MAKE THE WATER BOSSES PAY FOR POLLUTING OUR RIVERS AND STREAMS... NOT THE CUSTOMERS

WE HAVE a new Environment Secretary. How did it slip my mind? Anyway, his name is Ranil Jayawardena and, just in the job, he has become quite rightly incensed by the sewage being channelled by some water authorities into our once pure rivers and streams. So he is going to raise the top fines for this to £250million from their present upper limit of £250,000 – per incident. That’s a thousand-fold increase. Fine, Mr J., but a word of caution.

Whacking a fat fine on to a public facility simply means that the fat cats at the top, responsible through negligence for the offence, simply pass it straight on to the customers or taxpayers, or whoever. That means the product gets less, or service diminishes, or the taxpayer forks out to meet the fine he didn’t incur. The lard bellies just award themselves bigger salaries, bonuses and pension pots. That’s always how it works. The only fair recourse is to target the guilty very personally.

The eco-vandals turning our trout streams into sewers of slime simply don’t care or they wouldn’t do it. They only start to care – and care very much – when the corporate fine is to be met only by the return of their last bonus.

Suddenly it becomes really worthwhile to use the sewerage plants to purify the slime and return only pure, treated water to the streams.

Will it happen? Almost certainly not. His ministry is actually run by bureaucrats and the paper-shufflers protect each other. In that world the idle oaf running the water board could, after a reshuffle, become your boss.You don’t want to antagonise him – and you may meet him on the golf course.