Rivers of Bile

The wonders of private sector efficiency and consumer choice are again on display from Britain's moisture provision companies. Some have seen a fall in the level of complaints; but there has been an eleven per cent increase overall, thanks to entrepreneurial paragons like Anglian Water, South East Water, South West Water and our fine, honest friends Southern Water, whose new billing system brought them an increase of a hundred and fifty-five per cent. Any negative impact on shareholder dividends and executive bonuses has yet to be calculated, but is likely to range between the negligible and the infinitesimal.

The chair of the Consumer Council for Water, which produced the figures, said it was "disappointing that for the third year in a row, the rise in complaints has been heavily influenced by individual water companies introducing new billing systems that have gone wrong"; evidently, in today's competitive environment, the companies are rushing to correct their mistakes. Perhaps the number of complaints will begin to fall when consumers realise how seriously the water companies take them. The chair of the Consumer Council for Water sought to remind the companies that they "need to keep in mind that the changes they make do have an impact on consumers", assuming optimistically that the impact on consumers is not quite the least of the companies' worries. "Just because they cannot choose their water supplier, customers should not have to put up with sub-standard service," added the chair of the Consumer Council for Water, showing a remarkable degree of naïvety about the reasons for introducing private sector efficiency and consumer choice into the moisture provision industry in the first place.