Water companies, who have paid out £57bn in share dividends since 1989, have claimed it’s too expensive to fix or modernise the infrastructure in their networks, but it’s clear they’ve banked taking the fines, if they’re issued at all, into their business model. Southern Water was fined £90 million in July 2021 for consistently discharging sewage, with the judge noting that “history shows that fines of hundreds of thousands or low millions of pounds have not had any effect on the defendant’s offending behaviour”.
信用:Zoe Strapp
图:底色的Feargal Sharkey(背面,右)是一条干净的河流拥护者
在大流行期间,创纪录的人数开始定期进入大海,无论是在冲浪,游泳还是其他水上运动,就意识到,正如冲浪者所知道的那样,蓝色健康剂量对我们的身心健康真是太神奇了。A whole new cohort have seen how essential it is to protect these environments for people and planet, and there’s been a groundswell of moral outrage at the behaviour of water companies, with surfers from SAS linking up with groups of sea swimmers, and even some unlikely celebrity allies including the former Undertones frontman turned clean river advocate Feargal Sharkey and Deborah Meaden of Dragon’s Den fame, to pressure the government to do more.
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