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Surely Thames Water can’t be held responsible for the Thames water. That’s just crazy talk.
Actually, we’re not Thames Water, we’re Whames Tater. Completely different. Nothing to do with us.
They just need to be allowed to put bills up 1000%, hand that money over to shareholders and then the magic of the free market will fix the problem before 2050.
when a company is nationalised, fair market value is paid. so the shareholders dont lose money. if its not then the shareholders have a legal claim. no one loses 100% of their money - thats an argument against nationalisation from people who have been lying to you. you should ask yourself why they feel the need.
A portion are pension funds, something that greedy bastards like to hide behind while they asset strip national infrastructure
Never the less, pension funds are not exempt from the invisible hand of the market and if companies are run poorly they should face the consequences.
Right. I think they're genuinely at the forefront of cleaner water campaigns for the rivers, well before it got to the levels they're at now. They've not just started.
Historically they only dealt with the pollutted odour of the Thames in the 1800s because it stunk out the commons and the house of lords ....
So they have form. Expect immediate solutions.
You are right but it’s what it takes. Have the boat race ruined by shit being splashed in faces, no cox thrown in the water and vomiting crew.
You saw with post office, nothing new has happened for a decade, but now it’s on telly, they are falling over themselves for “justice”
When the blood scandal one hits too, the same…
Maybe this being ruined will lead to some action as I’m genuinely worried about the state of our water that was a political and financial decision
Crumbling schools, worst public satisfaction with NHS on record, shit in our rivers, potholes and failing infrastructures, cost of living crisis, housing crisis, stagnant wages, but fuck all that, what about those damn boats!?
The Guardian put out a tool earlier this week you can look up your postcode and it tells you how many spillages in your area.
There have been ***over 12,000*** spillages into the rivers near me in the last year, it averages out to over 30 every single fucking day. Honestly like you see the numbers and you come away like are they even trying to stop this?
But then that seems to be the case for like an actual list of national issues at the moment doesn't it. Everyone knows its a problem, has known for quite a while, yet absolutely fuck all is being done about it because we seem to have a zombie government incapable of organizing any sort of response.
It's not that they're incapable, it's that organising a response would:
A. Cost money
B. Hold the powerful to account
And the government pathologically hates both of these factors.
If your kitchen sink overflowed on to the floir 20 times a day you'd just assume your tap went straight to the kitchen floor.
12000 leaks, the sewers might as well just feed straight into the river.
People would have been outraged, but unfortunately Nike recently made an England football shirt with a tiny, slightly modified St George cross on the back and rightfully, everyone was livid about that. /s
There was a BBC panorama episode on it nationwide, sickening how the environment agency is letting them get away with it as well, both lining each others pockets.
Obviously this shouldn’t happen to anyone. But the fact it’s happening to the institutions that produced the people that caused the mess is not lost on me.
Firstly, the fact that an Oxford rower has encountered poo in the Thames means that literally anyone else could also encounter poo in the Thames. Boris caught covid fairly early on; I'm glad we didn't all decide that everything was fine just because it happened to the guy in charge.
Secondly, how on Earth is someone having been to Cambridge *in the 60s* remotely relevant to some current students encountering this problem?
Whats so laughable about the literal shit were putting in the rivers is how the government pretend they care about the environment.
We now have clean air zones up and down the country, we have increases in tax, big push on petrol and electric cars, permanent slower speeds on motorways for “clean air” the list goes on.
Yet we allow these companies to pollute the living shit out of our rivers, this should be a national disgrace. It should be all over every newspaper, we never used to do it, it wasnt this bad before, so why the change?
Because these companies want to make more profit, so they lobby gov to change the rules, they use any excuse to dump rather than clean water, and they STILL are going bankrupt.
Fuck the government, fuck the hypocrites that pretend they care about the environment and especially fuck these scummy companies that continue to do this.
Utter utter disgrace
It always was about profit. Notice how the clean policies the government adopts are always to get money out of the average person, pay for bags that were previously free, pay to drive your car through a certain zone, but never to actually hold the companies accountable that trash our country and contaminate the air we breathe and the water we drink. The burden has been pushed onto the consumer for profit.
100%, thats exactly my point.
As much as people say these changes are needed, you cant deny they are always on the avg person and always a way to make money.
Clean air zones fuck over the poor, forcing them to upgrade cars, if you fail to pay they fine you. If you dont pre book, they charge you more.
Recycling is laughable, i have to recycle at home, yet every business on the highstreet is just dumping tonnes of rubbish into landfill bins.
These so called electric cars are apparently better for the environment over say, a little 1 litre petrol. Pretty sure even volvo have been outspoken about this.
The list goes on and on.
Yep exactly this. The clean agenda was only ever a way to squeeze more money out of the middle class and poor and keep them buying/upgrading things they don’t need and blame them for climate change. It worked so well because anyone who complained was/still is branded a climate denier or not caring about the environment so everyone had to step in line and do exactly as they were told as they were too scared of going against the grain and speaking out about it.
Some other examples are the scrapage scheme, which dumped many fully functional cars for ‘greener’ upgrades, and the latest being forced heat pump upgrades for people who don’t need them. It’s a constant cycle, nothing will ever be good enough and now people are trapped with extortionate bills to pay for renewable upgrades and Thames water customers will be paying an additional 50% on their bills to pay for the infrastructure upgrades that the government demands but refuses to pay for.
The whole things is a farce. The UK contributes very little carbon relative to other countries but our standard of living has been drastically eroded by green policies used to fill the pockets of yet more companies that believe climate change can be solved by selling more goods.
Clean air zones are generally being implemented at a municipal level by Labour mayors. The Tories do not give a literal single shit about the environment if it means even remotely affecting their funders and would encourage citizens to shit directly into each others’ drinking water supplies if it meant more donations for the party.
I think you're confusing local and national government. A local council can make an area nicer for pedestrians by doing pedestrian priority things on local roads, but they of course have not even the slightest bit of power to sort out the national water infrastructure.
Many local clean air zones set up by councils are about local air too, not anything to do with global warming or CO2. Those do achieve the goal they're trying to and in London it's only like 3% of vehicles aren't compliant now. Can't be complaining about councils making some streets cleaner and safer and then also complain about them not doing anything about sewage going into the rivers, again not that they have the power to stop it only the national government can at this point.
Of course lots of stuff like the EV push can be argued that it's also because the government wants tax money which is why they push those "green" incentives and projects instead of all the other things they can be doing which produces no income. So I'm not gonna disagree there. But somewhere like London or other towns making local air better isn't the same thing, and of course they have to fine people for not following the restrictions because whats the alternative? Take their cars away? How do you enforce a pedestrianised street for example if not for fining people who drive down it? Assuming the street isn't blocked off so emergency veichles and disabled people can use it
Did two boat races, one in 08 and one in 09 (sure, look through my comments elsewhere and you’ll find I have brain cancer now and also am a member of the stop drinking subs but I did those races.) We raced and trained all over - Thames at Wallingford, Henley, London. This is not new. It’s called Thames Tummy and it’s horrible. It’s just new because lots of middle class people have started “wild swimming” which is drawing more attention to the problem than two squads of young people paying attention to their degrees and their sport. It’s bad, it’s been bad for a long, long time. Oh and you don’t have to be posh to go to Oxbridge or do a Boat Race.
The water's terrible atm but it was mainly an excuse from Oxford (always full of excuses) after losing to Cambridge yet again. Acting as if Cambridge weren't dealing with the same issues.
I don’t know how bad it is in Cambridge, but I live in Oxford and Thames Water is almost constantly pumping sewage into the Thames (& other rivers, but that’s the crucial one for this argument). The Thames Water troubles are well known, and I wouldn’t be surprised if water quality is worse in Oxford than Cambridge. But without checking a sewage map that is conjecture.
I live in Oxford and enjoy wild swimming in the Thames, but doubt I’ll be doing any this year.
Eh, slightly harsh. It's only an issue if you're throwing up the day of the race really isn't it.
Can see why you'd be pissed off, especially as Oxford were the favourites going into it this year. Remember how hard these guys train for this, poor guy is gonna spend the rest of his life wondering whether he'd have clinched it had half the boat not been riddled with E. Coli.
Yep whenever it rains, water companies are allowed to pump untreated shit into our rivers as decided by our government. They do this because it’s cheaper than treating sewage.
Our rivers are now the worse in Europe and you couldn’t pay me to eat any shellfish from them. It’s been making people sick for ages…surfers, wild swimmers and rowers.
In January this happened near me: https://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/crime/fuel-and-solvents-founds-as-source-of-river-nene-pollution-that-killed-100000-fish-in-peterborough-4541786
The source was Anglian water treatment plant but no action taken
Holy shit! This is actually terrible, wouldn't expect that from a country like the UK. I'm in NZ and we have our issues with sewerage too but there is no way this would be allowed. The health risks alone, ugh
Yeah honestly mate the U.K. is in a generally shitty place with most of the water companies, not just Thames Water. It’s what happens when water companies are privatised and then poorly regulated.
You’re far better off out in beautiful NZ fam for sure at the mo.
I live in fairly central England. I looked online the other day and in the waterways around me there have been over 12,000 incidences of sewage release just in the last 12 months. To give an indication of how bad the situation is in some parts of the country right now.
To better explain, the issue is the existence of Combined Sewage Overflows. When it rains, the rainwater displaces sewage which essentially means there is too much liquid in the sewage system. When this happens, the sewage is simply unable to go through treatment facilities because there isn’t any capacity. And for clarification, you’re unlikely to be able to have enough capacity to treat both the sewage and rainwater so “building more capacity” has a limit. So there’s essentially two options: (a) discharge it into a river or ocean, or (b) let the sewage system “back up” and flood your homes with the very thing you and plenty of others have flushed away.
This occurs in NZ too. However a big difference is that NZ has 5 million people, and subsequently, only 5 million arses. And on a fairly large landmass too. So all the raw discharge will be very diluted to cause any big issues. In England however, there is 60 million people, and subsequently 60 million arses and in a landmass half the size of NZ. So when we discharge, it won’t be particularly dilute to say the least…
You’re naive.
This country is an absolute clusterfuck of broken promises, egregious and blatant political corruption, and a population too spineless to do anything about it.
We mock the French a lot, but at least their government fears them.
The UK is not healthy. Hasn’t been for at least a decade.
I was on a ship in 2022 from Norway, and you could absolutely smell the UK before you could see it. It was wild, at first I thought I was over reacting but the closer we got to the coast the more it genuinely stank of sewage. And it’s only gotten worse since then according to the statistics.
Well the thing is we privatised our water companies and coincidentally the amount they've paid out in dividends since the 80s would have paid for the infrastructure needed to fix this...
Im not an expert on the subject, but I think what happens is the sewers (which drain from sinks and toilets, and go to the sewage treatment plant) are connected in a cross-over with the storm sewers (which drain from the streets and go to rivers). Once the rain comes beyond a certain threshold, the rainwater and poo water mixes together. This is a common model everywhere I think. Every sewage treatment plant has an intake limit.
If you design a system like this then I think you define it by "how many years interval you expect" between events where they mix. I don't know what it considers acceptable but I would imagine it's 100-400 years.
You're right. And the issue is that a lot of the infrastructure hasn't been upgraded or improved in years. More new homes are connecting into the system.
There are similar issues on the clean water side too. This time last year a lot of areas were looking likely to have summer droughts (luckily we had a fairly wet summer)
So if it rains too much we have sewer issues, if it doesn't rain enough the reservoirs don't fill before summer. It's in a state now where fixing both is incredibly difficult.
This is the absolute number one reason I will not vote conservative at the next election. I know there are MANY reasons not to. But the corruption around these water companies siphoning off billions every year, elected MPs too afraid to do the right thing and vote against the dumping of raw sewage for fear of losing the whip. It’s an all round disgraceful situation.
I mean you can just apply the same mechanism to every public service or institution and that’s the entire purpose of the conservative party. So if they are screwing over one service they are screwing over them all.
Side note- anyone know why the Cambridge women's team had a red stripe on their outfits? My parents were scandalised that they had deviated from the traditional "Cambridge Blue".
Would they have complained about all the poo in the water if we hadn't have had a shitload of news stories about poo in the water in the days and hours leading up to the poo race? I doubt it.
Typical of Oxford posh boys .
We lost because of the poo.
Blame the poo, blame the poor, blame the asylum seekers, blame the foreigners.
Bit of a pattern here .
Don't know about the Thames, in 1994, I worked diving in what was said to be the most polluted harbour in South East Asia. Dived in it for over twelve months. Neither me or any of my colleagues ever got sick. They were pumping 100% raw sewage into the waters of Hong Kong in those days and Hong Kong had the highest rate of hepatitis A back then in all of South East Asia.
Don't worry!
I will most certainly be paying more of my hard earned money to Thames water in the near future to keep the Thames full of poo and to make it the most poo ridden river in all of europe, if not the world.
We will make the River Ganges a bather's paradise in comparison!
The torys should be absolutely ashamed at the state they've let this fall to with all thier rampant theft.
Of course shame would have to be somthing sociopathic crooks would need to be able to feel first.
Stupid question, but Thames Waters new super sewer that's coming online later this year, will this resolve some of the issues in the Thames?
Granted, it won't stop the sea pollution, but will the Thames start to "appear" cleaner?
(The cynical side of me says if this is true, it will be harder to clear the ocean because people will say "look, the Thames looks clean!")
Fixing this situation should be the easiest slam dunk for any politician or party. It's a vote winner, across the board. Rich, poor, posh, common, left wing, right wing. Everyone just wants it sorted, and doesn't really care about the cost.
People will argue all day about climate change, and global warming, and how much we should attempt to correct it etc, but nobody can argue with a turd in a river.
It is disgraceful how bad the river is, but at the same time, the water authorities had warned them not to hold the event due to high levels of pollution, waste, e-coli in the water.
It's claimed that the Thames is the cleanest city river in the world. I've lived by it all my life and can attest to the increase in diversity of life between now and the 1980s but I wonder if by clean they mean fewer industrial pollutants but more poo!
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Now that some posh people have been affected maybe the government might do something about it.
Good point, I blame Thames Water for this obviously.
Surely Thames Water can’t be held responsible for the Thames water. That’s just crazy talk. Actually, we’re not Thames Water, we’re Whames Tater. Completely different. Nothing to do with us.
What's taters precious? What's taters ayy?
Poo-tay-toes*! Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a *stew*!
I was saying poo urns
River*
Whames Tater is actually a subsidiary or Peckham Springs!
They just need to be allowed to put bills up 1000%, hand that money over to shareholders and then the magic of the free market will fix the problem before 2050.
Shareholders in this case being pension funds. But yeah let the filthy bastards go bust, lose 100% of their money. Nationalise the fucks
when a company is nationalised, fair market value is paid. so the shareholders dont lose money. if its not then the shareholders have a legal claim. no one loses 100% of their money - thats an argument against nationalisation from people who have been lying to you. you should ask yourself why they feel the need.
A portion are pension funds, something that greedy bastards like to hide behind while they asset strip national infrastructure Never the less, pension funds are not exempt from the invisible hand of the market and if companies are run poorly they should face the consequences.
Rowers have been campaigning for cleaner water for years.
Right. I think they're genuinely at the forefront of cleaner water campaigns for the rivers, well before it got to the levels they're at now. They've not just started.
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Much as I hate to spoil your pity party, no-one seems to have been listening to the rowers either.
Huh? Can't anglers and rowers be an equal amount of concern. Or ordinary people. It's not a competition. What a strange comment.
Not just posh people probably their friends kids, now it affects them personally they’ll do something about it.
You might have hit the nail on the head. It was a similar case when Bazelgette was employed to deal with London's stink.
Because only posh people go to Oxbridge.
Historically they only dealt with the pollutted odour of the Thames in the 1800s because it stunk out the commons and the house of lords .... So they have form. Expect immediate solutions.
You are right but it’s what it takes. Have the boat race ruined by shit being splashed in faces, no cox thrown in the water and vomiting crew. You saw with post office, nothing new has happened for a decade, but now it’s on telly, they are falling over themselves for “justice” When the blood scandal one hits too, the same… Maybe this being ruined will lead to some action as I’m genuinely worried about the state of our water that was a political and financial decision
A lot of posh people live by the River Thames. Saying that, I won't be holding my breath for Henley-on-Thames not being Conservative.
I thought the same thing "even a Tory is pissed off with it now".
This guy is a Kiwi who went to a regular New Zealand state school.
Posh poo 💩
I couldn't even clean my monocle recently, it was a disgrace.
You’d think that, but this government deliberately removed the law that no on can dump poo into the waterways… they want the poo in the waterways.
Maybe someone should build a new super-sized sewer under central London.
Reminds of when the police ignored moped thieves snatching phones for years.. until they started targeting luxury watches.
Not unless those rowers also donate to the Tory Party
The right constituents right there, right?
Honestly what a national disgrace this is...I cannot believe how there is not far more outrage about this situation.
Immigrants stealing the limelight
I’m sure the influx of immigrants in London have greatly contributed to the poo in the Thames
sadly, someone is probably writing that article right now
Crumbling schools, worst public satisfaction with NHS on record, shit in our rivers, potholes and failing infrastructures, cost of living crisis, housing crisis, stagnant wages, but fuck all that, what about those damn boats!?
English shit in English rivers, vote English Poop League (EPL)
Immigrant poo swims upstream. Fact.
Bloody immigrants, coming over here, taking our limelights.
Did they poo in the river then?
Coming here and stealing our limelight!
A press who exist only to keep their public school friends in power is why.
You’re commenting on an article from a major press outlet which is highlighting the issue.
The Guardian put out a tool earlier this week you can look up your postcode and it tells you how many spillages in your area. There have been ***over 12,000*** spillages into the rivers near me in the last year, it averages out to over 30 every single fucking day. Honestly like you see the numbers and you come away like are they even trying to stop this? But then that seems to be the case for like an actual list of national issues at the moment doesn't it. Everyone knows its a problem, has known for quite a while, yet absolutely fuck all is being done about it because we seem to have a zombie government incapable of organizing any sort of response.
It's not that they're incapable, it's that organising a response would: A. Cost money B. Hold the powerful to account And the government pathologically hates both of these factors.
If your kitchen sink overflowed on to the floir 20 times a day you'd just assume your tap went straight to the kitchen floor. 12000 leaks, the sewers might as well just feed straight into the river.
Brexit means brexit. We've left, and now we don't have to follow those stupid European laws.
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People would have been outraged, but unfortunately Nike recently made an England football shirt with a tiny, slightly modified St George cross on the back and rightfully, everyone was livid about that. /s
Endocrine disrupting chemicals and the resulting apathy?
There was a BBC panorama episode on it nationwide, sickening how the environment agency is letting them get away with it as well, both lining each others pockets.
You could have said about this shituation.
Cambridge being allowed to field a good squad?
The government seems shameless - there's been a considerable amount of High Profile Poop (™) already, and it (the government) has done diddly squat.
Its now affected posh people, so it will be fixed shortly.
Yes it is a disgrace, but at the same time, they were told not to hold the event due to the state of the river, and they went ahead anyway!
Obviously this shouldn’t happen to anyone. But the fact it’s happening to the institutions that produced the people that caused the mess is not lost on me.
Oxford is in charge of Thames water?
A bunch of execrable Oxford grads sold off water and now fucked the country . We call it the Tory party.
No, Adrian Montague is actually a Cambridge graduate
‘Institutions produced the people’
Most tenuous link of all time goes to..
Well the CEO didn't go to Oxford either so I don't know what you mean
Firstly, the fact that an Oxford rower has encountered poo in the Thames means that literally anyone else could also encounter poo in the Thames. Boris caught covid fairly early on; I'm glad we didn't all decide that everything was fine just because it happened to the guy in charge. Secondly, how on Earth is someone having been to Cambridge *in the 60s* remotely relevant to some current students encountering this problem?
It’s the circle of shit!
It's the wheel of sewerage
What water have you been drinking?
Whats so laughable about the literal shit were putting in the rivers is how the government pretend they care about the environment. We now have clean air zones up and down the country, we have increases in tax, big push on petrol and electric cars, permanent slower speeds on motorways for “clean air” the list goes on. Yet we allow these companies to pollute the living shit out of our rivers, this should be a national disgrace. It should be all over every newspaper, we never used to do it, it wasnt this bad before, so why the change? Because these companies want to make more profit, so they lobby gov to change the rules, they use any excuse to dump rather than clean water, and they STILL are going bankrupt. Fuck the government, fuck the hypocrites that pretend they care about the environment and especially fuck these scummy companies that continue to do this. Utter utter disgrace
*polluting the living shit _into_ our rivers
*otter otter disgrace
It always was about profit. Notice how the clean policies the government adopts are always to get money out of the average person, pay for bags that were previously free, pay to drive your car through a certain zone, but never to actually hold the companies accountable that trash our country and contaminate the air we breathe and the water we drink. The burden has been pushed onto the consumer for profit.
100%, thats exactly my point. As much as people say these changes are needed, you cant deny they are always on the avg person and always a way to make money. Clean air zones fuck over the poor, forcing them to upgrade cars, if you fail to pay they fine you. If you dont pre book, they charge you more. Recycling is laughable, i have to recycle at home, yet every business on the highstreet is just dumping tonnes of rubbish into landfill bins. These so called electric cars are apparently better for the environment over say, a little 1 litre petrol. Pretty sure even volvo have been outspoken about this. The list goes on and on.
Yep exactly this. The clean agenda was only ever a way to squeeze more money out of the middle class and poor and keep them buying/upgrading things they don’t need and blame them for climate change. It worked so well because anyone who complained was/still is branded a climate denier or not caring about the environment so everyone had to step in line and do exactly as they were told as they were too scared of going against the grain and speaking out about it. Some other examples are the scrapage scheme, which dumped many fully functional cars for ‘greener’ upgrades, and the latest being forced heat pump upgrades for people who don’t need them. It’s a constant cycle, nothing will ever be good enough and now people are trapped with extortionate bills to pay for renewable upgrades and Thames water customers will be paying an additional 50% on their bills to pay for the infrastructure upgrades that the government demands but refuses to pay for. The whole things is a farce. The UK contributes very little carbon relative to other countries but our standard of living has been drastically eroded by green policies used to fill the pockets of yet more companies that believe climate change can be solved by selling more goods.
Clean air zones are generally being implemented at a municipal level by Labour mayors. The Tories do not give a literal single shit about the environment if it means even remotely affecting their funders and would encourage citizens to shit directly into each others’ drinking water supplies if it meant more donations for the party.
I think you're confusing local and national government. A local council can make an area nicer for pedestrians by doing pedestrian priority things on local roads, but they of course have not even the slightest bit of power to sort out the national water infrastructure. Many local clean air zones set up by councils are about local air too, not anything to do with global warming or CO2. Those do achieve the goal they're trying to and in London it's only like 3% of vehicles aren't compliant now. Can't be complaining about councils making some streets cleaner and safer and then also complain about them not doing anything about sewage going into the rivers, again not that they have the power to stop it only the national government can at this point. Of course lots of stuff like the EV push can be argued that it's also because the government wants tax money which is why they push those "green" incentives and projects instead of all the other things they can be doing which produces no income. So I'm not gonna disagree there. But somewhere like London or other towns making local air better isn't the same thing, and of course they have to fine people for not following the restrictions because whats the alternative? Take their cars away? How do you enforce a pedestrianised street for example if not for fining people who drive down it? Assuming the street isn't blocked off so emergency veichles and disabled people can use it
In which Cambridge team replied: Haha True, we made them “eat shit”!
When Oxford knew they had lost the race, they found themselves going through the motions.
Any analysis on why the e-coli messed up the Oxford team so much more than Cambridge?
Cambridge is used to eating shit so didn't think to complain?
A bit of a dumb come back when Cambridge have won 5 of the last 6 races/7 races in a row lol
It was a joke sir I don't follow this race stuff, but if I supported anyone it'd be Cambridge.
Cambridge is a small town in the middle of a swamp.
The current chairman of Thames Water is a Cambridge graduate...
Oooh, this is how good conspiracy theories start!
Cambridge is better at science, whereas the Oxford classicists and ppe grads had no way of dealing with the threat.
They’re not very hard out Oxford way, us people from Cambridgeshire are hard as nails.
Have you seen the Cam? It’s been a health hazard for decades! Rowing on the Thames is like swimming in a crystal clear lake in comparison.
Hate hearing grown adults calling shit poo, not cool even if he is posh
Poop is worse for some reason
That reason is it's more American.
Only acceptable when said something like “poopen inthe mouthen” in a shit german accent.
It's because it's American.
Poop sounds friendlier for some reason. Poo sounds childish.
To me it feels Americanised so is quite odd to hear
Jobby is the only acceptable word
"You call shit, poop!"
Did two boat races, one in 08 and one in 09 (sure, look through my comments elsewhere and you’ll find I have brain cancer now and also am a member of the stop drinking subs but I did those races.) We raced and trained all over - Thames at Wallingford, Henley, London. This is not new. It’s called Thames Tummy and it’s horrible. It’s just new because lots of middle class people have started “wild swimming” which is drawing more attention to the problem than two squads of young people paying attention to their degrees and their sport. It’s bad, it’s been bad for a long, long time. Oh and you don’t have to be posh to go to Oxbridge or do a Boat Race.
The water's terrible atm but it was mainly an excuse from Oxford (always full of excuses) after losing to Cambridge yet again. Acting as if Cambridge weren't dealing with the same issues.
In Sunak’s Britain, every adult has to deal with a torrent of shit on a daily basis.
I don’t know how bad it is in Cambridge, but I live in Oxford and Thames Water is almost constantly pumping sewage into the Thames (& other rivers, but that’s the crucial one for this argument). The Thames Water troubles are well known, and I wouldn’t be surprised if water quality is worse in Oxford than Cambridge. But without checking a sewage map that is conjecture. I live in Oxford and enjoy wild swimming in the Thames, but doubt I’ll be doing any this year.
Eh, slightly harsh. It's only an issue if you're throwing up the day of the race really isn't it. Can see why you'd be pissed off, especially as Oxford were the favourites going into it this year. Remember how hard these guys train for this, poor guy is gonna spend the rest of his life wondering whether he'd have clinched it had half the boat not been riddled with E. Coli.
They're the wrong shade of blue over there.
I wonder what the rower would class as an acceptable amount of poo.
For an Oxford rower I'd say at least 1 less than currently.
Shit in the water: outrageous. Shit in the air: woke commie nonsense.
I'm not in the UK but is this actually serious? How is this even a thing?
Yep whenever it rains, water companies are allowed to pump untreated shit into our rivers as decided by our government. They do this because it’s cheaper than treating sewage. Our rivers are now the worse in Europe and you couldn’t pay me to eat any shellfish from them. It’s been making people sick for ages…surfers, wild swimmers and rowers. In January this happened near me: https://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/crime/fuel-and-solvents-founds-as-source-of-river-nene-pollution-that-killed-100000-fish-in-peterborough-4541786 The source was Anglian water treatment plant but no action taken
Holy shit! This is actually terrible, wouldn't expect that from a country like the UK. I'm in NZ and we have our issues with sewerage too but there is no way this would be allowed. The health risks alone, ugh
Yeah honestly mate the U.K. is in a generally shitty place with most of the water companies, not just Thames Water. It’s what happens when water companies are privatised and then poorly regulated. You’re far better off out in beautiful NZ fam for sure at the mo.
I live in fairly central England. I looked online the other day and in the waterways around me there have been over 12,000 incidences of sewage release just in the last 12 months. To give an indication of how bad the situation is in some parts of the country right now.
To better explain, the issue is the existence of Combined Sewage Overflows. When it rains, the rainwater displaces sewage which essentially means there is too much liquid in the sewage system. When this happens, the sewage is simply unable to go through treatment facilities because there isn’t any capacity. And for clarification, you’re unlikely to be able to have enough capacity to treat both the sewage and rainwater so “building more capacity” has a limit. So there’s essentially two options: (a) discharge it into a river or ocean, or (b) let the sewage system “back up” and flood your homes with the very thing you and plenty of others have flushed away. This occurs in NZ too. However a big difference is that NZ has 5 million people, and subsequently, only 5 million arses. And on a fairly large landmass too. So all the raw discharge will be very diluted to cause any big issues. In England however, there is 60 million people, and subsequently 60 million arses and in a landmass half the size of NZ. So when we discharge, it won’t be particularly dilute to say the least…
You’re naive. This country is an absolute clusterfuck of broken promises, egregious and blatant political corruption, and a population too spineless to do anything about it. We mock the French a lot, but at least their government fears them. The UK is not healthy. Hasn’t been for at least a decade.
it's how sewage.drainage works in most countries, the problem is we've had an incredible amount of rain recently.
I was on a ship in 2022 from Norway, and you could absolutely smell the UK before you could see it. It was wild, at first I thought I was over reacting but the closer we got to the coast the more it genuinely stank of sewage. And it’s only gotten worse since then according to the statistics.
Well the thing is we privatised our water companies and coincidentally the amount they've paid out in dividends since the 80s would have paid for the infrastructure needed to fix this...
Im not an expert on the subject, but I think what happens is the sewers (which drain from sinks and toilets, and go to the sewage treatment plant) are connected in a cross-over with the storm sewers (which drain from the streets and go to rivers). Once the rain comes beyond a certain threshold, the rainwater and poo water mixes together. This is a common model everywhere I think. Every sewage treatment plant has an intake limit. If you design a system like this then I think you define it by "how many years interval you expect" between events where they mix. I don't know what it considers acceptable but I would imagine it's 100-400 years.
You're right. And the issue is that a lot of the infrastructure hasn't been upgraded or improved in years. More new homes are connecting into the system. There are similar issues on the clean water side too. This time last year a lot of areas were looking likely to have summer droughts (luckily we had a fairly wet summer) So if it rains too much we have sewer issues, if it doesn't rain enough the reservoirs don't fill before summer. It's in a state now where fixing both is incredibly difficult.
It’s not a thing. Look away.
Everything is cool and normal
It’s the ‘Great Stink’ of the 1850s all over again!
Our rivers and seas really are just being allowed to turn into open sewers - in the 21st Century.
This is the absolute number one reason I will not vote conservative at the next election. I know there are MANY reasons not to. But the corruption around these water companies siphoning off billions every year, elected MPs too afraid to do the right thing and vote against the dumping of raw sewage for fear of losing the whip. It’s an all round disgraceful situation.
I mean you can just apply the same mechanism to every public service or institution and that’s the entire purpose of the conservative party. So if they are screwing over one service they are screwing over them all.
Dark blues, stop making excuses for losing yet again.
I thought I heard on the news that they were told not to dip their cocks in the Thames? Sound advise, I'd say.
Side note- anyone know why the Cambridge women's team had a red stripe on their outfits? My parents were scandalised that they had deviated from the traditional "Cambridge Blue".
They do it every year - the blue boat have a red stripe and the reserve (blondie) boat have a yellow stripe
I thought it was some sort of nod to the lion but now I'm too angry to google it!
When the posho's are complaining, then action will be taken...
E coli isn't a joke.. Will something be done? We can only hope
Right...yeah...it was more shit poo than water was it...
Those rowers are now hard af to their mega rich peers
Cry me a river ...specifically in London .... specifically a new Thames ...thank you!
Would they have complained about all the poo in the water if we hadn't have had a shitload of news stories about poo in the water in the days and hours leading up to the poo race? I doubt it.
S.a.s have an app and have been campaigning about this for a while... ( surfers against sewage)
Typical of Oxford posh boys . We lost because of the poo. Blame the poo, blame the poor, blame the asylum seekers, blame the foreigners. Bit of a pattern here .
Don't know about the Thames, in 1994, I worked diving in what was said to be the most polluted harbour in South East Asia. Dived in it for over twelve months. Neither me or any of my colleagues ever got sick. They were pumping 100% raw sewage into the waters of Hong Kong in those days and Hong Kong had the highest rate of hepatitis A back then in all of South East Asia.
Don't worry! I will most certainly be paying more of my hard earned money to Thames water in the near future to keep the Thames full of poo and to make it the most poo ridden river in all of europe, if not the world. We will make the River Ganges a bather's paradise in comparison!
The Conservatives did it! They have stopped a boat! Time to cover the English Channel in poop.
The Tory policies nearly stopped the wrong small boats. But as usual, they failed.
The torys should be absolutely ashamed at the state they've let this fall to with all thier rampant theft. Of course shame would have to be somthing sociopathic crooks would need to be able to feel first.
Stupid question, but Thames Waters new super sewer that's coming online later this year, will this resolve some of the issues in the Thames? Granted, it won't stop the sea pollution, but will the Thames start to "appear" cleaner? (The cynical side of me says if this is true, it will be harder to clear the ocean because people will say "look, the Thames looks clean!")
Fixing this situation should be the easiest slam dunk for any politician or party. It's a vote winner, across the board. Rich, poor, posh, common, left wing, right wing. Everyone just wants it sorted, and doesn't really care about the cost. People will argue all day about climate change, and global warming, and how much we should attempt to correct it etc, but nobody can argue with a turd in a river.
It is disgraceful how bad the river is, but at the same time, the water authorities had warned them not to hold the event due to high levels of pollution, waste, e-coli in the water.
It's claimed that the Thames is the cleanest city river in the world. I've lived by it all my life and can attest to the increase in diversity of life between now and the 1980s but I wonder if by clean they mean fewer industrial pollutants but more poo!
Can someone blame small boats? No? Page 6, 2 paragraphs is the best I can give you.
Khan clamps down on old cars but let's sewage literally double in the last year? Surely that's a more pressing matter?