England’s privatised water: profits over people and planet

There is little doubt that Margaret Thatcher, former UK prime minister, left an indelible and longlasting mark on the UK. She is remembered as much for her efforts to crush the labour unions as for her drive to deregulate and privatise the economy. Having initially starved England and Wales’ regional state owned water and sewerage utilities of much needed public investment to upgrade the infrastructure, her government privatised these in 1989.For the previous century, water had been treated not as a commodity but as a prerequisite for public health. This is, after all, the country in which John Snow traced the origins of a deadly cholera outbreak in 1850s London to a single water pump in Soho by using ground breaking research that linked the disease to unsanitary water. Only a few decades later, self-made businessman turned politician Joseph Chamberlain argued in relation to control over water and sewerage that,…
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