[hnhg]

Short answer is that the UK gave private companies to extract as much wealth as possible with minimal re-investment in infrastructure. The nation has since seen water rationing and raw sewage being pumped into rivers and beaches, but at least some shareholders have benefited, right?

[psd1]

Well tbf, there is a regulator and there are price controls. They've been given license to extract wealth, but not as much as possible.

I do share your bitterness. Free-market fundamentalists have flogged assets for years, and the cost to the citizens is some future government's problem.

[alt227]

A regulator so weak that they have not been able to enforce pretty much anything, and are about to be systematically decontructed and replaced

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ofwat-to-be-abolished-in-...

[jaccola]

> there is a regulator and there are price controls

> Free-market fundamentalists have flogged assets for years

Maybe the problem isn't the free market (since one does not in any way exist in this case) but government interventionism.

[elAhmo]

Yes! Same with trains.

[peterfirefly]

Water meters work better than rationing.