Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Thu May 15, 2025 9:22 pm I find it quite entertaining now I've stopped commenting myself. There are a few people I bookmark who make most of the points I would, except better.

Same here. I don't know which is worse - the Guardian BTL or the BBC HYS. Pity the blog about the latter ceased - I used to enjoy reading that.

The Mail's just... deranged.

Why aren't they doing anything about the water companies?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... gency-loan

Ministers plan to use new powers to block bosses from Thames Water taking bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of pounds as the company fights for survival, the Guardian can reveal.

Britain’s biggest water company admitted this week that senior managers are in line for “substantial” bonuses linked to an emergency £3bn loan.

Thames claimed the payouts were vital to retain staff and prevent rival companies from “picking off” its best employees. But the disclosure provoked fury as the company has said its finances are “hair raising” and that it had come “very close to running out of money entirely” last year.

Thames is in a desperate race to raise funds and persuade the water regulator to let it off hundreds of millions of pounds of fines or risk being renationalised.

Government sources said these bonuses could be banned as soon as next month, and any paid for the last financial year, between April 2024 and April 2025, could be clawed back. The environment secretary, Steve Reed, said “the days of profiting from failure are over”.

Stephen Bush in the FT just do what Blair did.

https://www.ft.com/content/778f32cb-faf ... 6ce667d712

People at the heart of the Labour government seem to be more preoccupied about whether or not it is governing within the Labour tradition than whether it is governing well. Because frankly, the only time that Labour has been able to secure two consecutive full terms in power is when, under Tony Blair, it had a clear theory of economic growth: that of economic liberalism, openness to the world and to the EU in particular.

I don’t think it is going to come as a galloping shock to readers to learn that I think Labour should give that approach another go. But even if you disagree, Labour surely needs to commit to something — whether it is properly funding Ed Miliband’s plans for the green transition, or something else entirely. But the one place it surely should not be looking at are failed approaches from its own history, which did not work at the time and are not going to work any better now, with a less loyal electorate far less inclined to let Labour work through its midlife crisis in public.