On Friday 5 May 2016, the Thames Blue Green Economy campaign group published a devastating critique of Thames Water’s Thames Tideway Tunnel (TTT), and calls on the Government and Thames Water to halt preliminary works and to set up an Inquiry into the suspect financing and institutional arrangements behind the project.
The report, ‘The Case Against the Thames Tideway Tunnel’, sets out detailed evidence against the TTT on the following grounds:
- The TTT is not needed to maintain Tideway water quality in line with European legal standards (pages 5-7)
- The TTT is hugely expensive, with construction costs alone estimated at £4.2 billion (2011 prices) and there are much cheaper and more effective alternatives to cope with occasional run-off issues (pages 7-8)
- The costs of the TTT will be paid for by a new utility charge on the bills of customers across the whole of Thames Water’s region even though the Tunnel will only cope with occasional storm run-off from Inner London (pages 8-10). Over the last 5 years, Thames Water has paid no UK corporation tax. Since 2004, Thames Water has paid over £3 billion in dividends to shareholders.
- the problems of the Tunnel are so serious that bidding for the special-purpose TTT “IP”, the company, now known as Bazalgette Tunnel or Tideway, set up to actually build and operate the Tunnel for Thames Water, under license from the regulator Ofwat, is “uncompetitive” under government regulations with only two bidders; therefore breaching normal competitive tendering standards for public service contracts. HM Government is having to provide guarantees to investors and lenders in an attempt to get the funding committed and the Tunnel built (pages 10-13)
- Thames Water, the Tunnel developer, is owned and controlled by shareholders in a tax-haven (Luxembourg), including a Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund (majority), BT Pension Fund, and the Abu Dhabi and Chinese Sovereign Wealth Funds. These shareholders have also allowed Tames Water to raise £5 billion of the company’s £10 billion debt via a Cayman Islands company, TWU Cayman Finance Limited. Given the extraordinary secrecy surrounding such tax havens, there is no way of knowing whether this money has come from drug-money laundering, terrorist or other criminal sources (pages 13…)
Lord Berkeley, a long-time opponent of the Thames Tideway Tunnel, said:
“There is no need for the Government to allow this project to continue. It will cause some 12 million customers and their grandchildren having to pay for something that is no longer necessary, just to line the pockets of dodgy offshore financial institutions and, when these fail, for the taxpayer to pick up the £4 billion bill.”
Report and other documents on:
http://www.bluegreenuk.com/freewater/tbge.html
As a Thames Water customer in Oxfordshire, I certainly resent paying for this. Either it should be paid for by people who directly benefit in London, or if it is considered of national importance, it should be paid for by everyone through taxation. Just because I happen to live within the boundaries served by this particular monopoly provider, why should I have to pay for it? Roll on the day when domestic customers can change water supplier. At the moment, we have the worst of both worlds: private utilities who have a monopoly.
I wrote to my MP with this very complaint a few years ago. I received a reply from someone high up at Thames Water who said it actually costs them more to serve Oxfordshire because it is a rural area, and they have to provide water to farms, etc. Great, I thought, sitting in my one bedroom flat in the middle of town.
The MPs’ slippery-eel one-liner is “We have no jurisdiction over Local Government …” [incidentally, did you know that your MP has no “duty” to respond to any communication from you ?]
Nor does your MP have “…any jurisdiction nor influence over Utilities and Companies,
including such “charities” as a local Housing Associations Hall Management opportunist,
just one lone lower-manager of which can falsely and in itself “anti-socially” “frame” any individual
(especially such a disabled and impaired elderly one as yours truly here)
e.g. for standing up peacefully and normally in favour of “Egalitarianly Cooperative and BodyMindful Holistic living and Health-building initiation and practice in the Village Hall;
“Aggressive anti-social-behaviour” was summarily registered upon that protagonist, when the case was, and will for-ever remain, in fact one of pro-social-progress-assertion]
– and summarily a “ban” and registration as “anti-social” and “aggressive”
was legally imposed, “for ever”;
when the case was and remains one of pro-social “assertion”.
And that low-manager’s CEO has to blindly side with that “case-officer”;
neither of whom, nor the organisation, nor the “democratic lawmakers” whose damaging loophole it responsibly is, can be brought to redress.
No redress. “Banned from ever entering any of their premises ever again”.
Other “authorities”, such as Housing Associations, local Tenants Associations, and even politically-well-placed individuals, can get away with similar “twice blest is he whose blow’s in fust”, false-witnessings and summary “demonisations”..
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{If we took such “blanket-banning” to its letter
we would not be allowed to enter the Miles Mitchell Estate Hall, where we live, in order to vote on UK and Local Council Democratic Polling Days}.
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Surely the “root” of this blatant malfeasance is in the Constitution itself, where “No-Lose Method III Cooperative Problem Solving” is excluded.
Evidently too, the Constitution excludes from British Law the legality of “Holistic Health” as a “legal-entity”, and even several million pounds paid ‘privately’ to a leading solicitor to fight essentially in the highest courts, for the legality of this one’s Health-building need and right in one’s own life,
those highest courts “would probably still not grant you that need and right; ity would shake Civilisation itself to kits very foundations” – [AgeUk via Plymouth Age Concern’s solicitor’s advice]
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Ombudsman’s constitution, legislation and regulation can not “work” either:
you have to first complain to the “malfeasant offender” by successfully completing their one-way appointed “correct complaint form”
[not the UK Judiciary’s; nor even your own personal sworn statement]
correct complaint form(s),
which is nothing short of another ‘kangaroo-court-monopoly’ legally-issued
under the Power of the British Establishment, Constitution, and Judiciary, by that “offender”.
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Isn’t that part of the British State, and aren’t all such “false-witnessing” individuals,
in real effect “persona non grata” to the ordinary loyal but ‘victimised’ British citizen ?
So many of our “Peoples’ Representatives” and “Experts”, are jamming-up the access-channels in both Parliamentary Houses;
and in the Executive Civil Services are not even having their computers and doors open to the needy public.
What in Heaven’s name are they wasting our hard-earned Taxes on,
to the tune of so many multiple-human-livings each civil-servant and parliamentarian draw,
and are constitutionally-“awarded” [qua “paid” having “”earned””]
out of both the Common Money Purse and the Environmental Lifesupports both at large and in the Marketplaces ?
Surely it is they who are “driving” rogues needing unmasking ?
as well as the super-billionaire-o-crats
hiding away on offshore islands and in floating-luxury private-yachts, sculling from foreign shore to foreign shore all around the world,
“seceding” from the National and Widely-Social Life and Realities”
– and effectively “banning” criticism and moves to improve,
by causing the British Establishment and JMudiciary (e.g. Virgin Television) to “ban” such critiques as from RT News “Stacey Herbert & Max Keiser Report”;
and to ‘lean-heavily against’ efforts by loyal British citizens (such as MilesJSD) to establish Generic Holistic Health building as a Common Need and Primary Individual as well as Mutual Human Right – [see http://www.liferesh.co.uk “Basics”].
nNw we begin to see why the National Health Service can not actively deliver Holistic Living and Health building to all people [as well as they should be also to their registered unwell and patients numbers] –
it is because our Governments are “blowing away” our Taxmonies, and our own physical-mindful-and-spiritual efforts for Health, Cost-Effectivenesses, and “Sustainworthy-ing”,
on their own “career-and-=lifestyle-securities”
and on safe-super-luxuries for themselves and their overarching Trillionaire Owners,
when they are needed to be daily-scrutinising such obvious and patently evil “scams” as this “Thames Tide Tunnel” Gorgon’s head.
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Every one of “those Responsible”, and not only in this Thames matter but in all Taxes-Expenditures and People’s-burdens,
needs to be held “immediately response-able, and thereto enforced”.