In 2024, water companies in England dumped raw, untreated sewage into rivers and coastal waters for 4.7 million hours. One discharge event every thirty seconds. And the companies responsible have paid out £78 billion in dividends to shareholders since privatisation while accumulating £64 billion in debt.
In this second episode of Restoring Britain's Health, Anwer Jan examines the corporate extraction model that has turned Britain's waterways into an open sewer, and the regulatory framework that has allowed it to happen unchallenged for thirty-five years.
This episode covers:
The privatisation scandal: debt-free utilities handed to overseas investors who borrowed billions, paid billions more in dividends, and now want your bills to rise 36% to fix the infrastructure they neglected
The pharmaceutical cocktail in your rivers: antidepressants, antibiotics, hormones and painkillers that treatment plants were never designed to remove
Forever chemicals: why Britain's PFAS limits are twenty-five times more lenient than America's for the same carcinogenic compounds
The ecological collapse: zero English water bodies at good chemical status, and a government target of 2050 to fix it
What Scotland, Austria, the Netherlands and France have done differently, and why Britain refuses to follow
Every claim is sourced from peer-reviewed research, government data, and official regulatory reports.
Citations and references can be found here: https://x.com/theanwerjan/status/2028522193961857147
Music by William Howarth