Member-only story
The Extraordinary Failure of Thames Water shows What Privatization Will Do To Our Beloved NHS
Read on….
Again, Milton Friedman is in the dock.
This time alongside Frederick Hayek, Margaret Thatcher and the leading Conservatives from the 1970s and 80s.
Back then we were told that government was the problem with its myriad responsibilities and smaller states with the deregulation of its public services, devaluation of the currency was the solution.
Britain’s first female prime minister took heed of the dangerous ideas of these destructive economists and sought to implement everything they said to the letter.
And what followed was the privatization of the commanding heights of the British industry: telecommunications, electricity, energy, railways and of course, water.
Thames Water is the subject of this article and with good reason too.
At the time Thatcher made the decision to sell Thames Water to the highest bidder in 1989, the winning company did not have to grapple with any historical debt as the Conservative government took the unprecedented step of giving the new owners of Britain’s biggest company a new slate.
And what’s happened since?