The Financial Times has reported that Macquarie (also known in Britain as the Vampire Kangaroo) has told investors it was “very proud’ of its record as the owner of Thames Water – the company it sold seven years ago.

Well, it was no doubt proud of the money they made out of it – 2.7 billion pounds in dividends to Macquarie and offshore pension funds. Today the latest Thames Water owners are close to insolvency and are seeking a Government bail out with a 3 billion pound loan. But the new owners want to preserve the Macquarie culture by spending part of the bail out money on hundreds of thousands of pounds in bonuses.

The Guardian (16/5) revealed that the company’s senior managers were in line for “substantial’’ bonuses and the company claimed that the payouts were vital to retaining staff and preventing rival companies from ‘picking off’ its best employees. The Guardian reported that the Thames Chair, Sir Adrian Montague, told the House of Commons environment, food and rural affairs committee (Efra) that the managers were entitled to the money and that senior mangers were “it’s most precious resource’’.

He also said the company CEO, Mark Weston, had been paid a 195,000 pound bonus for three months work compared with bonuses of 3% to 6% for frontline workers.

One wonders why on earth rival companies would want to poach a few senior rats deserting a sinking ship with billions in debt. Although given the state of the entire UK water industry one would have to wonder about the abilities of staff at other companies and the companies’ cultures

It should also not be forgotten that the core business of Thames Water was allegedly providing clean water and handling sewage rather than financial engineering.  Yet last year Thames Water had a 40% increase in pollution while performance bonuses of 770,000 pounds were paid out.

The Guardian reported that Helena Dollimore, an Efra committee member enquiring into Thames Water, said “Thames Water’s evidence was damning and another reminder of the dire state of the water industry. Vital infrastructure work was delayed, pipes left to crumble while bosses were rewarded with huge bonuses.”

The Chair also tried to argue that potential lenders wanted the bonuses paid – indeed insisted on it. The Guardian followed this up and asked whether that was really true. The company admitted that there was a bit of a problem and there may have been some misspeaking. The Chair said: “Following the session we have been approached by The Guardian who we understand intend to write a story suggesting that we mislead in relation to the company’s management retention plan.” As for the potential buyers ‘insisting’ on the bonuses saying the comment rose from our discussions to liquidity. It was agreed that a retention plan was important in relation to retain the people best placed to deliver the improved outcomes during this current period of uncertainty and this was reflected in the term sheet we agreed with our creditors.”

Sir Adrian then had to make another admission: that he may have “misspoken when I stated that the creditors insisted on the management retention plan.”

Thames, in the last year, had a 40% increase in pollution incidents while 770,000 pounds were paid out in performance bonuses.

Almost all of England’s water companies are under criminal investigation as a ‘record’ 81 probes into environmental breaches have been launched by the Government.

The number of criminal investigations into illegal sewage spills and other breaches of environmental permits in the industry has more than doubled since last July. It is the result of a 400 per cent surge in spot checks at water company premises and rivers by the Environment Agency in the past year.

The great transformation of UK infrastructure largely took place in the 18^th and 19^th century.  While the terrible pollution problems with coal emissions continued into the 1950s much basic infrastructure was developed in major provincial cities. Clean water was then, unlike today, one of the priorities.

The rivers and beaches Thames Water and other companies are supposedly protected are now so polluted that you can’t swim in them taking our environment back more than a century.

Looking back, however, we can see that the Reagan, Thatcher, Howard years created a number of problems which transformed the society to what it is today. Deregulation lead ultimately to financial crises. Inequality increased after decades of improvement in workers’ pay. Social welfare and education were no longer government priorities.

We also created – in the Anglosphere and elsewhere – a society in which populists and demagogues managed to blame everyone except the guilty for the situation.

And meanwhile companies like Macquarie were clipping their coupons at every step of the way.