A Dusty Answer

Ofwat, Britain's eminently misreadable regulator for water profiteering, has demonstrated why closer regulation of the energy cartel would be a Bad Thing. Thames Water has put in for an eight per cent increase on its victims' bills: partly because it wants help in building a "super-sewer" to match our titan prisons and giant profits; but also because of those perennial villains, the scroungers who don't pay their bills and the Environment Agency charges which cannot be dodged by fleeing to the Cayman Islands. The regulator has politely invited Thames Water to go back to its desk and do the sums again. Of course, if anyone tried this sort of thing with Centrica and its carefree chums, we would all be squatting in the dark living on cold baked beans; and Thames Water has duly threatened to "review the decision carefully" before deciding whether there is any alternative to turning London into a dust-bowl. Meanwhile the badger-busting environment secretary, Owen Paterson, has taken the present administration's usual form of statesmanlike action, and has written to company executives with a bit of an urge.