Greedy water execs’ bonus scheme worth MILLIONS is outrageous – they’re filling pockets while pumping rivers with s**t
THIS week I have mostly been barking at my kids and demanding they use less water.
I have suggested that perhaps they don’t need to fill the bath so full that it overflows and rains down on the kitchen table below.
And I have informed them that four minutes is the perfect amount of time to stand under a running shower and pretend you have washed your hair when all you’ve actually done is stare at the mirror and pick your nose.
I eagerly await their compliance as the matter is urgent.
And not because Britain is in the grip of its driest spring for 69 years (one that has forced my hometown of Chesterfield to cease offering cruises on the canal).
No, my domestic demands are driven by far more selfish concerns: The arrival of my new bill from Thames Water insisting I now pay £84 a month.
That’s a punishing increase of £14 on the daylight robbery this useless firm was already subjecting me to 12 times a year.
Just to put you in the picture, I live in a small terraced house with a minuscule garden that I stopped using the sprinkler on about three years ago, when my water meter was installed.
Thames Water has tried to explain why my bill has shot up, pointing to factors including inflation and the new price hikes agreed with regulator Ofwat.
It also, of course, has to stem all the leaks and work out how to stop pumping our rivers full of s**t. But this week I learned the real reason Thames Water is fleecing me and its 16million customers (who of course have no choice about who supplies our water).
Its chairman revealed it is set to pay out “very substantial bonuses” to its execs, with many in line for a cash handout of 50 per cent of their already hyper-inflated salaries.
They include boss Chris Weston who was parachuted into the broken business in January 2024 and has already been handed a £195,000 bonus after just THREE MONTHS’ work.
His total package is an incredible £2.3million a year, which he reckons he’s worth every penny of, despite saying this week: “I’m very sorry about the service some people receive.”
Thames Water chairman Sir Adrian Montague — an investment banker who probably has a shed bigger than my entire house — told MPs this week that he had to pay ludicrous bonuses to prevent his top team being poached.
“We have a bonus scheme to protect our most precious resource, which is the senior management team . . . we need this team to stay,” he insisted to the cross-party Environment Select Committee.
A more tone-deaf description of bloated fat cats you will struggle to find. When I think of “precious resources” I tend to think about things like, you know, water.
Adding salt to the wounds, Sir Adrian went on to declare that these payments would be made from the £3billion LOAN Thames recently received.
That will be the creditor loan it desperately needed after making such a hash of the business that it piled on nearly £20billion in debt and was in danger of going bust.
This loan and its extortionate interest rate — 9.75 per cent since you ask — is being paid for by mugs like you and me.
Ordinary people who just want to turn on the tap without being clobbered by greedy executives who have shown time and time again that they are the problem and not the solution.
The Government insists the use of our money on bonuses for bad management will stop now the new Water (Special Measures) Act has come into force.
It promises a “ban on bonuses” for anyone whose firm has poorly served its customers or wrecked the environment.
But look who will be the judge and jury on that . . . Ofwat. The same pathetic regulator that oversaw the current mess. Great.
Well I have a deal for you, Ofwat.
I’ll get my family to save water by turning off the taps and you can stop this reward for failure by stemming the flood of cash going into water bosses’ pockets.
GRILLS, THRILLS ’N’ ILLS
ITV’s new show The Assembly is certainly an eye-catching format.
If you haven’t somehow been lured in by the channel’s never-ending promotion, the programme invites an audience of learning disabled and neuro-diverse folk to quiz celebrities.
The idea is to generate just enough unfiltered questions to make the subjects squirm in their seats – and maybe give honest answers for a change.
Which works well when a visibly stunned Danny Dyer was asked: “When [your wife] Jo kicked you out, she emptied your shared bank account. Do you still have a shared bank account now?”
Ouch!
But the format slipped a bit when Gary Lineker was probed by an LGBT questioner about his involvement in a World Cup hosted by a nation that hates gays.
Instead of grilling him on the one he actually broadcast from – Qatar 2022 – he was asked about Saudi Arabia 2034.
We can only wonder why that was.
Gary will be 72 then so unlikely to play much of a role in that tournament.
As such he was able to bat the question away with ease while saying – with a straight face – that he hoped the Saudis might change their mind about gays by then.
Good luck with that, Gal.
Meanwhile in another episode, Doctor Who darling David Tennant also dodged a bullet.
As the show was evidently recorded some time ago, TV’s smuggest luvvie was not asked the question currently on most people’s minds.
Namely: “So David, why was your expensive ITV quiz show, Genius Game, such a massive flop?”
THE “cocaine wrap” quickly hidden by Emmanuel Macron was so obviously a tissue.
The real question is, what on earth had the clearly embarrassed French President been using that tissue for that it needed to be whisked away so quickly?
The sex-obsessed 13-year-old me could no doubt think of one explanation . . .
STEER CLEAR, KEIR
A MARS Bar for whoever dreamed up Keir Starmer’s new catchphrase for Britain’s immigration problems, “An island of strangers”.
Because it certainly wasn’t the toolmaker’s son, whose grasp of memorable phrases can be boiled down to exactly one, that excruciating zinger: “Return of the sausages.”
No, it was probably some clever-clogs spin doctor, desperate to make Two-Tier Kier appear like he lives in the same country that we all do.
I mean, can you imagine Starmer coming out with that line at one of his fancy-pants dinner parties in liberal North London?
Not a chance.
The nearest he ever gets to such a concept is when he stumbles into Waheed Alli’s scullery as the “staff” sit around the kitchen island preparing canapés.
RUBEN AMORIM has had a tough time managing Manchester United but he’s getting some things right.
Like his decision to pay for 30 backroom staff and their families to attend Wednesday’s must-win Europa League final in Bilbao.
Some might see it as a cynical stunt by Amorim, designed to show up Reds owner Jim Ratcliffe, who banned free tickets for most staff.
So what? Anything that reminds the penny-pinching Jim who is actually putting in the real work at Old Trafford is fine with me.
NATALIE TO GIVE US CORRIE WOBBLES IN DALES MIX-UP?
CUTE idea by ITV to blend Corrie and Emmerdale for an hour-long special.
Mixing characters from both shows, it will be like a “by ’eck” version of t’Marvel universe.
But bosses will need to be careful who they feature. Like cobbles newbie Natalie Anderson.
She has just joined Corrie as Theo Silverton’s wife Danielle. But ten years ago she was on Emmerdale playing Alicia Metcalfe.
If she suddenly turns up in The Woolpack acting like someone else, punters will think they’ve had their drinks spiked.
Vindaloony!
BRITAIN’S poshest curry house, Gymkhana – in London, natch – has just introduced a new “minimum spend policy”.
Customers going for dinner now have to give credit-card details and are charged £100 PER PERSON before they even set foot in the joint.
A hundred sheets for a ruby!? It’s vindaloony!
