On social media when viewers disbelieve what they’re reading the response is to post in reply, of all the things that didn’t happen, this didn’t happen the most.’
Fifty years ago a Tory ex-prime minister described the behaviour of a company as ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism.’ When is capitalism ever acceptable?
Conservativehome, eight years ago expressed faux outrage at the idea that capitalists might take advantage, correction, more advantage, of the rest of us suckers. ‘Capitalism depends on a code of morality. When those who own or run companies enrich themselves with indecent and grotesque eagerness at the expense of their pensioners and employees, trust collapses and the whole system becomes unsustainable. ‘
https://conservativehome.com/2016/07/25/the-return-of-the-unacceptable-face-of-capitalism/
So, is Thames Water the latest in a long line of unacceptable capitalism?
From The Guardian, 28 March;’ It (Thames Water) has been lobbying the industry regulator Ofwat to increase bills by 40%, pay lower fines for breaches including sewage dumping, and to be allowed to pay out dividends. The watchdog has been examining the supplier’s business plan for 2025-2030, and Thames said Ofwat’s initial assessments made the company “uninvestible” for shareholders.’
The following is an extract from the Socialist Standard, August 2003
‘Will there be calls from the so called ‘Labour’ Party to effect immediate nationalisation? Or does the new, always was, business friendly, we can run capitalism better for you than the Tories, eschew such ‘socialist’ ideas now?
There are still some in the Labour Party and in the various left-wing organisations who claim that vast swathes of British industry should be re-nationalised. This is why many see “New” Labour as a dramatic break with “Old” Labour. Jim Mortimer (an ex-Labour Party general secretary) describes New Labour, in a recent pamphlet The Formation of the Labour Party – Lessons for Today (2000), as apologists for capitalism and the new Clause IV as “a symbolic change to mark the abandonment of Labour’s traditional advocacy of a widening area of social [state] ownership”. However, as socialists, we would prefer to see declining faith in nationalisation and the Labour Party as a positive development. The results of Labour governments are no longer clothed in the misleading garb of collectivism but show what they essentially are—managers of capitalism. Electoral imperatives, present from early in Labour’s existence, have triumphed over reforming rhetoric.'
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2023/08/has-labour-party-lost-its-way-2003.html
In a sane society, i.e. a non capitalist one, the supply of free environmentally safe water would be available for the benefit of all, not just for the production of profits and dividends.
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