Murky Water - (Manchester Capitalism) by Luca Calafati & Julie Froud & Colin Haslam & Sukhdev Johal & Karel Williams

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of our most vital resource.

Our water system is a mess. Rising bills and rivers full of sewage grab the headlines, but the greater threat is climate crisis, bringing increased drought and flooding.

This book exposes the many problems with our unsustainable water system. Unfair charges limit spending on infrastructure, while financial extraction has turned the water companies into debt-burdened zombies in an increasingly fragmented system.

Reforming regulation and tinkering with tariffs will not be enough, and public ownership is just the first step. Murky water shows that the system can only be made sustainable through a radical overhaul of how it is owned, managed, funded and planned. We need a new kind of water management, with national and catchment planning and coordinated action by landowners, local authorities and water companies.

Westminster and Whitehall currently stand in the way. To overcome their resistance and secure a sustainable future, we must ignite a social movement capable of challenging power.

From the Back Cover

Our water system is a mess. Rising bills and rivers full of sewage grab the headlines, but the greater threat is climate crisis, bringing increased drought and flooding.

This book exposes the many problems with our unsustainable water system. Unfair charges limit spending on infrastructure, while financial extraction has turned the water companies into debt-burdened zombies in an increasingly fragmented system.

Reforming regulation and tinkering with tariffs will not be enough, and public ownership is just the first step. Murky water shows that the system can only be made sustainable through a radical overhaul of how it is owned, managed, funded and planned. We need a new kind of water management, with national and catchment planning and coordinated action by landowners, local authorities and water companies.

Westminster and Whitehall currently stand in the way. To overcome their resistance and secure a sustainable future, we must ignite a social movement capable of challenging power.

Review Quotes

'Murky water is a rigorously researched and well-argued book that cuts through the mire and offers clear and practicable solutions to the water crisis in the UK. It recognises that Westminster politicians will not tackle the crisis effectively unless pressured by us as citizens organised into a social movement for water reform.'
Grace Blakeley, author Vulture Capitalism

'Murky water is a singular achievement that brings a radically new approach to bear on the provision of basic services. This fascinating, rich study disposes of the mythology that our water and sewage systems are Victorian leftovers, showing that they essentially date from the long post-war boom. The failure to invest since then is not just the result of extractivism and compromised regulation but of the very system of charging for water, which weighs too heavily on the poor and too lightly on the rich. If we are to live better we need to attend to the necessities of life in new ways suggested by this vitally important book.'
David Edgerton, author of The Rise and Fall of the British Nation

'Too often the economic and the social are treated as separate domains and dealt with in separate analyses. Murky water is a book that innovatively brings together what's gone wrong economically in privatised water and shows how we can fix it socially if we mobilise for change.'
Hilary Cottam, author of The Work We Need

'A serious attempt to grapple with the issues not only of ownership but of accountability for performance and equity in terms of the price of water. Too often on the left there is an automatic, almost kneejerk assumption that public ownership is desirable without a serious consideration of the difficult issues of effective governance and accountability, the source of the considerable required investment and the pricing of water for users.'
Andrew Davies, formerly Minister for Economic Development, Welsh Government

About the Author

Luca Calafati is an independent researcher and social entrepreneur
Julie Froud is Professor of Financial Innovation at Alliance Manchester Business School
Colin Haslam is Emeritus Professor of Accounting and Finance at Queen Mary, University of London
Sukhdev Johal is Chair in Accounting and Strategy at Queen Mary, University of London
Karel Williams is Director of Foundational Alliance Wales