nations and territories are competing, but a handful – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England and Scotland – dominate the honours league. Because they have the velodromes, the pools, the hi-spec gyms and athletics facilities, the professionals and the big state budgets for sport. Poorer countries have only the open road for long-distance runners, and perhaps shark-infested seas for swimmers.
I hear there are more velodromes in Scotland (pop. five million) than in Africa (pop. 1.2 billion), and I can quite believe it.
No wonder what was once known as “the white Commonwealth” monopolises the medals. It’s a rich man’s games.
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Vain, dim Liz Truss, the strutting Thatcher doll desperate to become Tory leader, calls Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon “an attention seeker”.
Miaow! It takes one to know one.
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Council chiefs seek someone to run donkey rides on the glorious beaches of Scarborough, Filey and Whitby next summer. Sounds like the perfect post-prime ministerial role for Boris Johnson. He ran a Cabinet of donkeys for three years – until they took him for a ride.
