Opinion: Protecting our green and pleasant land

Tourism will take a hit; anyone who hoped to go to the seaside this Bank Holiday weekend will find it problematic.

How did we get here? Labour proposed that water companies should be forbidden from doing precisely this, the Tories let them. Yes, we are reading and hearing all sorts of weasel words from them about how they didn’t mean this or intend this or want this. Maybe not, but then that is indicative that they didn’t comprehend the consequences.

Alternatively, perhaps they were influenced by the idea of protecting the water companies and their profits. So, what was

it? Was it incompetence? Was it mendacity?

It’s depressing to note that our own local MP, Mr. Bristow, voted in favour of letting the water companies dump sewage into our waters. He may try to say that he didn’t vote specifically for this: I am sure that if he knew at the time that there would be these consequences, he perhaps would have voted differently. But being afraid of unpopularity is not the same thing as having a moral compass.

There is a deeper lesson: not everything that is important makes a profit. The air we breathe being clean is a good example: yes, there is a long-term profit associated with having a healthy workforce, but this can be obscured by the idea of immediate gain. We have privatised our utilities; they are more concerned with short term gain than what is good or right or even foresighted.

Furthermore, the market only works in situations where there is a choice. You don’t have a choice to use water or electricity; your choice of suppliers is relatively limited. This is a situation of natural monopoly, and it has led to absurd profits in a period of penury for most.

This situation is actually bad for business: businesses are less protected from energy price rises than individuals. How many small businesses, which are the largest employer in this country, can sustain the present costs? And what happens if they go bankrupt?

Given this, you would think that the Tories would reconsider their present positions. Not really. They are looking at how they can navigate a middle course, whereby they sustain the utility companies in their profits but somehow the devastating effects of price rises are mitigated.

There will be tinkering, no wholesale change. To enact a wholesale change, however, would be an admission of error. The Tories are noticeably allergic to this.

What can we do? Labour will continue to push the government, but citizens should also do their part in writing to their MP. Popular pressure over a sustained period changed the Tories’ leader. Popular pressure may push them in more positive directions, at least until there is a General Election.

This is the real remedy: a government that need not be pushed to do the right thing but will be elected on a positive prospectus. But until then, we have to do what we can to protect our green and pleasant land.