Following neoliberal economic strategy has optimized for profit maxing over basic quality of life, let alone competency of building and operating complex systems. While the US is #1 in the trend, the UK is following pretty closely
That is specifically because the Tories privatised water. Historically, like most places, the vital-to-life water supply and corresponding sewage processing were owned by the public in England and Wales. People hated the idea of this being changed, but Tory doctrine says that absolutely everything should be owned by for-profit companies even though we know that can't work. So, first they forced the publicly owned companies to stop investing and then they privatised the water supply, wrote off all debt owed by the public institutions and handed the new private companies £1.5 billion because hey, if you believe in nonsense, why not?
The result was universally dismal, these private companies "leak" sewage into previously clean waterways, avoid taxes, divert as much money as possible to their off-shore owners, and of course they insist they constantly need higher and higher charges from their captive customer audience, then "oops" the money is used to pay off wealthy investors and none of the urgently needed work gets done.
I hate how the UK sewage system has failed. I agree that a good share of the blame lies with the for profit asset stripping owners. But just blaming 1980s Thatcher privatisation lets the government off the hook. The regulators (Ofwat and the Environment Agency) have watched this happen from the sidelines and failed to apply the law. Every “non exceptional” spill is a criminal offence with potential jail term, including actions of corporate conspiracy. The are 10,000s river and sea spills per year. Where is the punitive action? Why are the perps walking free? This is the soft corruption of the lobby and revolving door appointments (head of a water company one year, boss of the EA the next). Sure the only way to fix it now is (uncompensated) nationalisation, but the regulators have failed to anpply the regulations and are as much to blame.
Regulatory corruption (regulatory capture) is a understood and predicted effect of privatization. It's the class that decided to start and stay on the privatization strategy that also hold the political power to regulate more strongly.
I recall that most Tory voters in the 1980s were "sold" on the idea of privatisation (and had real horror stories in relation to eg phone line installation delays).
One of the ideas was to widen share ownership to the average bloke. Sure - that never happened (although many average pensioners maybe hold Macquarie via an investment fund).
This "class" actually, in general, are very angry about regulatory capture and we blame the class of woke bien pensant "leaders" who back scratch and go in and out of the media, the lobby, the civil service, NGOs and the privatised utilities scratching each others' backs and telling us all we are idiots. [Rory Stewart being their patron saint]
Grok is my go-to LLM for research not because I care for Elon Musk but because it's really good. I'm not even sure if I'm paying for it? I have an X Premium account but I don't know if that's giving me more Grok usage or what. Either way, its research mode is very good and frequently pulls off tasks the competitors struggle with in my experience.
The modern Trump version is: "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment." - Trump's legal defense during his first impeachment.
Clinton, being a lawyer, asked for a definition of "sex". The definition given to him did not include oral sex. When a lawyer asks you for a definition of a word, then you are getting screwed.
I agree 100%, you get paid to do your job, anything above this is charity to the shareholders/executives/managers. I work as a contractor so get paid for days I work, I've watched permanent staff who were perfect corporate bots get the boot while I stayed as I focused on the work.
Everyone always seems to assume everyone else is a corporate bot and they are the only true mercenary just working for the money.
I’ve seen so many contractors who think they’re so smart for being contractors and not loyal to any kind of company… turns out they do the same shit an employee does just gets paid 5x less, and when they’re booted no one really gives gives a shit about them. Okay…
I was a contractor for 14 years, and I kept running into people like you that didn't realize I got paid a lot MORE to come in and fix the problems that the full timers couldn't.
Reminds me of the folks I tell I work in "IT", and they think I fix printers all day.
> The point is that some people didn't realize contracting was a step up, not a step down.
What do you think is so magical about working fixed term? The pay used to be better but it's levelled out now. If the pay isn't better, then youre worse off. You're living in the past
Carrying an extra 50kg weights up a mountain seems inefficient to me, unless you mean a much lighter one or one that you can use stones you find around where you are?
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