When people tell you that privatization of public services is a good thing, look at the UK

[Olde Hornet]

The Post office scandal

Post Office Scandal: New Law Set To Overturn Convictions

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has proposed a new law that would exonerate victims of the Post Office scandal.

time.com

The scandal saw hundreds of post office employees wrongfully accused after software showed discrepancies in the Post Office’s finances, in what the Criminal Cases Review Commission called the “most widespread miscarriage of justice the CCRC has ever seen and represents the biggest single series of wrongful convictions in British legal history.”

What is the Post Office scandal involving Horizon IT?​

Japanese tech company Fujitsu Services developed and began operating the Horizon IT financial software services for the Post Office in 1999. Employees said they reported issues with the software from the start, but claimed the Post Office brushed off their concerns or said the issues were the fault of the individual branch managers.

CCRC, which reviewed the wrongful convictions, said that “Horizon appeared to have significant bugs which could cause the system to misreport, sometimes involving substantial sums of money which sub-postmasters found difficult to challenge as they were unable to access information about the software to do so.”

As a result, between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 sub-postmasters were accused of wrongdoing, leading to prosecutions, criminal convictions and, in some cases, prison sentences, the BBC reported. Postmasters found guilty were ordered to pay the Post Office for the money they were accused of stealing, leading in some cases to bankruptcy and financial ruin. Victims and their families have reported that wrongful convictions contributed to addiction, illness and suicides.

 

[Olde Hornet]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/08/business/thames-water-uk-industry-crisis/index.html

Britain’s water industry crisis: Sewage spills, huge leaks and crushing debts​

Financial trouble at the company that supplies more than a fifth of the UK population with water has raised alarm about the dire state of an industry that delivers a resource people can’t live without.

The problems are most acute at Thames Water, London’s utility, but the wider industry across England and Wales is struggling to deliver a reliable service under the weight of huge debts built up since it was sold to private investors over 30 years ago.

The UK water sector is “clearly in a state of multiple crises,” said Dieter Helm, a professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford.


“The day job of maintaining the assets… and achieving required environmental outcomes has not been done very well, and in some cases very badly,” Helm told CNN, adding that “widespread financial engineering” to boost dividend payouts to shareholders had left the industry in a precarious position.

Sewage spills into rivers and coastal waters are routine, leakage is enormous, service is poor, and bills are high — and could go even higher starting in 2025 as mountains of debt make it hard for companies to fix those problems.

 

[Olde Hornet]

The cost to the public goes up, because companies will drain the system for money for the owners. In the UK the burden to fix problems caused by private sector that run formerly public companies is dumped on the public. The public will pay for the Post Office scandal and they are paying with higher water bills to fix the water systems. The government oversight allowed the water companies to take money out of the systems for owners and pollute the waterways without any pushback.

 

[unknown1]

That's not enough examples to prove it's worse than politicians being openly bought and sold here when it's completely legal.