The Guardian

The prime minister’s pledges to transform the country look about as rock steady as Thames Water’s balance sheets

Another busy week for Britain’s Ministry of Metaphor, as the country’s largest supplier of that luxury product “water” teeters on the brink of collapse. Thames Water has become the latest object lesson in the predictable and predicted folly of privatised monopolies, aided by a regulator that’s an even bigger wet wipe than the fatbergs bunging up the sewers. If you thought leveraged debt was bad when the Glazers did it with Manchester United, it’s possible you’ll find it even worse when water firms are holding you to a 40% bill hike if you simply want one of the essential building blocks of human life to come out of your tap. The companies have acted like cowboy builders who fleece unsuspecting customers for catastrophically poor work, and now want you to pay them huge sums again to fix it.

Back to them in a minute. For now, let’s rewind to early January this year, when the prime minister portentously unveiled his government’s five pledges. You may recall quite a lot of political experts explaining loftily that he had chosen these specific targets as they were actually not all that hard to achieve. As Rishi Sunak put it then: “Those are the people’s priorities. We will either have achieved them or not. No tricks, no ambiguity. We’re either delivering for you or we’re not.”

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

First Bornean orangutan to be born at the zoo in 20 years welcomed, with species facing extinction in the wild

An orangutan has been born at Blackpool zoo as part of efforts to save the dwindling species.

The new arrival is the first Bornean orangutan to be born at the zoo in 20 years, making him a “very special baby”, zookeepers said.

PFAS was found in seven of eight samples bought at US stores, with organic kale containing higher levels of the toxic compounds

Seven out of eight US kale samples recently tested for toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” contained high levels of the compounds.

The testing looked at conventional and organic kale bought at grocery stores across the country, and comes after Food and Drug Administration analyses conducted between 2019 and 2021 found no PFAS contamination.

Exclusive: Quadrature Climate Foundation is run by billionaires whose fund has stakes worth $170m in fossil fuel firms

Some of the world’s best-known climate campaign groups have taken millions of pounds in donations from a foundation run by billionaire hedge fund bosses whose investment fund has invested in fossil fuel companies, the Guardian has learned.

Groups including the European Climate Foundation, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have taken millions of pounds in grants over the past two years from Quadrature Climate Foundation, according to filings with the Charity Commission. WWF told the Guardian on Tuesday it would investigate the donation.

It takes just under a minute to make a single swift brick that could house generations of migratory birds. So why isn’t it compulsory to install them in the UK?

At first, it is hard to spot. A small hole in the eaves is often all that can be seen. It’s only on closer inspection that a hollow brick can be discerned, slotted neatly into a wall. Inside might be a pair of nesting swifts that have travelled thousands of miles from Africa to the UK.

At Manthorpe Building Products’ factory in Derbyshire, it takes just under a minute to produce a single swift brick that could provide a safe haven for generations of these migratory birds. Granules of recycled plastic are put into an injection moulding machine and, moments later, the separate parts of the brick come out, before a worker snaps them together.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including hungry gannets, spotted owlets and a baby mongoose

NAO report raises concerns about lack of long-term planning after take-up remained flat from 2011 to 2019

A public spending watchdog has criticised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs amid concerns about a lack of long-term planning to tackle waste and boost recycling.

A 56-page report, published by the National Audit Office (NAO), found that household recycling rates in England had stalled over the last decade.

Review of research finds particularly clear evidence that LEZs in cities reduce heart and circulatory problems

An increasing number of research studies are showing that low emission zones (LEZs) improve health.

More than 320 zones are operating across the UK, Europe and notably in Tokyo, Japan. These reduce air pollution across an area by curbing the number of highly polluting vehicles, normally older diesels. Schemes, including London’s ultra-low emission zone, can improve air quality. This should lead to improved health, but does this actually happen?

Any financial reconstruction of Thames is simple. Shareholders and bondholders are on the hook

What did Sarah Bentley, the now ex-chief executive of Thames Water, mean when she warned repeatedly in her final months in the job that England’s largest water and wastewater company had been “hollowed out over decades”?

A benign(ish) interpretation is that she was merely reprising what everybody has known for years: that Thames was rinsed by its former owners, most notably the Australian financial outfit Macquarie, which was the dominant shareholder from 2006 to 2017. That was the period in which the company’s borrowings were increased towards today’s towering level of £14bn and the regulator Ofwat was reduced, more or less, to appealing for Macquarie to get out and make way for more far-sighted owners.

Exclusive: Other summer hotspots such as Devon and Cornwall also likely to face problems, leaked minutes show

Cumbria and the Lake District are likely to be plunged into drought, minutes from the government’s National Drought Group reveal, with reservoir levels in the regions having dropped significantly.

Other popular summer holiday destinations including Devon and Cornwall are also likely to be hit by water supply problems, the group heard, and holidaymakers may be be told to curb their use.

Lesions found on 99% of southern resident orcas studied on Pacific north-west coast

Scientists studying an endangered population of orcas resident off the Pacific north-west coast of Canada and the US have recorded a “strong increase” in skin lesions on the animals’ bodies, which they believe is due to the decreasing ability of their immune systems to deal with disease.

The lesions appear on the whales as grey patches or targets, or black pin points. Some resemble tattooed skin. Their presence on the animals’ graphically black and white bodies is “increasing dramatically”, according to Dr Joseph K Gaydos of the SeaDoc Society at the school of veterinary medicine at the University of California, lead author of the scientific paper.

Companies are taking out devastating ‘civil injunctions’ against climate activists – and making them pay the costs

Apparently, it’s not enough for the police to be given powers to shut down any protest they choose. It’s not enough for peaceful protesters to face 10 years in prison for seeking to defend the living planet, or to be deprived of the right to explain their actions to a jury. Now they are also being pursued through another means altogether: the civil courts. And the penalties imposed in these cases, with or without trial, legal aid or presumption of innocence, can be much greater.

The law in England and Wales permits corporations and government bodies to create their own system of punishment. The tool it grants them is a simple one, with massive, complex and ever-ramifying consequences. It’s called the civil injunction.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Peabody yet to restore park after finishing construction work in 2020, leaving children with no green space

Families in south London are demanding that an award-winning developer reopens a park that was boarded up in 2016 for the construction of new homes.

Hatcham Gardens sits in a densely built part of Lewisham next to a school and surrounded by flats. Peabody was given permission by Lewisham council to close the park temporarily for use during construction.

Water privatisation in England and Wales has achieved just one thing: the enrichment of executives and overseas shareholders

Thames Water is on the brink of collapse, with emergency plans being drawn up to take the company into temporary public ownership. It’s an extraordinary state of affairs: how could a business with a regional monopoly over an essential service not manage to maintain a financially sustainable footing? The answer: an extractive ownership model has seen the company loaded with debt, and returns for its investors prioritised over the needs of both people and the environment. As interest rates have risen sharply over recent months, this inherently precarious business model has come under acute and seemingly fatal pressure.

The story of Thames Water is emblematic of wider failures of privatisation. Since the late 1980s, water companies in England and Wales have paid out £72bn to shareholders. To help pay for this generosity, the water companies – which were sold off without debts – have borrowed on an exceptional scale, accumulating a debt pile of £53bn.

Mathew Lawrence is director of Common Wealth and co-author of Owning the Future with Adrienne Buller

Charity Trees for Streets says dry weather has put pressure on saplings, which need about 50 litres a week

As young street trees struggle and wilt in the summer heat, people are being urged to step into action with their watering cans to help.

Hundreds of people are already looking after their local trees as part of the Watering Wednesday campaign launched by Trees for Streets, and some residents have set up rotas and allocated particular saplings to specific families.

Increase of 1C in average annual temperature connected to more than 6% rise in physical and sexual domestic violence

As deadly heatwaves sweep through cities in India, China, the US and Europe amid the climate crisis, new research has found that rising temperatures are associated with a substantial rise in domestic violence against women.

A study published in JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday found a 1C increase in average annual temperature was connected to a rise of more than 6.3% in incidents of physical and sexual domestic violence across three south Asian countries.

Protesters are taking increasingly extreme action to highlight ecological collapse – and new, more draconian laws are failing to stop them

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Brad Homewood has two jobs. His paid gig requires the 50-year-old to drive a mini-mix concrete truck around suburban Melbourne. His volunteer work has resulted in him being arrested 13 times for taking part in protests meant to disrupt an economic system driving a climate and ecological emergency.

Last week Homewood glued himself to a nine-metre metal pole erected in the middle of a road at the entrance of the Port of Melbourne’s Appleton Dock. Traffic was stopped for two hours before emergency service workers could separate him from the pole and remove him from the site.

Oil and gas companies don’t just have a seat at the Cop table: they are in charge of the table

Earlier this month, the UN announced it will require fossil fuel lobbyists to identify themselves as such when registering for the Cop28 climate summit. The move was applauded by campaigners and politicians alike, but it’s a shockingly small first step towards matching the boldness demanded by UN secretary general, António Guterres, when it comes to rooting out fossil fuel influence. In a speech earlier this month, Guterres called for the phase out of fossil fuels themselves, and said oil majors must “cease and desist influence peddling and legal threats designed to knee-cap progress.”

The UN’s move to transparently label lobbyists at Cop28 looks a lot like damage control after recent embarrassing revelations, such as there having been more oil lobbyists than any one nation’s delegation at Cop26 in Glasgow. But to actually rid Cop of fossil fuel influence, the UN has to go far beyond finally unmasking industry lobbyists; it needs to hold up a mirror to its own enabling behaviour over the years, then reverse all of it.

Campaigners condemn pollution and shortages as government and regulator discuss possible bailout

Thames Water customers have called for an urgent inquiry into the company’s finances after children became seriously unwell from swimming in the river and homes were left without water during a drought.

Campaigners have expressed astonishment that the company may be bailed out by the taxpayer after it failed to invest appropriately in infrastructure to stop sewage spills and leaks.

Plans drawn up to pay for cost of dealing with sewage crisis and climate emergency

• Contingency plans being drawn up for Thames Water collapse
• Business live – latest updates

Water companies are reportedly pushing for bills in England to rise by up to 40% under plans being drawn up to pay for the cost of dealing with the sewage crisis and the climate emergency.

The increases are due to be announced next year and could drive annual bills up from an average of £450 to £680 in parts of the country by the end of the decade, according to a Times report citing consultation documents.