Please go and get yourself a copy of the latest Spring issue No 27 of the DISSENT Magazine. Available at Newsagents and some booksellers.

And read Ken Davidson’s article on the huge influence the multinational companies exert to “block moves to make water a basic human right”.

” Almost twenty years of documented cases of the failure of privatisation and the growing opposition to the World Bank and the water service companies in evry corner of the globe have revealed a legacy of corruption, sky-high water rates, cut offs of water to millions, reduced water quality, nepotism, pollution, worker layoffs.” Maude Barlow, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, Black Inc. 2008

“As Barlow makes plain, there is an innate preference by the operators of privatised water for high technology solutions where the economic ‘rents’ from investment can be more readily captured by the international cartel which is rapidly gaining a stranglehold on the industry, compared with the often small-scale, low-tech, environmentally-sensitive solutions to delivering potable water to households on a equitable basis.
This may help to explain why there are 7 desalination plants being built in mainland capitals and the Gold Coast. These plants will cost $8.7 billion according to the