England players were reportedly targeted with racist abuse during the match, although it is understood that no complaints have been made from the England camp.
Win against Serbia showcased familiar strengths and failings as the victors started fast then began to drop back
A sudden gust of wind whips around the Arena AufSchalke, a light drizzle has begun to fall and with 32 minutes on the clock, the match between England and Serbia is about to change course. It doesn’t feel that way in the moment. To be honest, you need to rewind the tape quite a few times to work it out. But in tight tournament games, the shifts of momentum and supremacy can be subtle, fleeting and almost invisible. And this particular shift begins with England’s man of the match, Jude Bellingham.
First, a little recap. Bellingham has deservedly put England ahead with a 13th-minute header, and with a third of the game played everything is going his way. Serbia, who can’t really defend that well, are defending deep, and thus forcing themselves to defend more. Harry Kane isn’t getting the ball at all, but as he will later explain this is essentially by design, stretching the pitch as much as he can so Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden and especially Bellingham can work their magic. The England press is hungry and organised, and even when they squander possession they invariably get it straight back.
NFU’s Hugh Broom says incident in Surrey ‘looks horrendous’ but the cow could have hurt someone
Officers who hit an escaped cow with a car “probably did the right thing at the time” even if it looks “horrendous”, a union leader and farmer has said.
A video showing a police car hitting the calf on Friday night on a residential street in Staines-upon-Thames was met with widespread outrage, including from the RSCPA which criticised the move as “disproportionate”.
Inquest opens into death of Connor MacKenzie Clark, 18, who is believed to have taken his own life
A Royal Marines major who was a member of the bearer party for the Duke of Edinburgh’s coffin has denied telling a teenage trainee who is believed to have taken his own life that he was the “worst recruit” and a “failure”.
Maj Mark Thrift also said he could not understand why a search for Connor MacKenzie Clark, whose body was found on a railway track in Devon a few metres from the training camp, was not launched when he was reported missing.
Fans waited three hours in Gelsenkirchen after victory
Uefa urged to guarantee sufficient transport for matches
The official England supporters’ group has called for an “urgent and thorough review” of the arrangements that led to thousands of fans being stranded before and after the fixture against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday night.
The Free Lions group described fans being crammed on to trams, forced to walk for miles and stranded in the city some three hours after the final whistle. It said it was “dismayed” and called on Uefa to guarantee sufficient transport arrangements to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
Children are facing a “brutal” loss of space and time for play in school, teachers, unions and academics have warned.
A combination of factors is eating into the time children spend outside, and will have serious implications for their wellbeing and mental health.
A Guardian analysis of the space available to state school children in England has revealed that thousands are attending schools with very little outside space, with government data showing that more than 300 schools have under 1,000 sq metres and at least 20 have no outside space. In nearly 1,000 schools, there is under 10 sq metres for each pupil.
New and unpublished research from the UCL Institute of Education seen by the Guardian showed a continued downward trend in the amount of time children have for playtime in the wake of the Covid lockdowns, with the youngest losing the most time.
The demands of the curriculum have increased, and continue to diminish time outside, while staffing shortages are reducing capacity to oversee playtime.
Across England and Wales schools face difficult financial decisions, which are having an impact on the funding to care for grounds. Headteachers in the state sector have said they are in desperate need of funding to improve basic facilities for children.
Authority has debts of £1.8bn after years of local government funding cuts and has failed to find an auditor
Warrington council’s inability to find an auditor to sign off its accounts has led the credit rating agency Moody’s to withdraw its monitoring of the authority, amid mounting concern about the broader crisis in local government funding.
In a statement, Warrington borough council said Moody’s Investors Service was no longer providing it with a credit rating, a crucial metric used by potential lenders to assess a borrower’s creditworthiness.
Lambeth council, which raised bills for more than 3,000 tenants on communal heat networks, has delayed crediting them for over a year
A local authority that threatened tenants with eviction if they could not afford a 350% hike in energy bills has delayed crediting them with a £1m government subsidy for more than 12 months, it has emerged.
Lambeth council is facing demands to pay compensation to residents who campaigners say have been forced into poverty by its conduct.
On the podcast today: England beat Serbia 1-0 with Jude Bellingham’s goal set up by Bukayo Saka. A win is the main thing for England, but there’s plenty to think about for Gareth Southgate.
Elsewhere in Group C, Slovenia and Denmark draw as Erik Janza’s fine finish cancels out Christian Eriksen’s opener, a magical moment three years after his cardiac arrest on the field at the last Euros.
University of Liverpool hosts Tay Day to coincide with singer’s Eras tour concerts at Anfield
It was mid-afternoon in the 600-seat lecture theatre in the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre at the University of Liverpool and the audience was deep into an analysis of sexual racism in Taylor Swift’s music videos.
At the front of the room, blown up on a giant screen, were several screenshots of the singer kissing white men in a variety of music videos, held in contrast with three images of her conspicuously not kissing her black love interests. How much of this is a product of a fundamentally racist society? What is her responsibility as a pop star to fight against society’s evils?
The Real Madrid star is a marauding matador, an all-rounder whose creative will lifted his teammates in Gelsenkirchen
With 28 minutes gone in Gelsenkirchen, Declan Rice headed a bouncing ball in the direction of Jude Bellingham, who waited and then did something extraordinary, arching his back and roundhouse‑pinging it across the pitch into the centre‑backs, with a sense in that moment of complete mastery of his craft, the day, this entire high‑stakes pursuit everyone else in here seems so anxious about.
It was the kind of pass you might attempt with a tennis ball against a classroom window, or while doing balloon keep-ups at Christmas; a pass to express the strange physical theatre of being in possession of such an excess of talent, even among the excessively talented.
Transport system failed to cope and supporters were left walking in the rain to get to England’s game against Serbia
The No 107 tram pulls up next to a racecourse just outside Gelsenkirchen and judders to a halt. We wait. And wait a little more. Five minutes become 10, and then 15. Songs and idle chat gradually turn to sighs and anxious hubbub. One England fan thinks this tram might be getting diverted back to Essen. Another thinks it might be going straight to the stadium. In fact, its final destination is Gelsenkirchen railway station, where – as one of the few passengers with working phone signal confirms – the crowds are “utter carnage”.
Which is also a pretty decent description of the tableau unfolding outside the windows. Here thousands of England fans in various states of distress and confusion, some in shirts and some not, are swarming in all directions across the pasture: some staggering, some running, some trying to clamber over the metal crash barriers in an attempt to reach the tram, some succeeding and some failing comically.
Midfielder scored only goal as England beat Serbia 1-0
Manager also pleased with ‘resilience’ as team held on
Gareth Southgate said that Jude Bellingham writes his own scripts after the midfielder’s goal ensured England began Euro 2024 with a nervy win against Serbia.
Bellingham, who rejected the negativity around the team’s performance on a tense night in Gelsenkirchen, headed in the winning goal in the 13th minute and was the best player on the pitch for long spells.
England are up and running. Again. It has been a happy feature of the Gareth Southgate years that his team always win their opening game at tournaments. It never used to be the case with England but to the list that features Tunisia, Croatia and Iran can be added the name of Serbia.
It was a nervy second half, a stark contrast to the enjoyment and expression of the first, which had been epitomised by Jude Bellingham, whose early bullet header would prove decisive. England dropped deep, stirring a few uncomfortable memories but trusting their ability to hold an extremely physical Serbia at bay.
A handful of schools, the Guardian’s analysis has found, have campuses that stretch over hundreds of acres. So what, exactly, do the 10 largest schools (by area) offer their lucky students?, and how do they go about sharing their grounds with other children?
Damian Clarke returns: “I was in Lisbon in 2004, staying in a mate’s flat. Afternoon the penalty finish, I had maybe three hours of his neighbours throwing things at the windows, singing, dancing, and shouting ‘English aaah!’.”
Glorious, i trust you joined it? I’d not class myself as an England fan – my two last trips to Wembley internationals have been in the away end – but I was in Tarabin, Egypt at the start of the 1998 World Cup. We got ourselves into suitable nick then settled down for the decisive group game against Colombia … except, of course, they were showing Tunisia v Romania.
Data shows would-be drivers waiting an average of 17.8 weeks from booking, up from six weeks before Covid
Would-be motorists keen to shake off their L-plates are having to wait more than five months to get a practical test at more than 100 examination centres around the UK, despite measures to clear a backlog built up during the pandemic. For potential drivers, booking a practical test has in recent years become a major obstacle to getting behind the wheel.
A freedom of information request to the Driver Vehicle Standards Agency, by AA Driving Schools, has revealed that the average waiting time for a driving test in Great Britain is now higher than before the Covid pandemic at the majority of centres.
Significant rise in number of people taking lessons amid surge in interest in language declared extinct a decade ago
The ancient Cornish language has been declared dehwelans dhyworth an marow – back from the dead – amid a rise in popularity thanks to Covid-19 and a critically acclaimed psych-pop star.
There has been a significant rise in the number of people learning Cornish since the pandemic lockdown forced classes online, according to the volunteer network An Rosweyth.
As the weeks roll by, Rishi Sunak’s decision to call the election before he needed to appears ever more curious. Unemployment is up and growth has stalled. NHS waiting lists have increased. There will be better news from this week’s annual inflation figures but it won’t make a difference to voting intentions.
The case for holding on until the autumn was that it would give time for the Bank of England to start cutting interest rates and for recovery to become more firmly embedded. That case now looks all the stronger. Threadneedle Street is not going to deliver a pre-election cut in interest rates this week and by the time it does start to reduce the cost of borrowing, the Conservatives will be long gone.
The captain has a newfound confidence as a result of his move to Bayern Munich and his stunning goalscoring form
As Harry Kane acknowledged last September, as he settled into his new life at Bayern Munich, there was certainly a script to be written. The Champions League final was in his home city of London. The European Championship was in Germany. The dream double was on.
“If there’s someone out there writing a movie … I will try and do my best to make it happen,” Kane said on the eve of England’s qualifying tie against Ukraine in Poland. Nobody even mentioned the Bundesliga title to him because Bayern had won 11 in a row and, well, you know …
The Serbia game has been labelled high risk amid fears of violence – but many say English hooliganism is in the past
For an England fan in the west German city of Gelsenkirchen requiring a Euro 2024 match guide or a free Panini sticker book, Friedrich Schellhase, 30, is the go-to man. From a trestle table at the front of his small white marquee on the city’s central Heinrich König Platz, Schellhase is handing out a host of freebie pamphlets and Uefa-branded pens this weekend.
He is also watching. A social worker whose speciality is helping the hardcore “ultra” fans of the Bundesliga club Schalke, Schellhase is one of a small army of observers in the city tasked by local authorities with sounding the alarm at the first sign of trouble before England’s game against Serbia on Sunday evening.
Doubts have been raised about Liverpool star’s defensive prowess but his ability could make difference at Euro 2024
This past week, Wayne Rooney declared that he “wouldn’t have Trent Alexander-Arnold anywhere near the middle of the pitch”. Which feels just a touch proscriptive, especially when you consider that – given the relatively modest distances involved – pretty much everywhere on a football pitch could be described as “near the middle of the pitch”. Presumably Alexander-Arnold’s role in a Rooney-coached team would be a highly bespoke corner-flag-to-corner-flag operation: shuttling up and down the right flank but bending his runs via the first few rows of the crowd, avoiding that all-important centre‑circle blast radius.
Of course, this was not the only reason Rooney’s comments struck a weirdly discordant tone. “I love him as a footballer and what he does on the ball,” Rooney explained. “But defensively he’s all over the place. He can’t defend.” Which, on the face of it, makes instinctive sense. Rooney wants his midfielders to be skilled in the defensive arts. Simple enough. Until you remember – with a certain irony – that just two Euros ago the defensive colossus Rooney was proposing in the crucial England creative midfield role was none other than Rooney himself.
The term for England footballers’ wives and girlfriends first exploded in 2006 in Germany. The new generation watching the Euros are turning the old stereotypes on their heads
When England take to the pitch for their first game on Sunday night in Germany, eyes will be trained not just on the players but on the team sitting in the stands, cheering on the squad – the wives and girlfriends of the players, the so-called Wags.
The acronym Wags first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph in 2002 – apparently coined by the staff of a Dubai hotel where the players’ wives and girlfriends stayed. Still a relatively new phenomenon, it exploded like a glitterbomb on to the resort of Baden-Baden, where the England squad were based during the World Cup in Germany in 2006.
Through tearful summers with different players, fans of the England men’s team can roll their own failure stories
Euro 96 was where it started in a meaningful way or truly feeling the hope and the anguish. The BBC montage splicing together Darren Anderton off the post, Gazza’s studs and Gareth Southgate’s penalty to Walkaway by Cast. Des Lynam presumably delivered something understated but poignant, and the bluesy guitar started pinging away. The montage maker must have been working on two edits. We will never know the upbeat one – a roll of tape just gathering dust in a vault or used as insulation for a two-bed apartment in W1A.
Once in your lifetime. Isn’t that the hope for England fans? To see the men’s side do it just once. This isn’t the hubristic arrogance that forgets that other countries also play football in the weeks leading up to a tournament. It isn’t calling Southgate a failure if we lose on penalties in the semi-finals to France. It isn’t yelling “Oh not faakin’ Bowen” at a big screen in an overcrowded sticky-floored pub as he prepares to come on with eight minutes left to try to break the deadlock against Slovenia. We’re not looking for a dynasty, just one tournament to go in off our collective English backside.
2016 Euros was last tournament where people could travel freely, making it hard to judge how current fans will behave
German police have spoken of concerns about an intelligence gap in the level of aggression of the latest generation of England football fan, as supporters gather in Germany for the first post-Covid Euros.
England’s Sunday evening tie against Serbia in their first game of Euro 2024 has been designated as “high risk” due to a heightened threat of violence between two groups of supporters with a history of thuggery.
Defender worried he might miss Euros with foot injury
30-year-old also over sickness bug and can face Serbia
John Stones has declared himself fully fit to take on Serbia on Sunday after recovering from a sickness bug that confined him to his room at England’s training base, but the defender has revealed he could have missed Euro 2024 because of his injury scare against Iceland.
Stones feared he had broken his right foot in the first minute of England’s friendly defeat last week and has been through the mill before Gareth Southgate’s side face Serbia in their opening game in Gelsenkirchen. The Manchester City centre-back, who is vital to his country’s hopes of bringing home the trophy, missed a day of training after succumbing to illness on Wednesday and fretted after being forced off at half-time in the team’s final warm-up match. Stones was involved in a collision with the Iceland forward Jón Dagur Thorsteinsson and his instant response was coloured by anxiety.
It’s Gareth’s Conundrum: fail to win the Euros and he’ll be cast as a fraud; win and he’ll be jeered for not winning more
Fail again. Fail better. Or maybe, with a following wind and some luck, don’t fail at all. By now it probably won’t make much difference either way. Not when it comes to things such as legacy, impact and understanding the journey from there to here. Welcome to Late Gareth, the age of unreason.
As Gareth Southgate embarks on his fourth and surely final tournament as England manager, kicking off with Sunday’s understatedly tricky Euro 2024 opener against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen, something else has become increasingly clear.
King’s College and Guy’s and St Thomas’ trusts have been worst affected by ransomware attack by Russian gang Qilin
Hospitals in London had to cancel almost 1,600 operations and outpatient appointments in the first week after being hit by a Russian cyber-attack, the NHS has disclosed.
The two major acute hospital trusts in the capital that were worst affected postponed 832 surgical procedures between Monday 3 June, when the hack began, and Sunday 9 June.
‘There are things that can be copied from [Iceland]’
Serbia will take inspiration from Iceland’s recent victory at Wembley as they plot to surprise England on Sunday, according to their centre-forward Dusan Vlahovic.
The meeting in Gelsenkirchen will be Serbia’s first at a European Championship in its current form and the hope is that a talented but mercurial side will step up to the plate. They bowed out after the group stage of the past two World Cups but Vlahovic, who forms part of a potentially formidable attack, sees a blueprint for early success in the way England were tamed a week ago.
Mason Reynolds, 19, had detailed diagrams of building and said he wanted ‘to make Jews afraid again’
A teenager with neo-Nazi views who made plans to carry out a suicide bombing at a synagogue because he wanted “to make Jews afraid again” has been jailed for eight years.
Mason Reynolds had carried out a “very significant amount of planning” for a terrorist attack at the synagogue in Hove, East Sussex, the sentencing judge said.
Local people say Shawn Seesahai’s murder highlights how young people are carrying weapons because ‘it’s cool’
Janet, 65, can vividly remember the evening her 11-year-old granddaughter arrived at her house last year and said she had seen someone being given CPR on the playing field yards from her front door.
They were shocked to learn that a 19-year-old man, Shawn Seesahai, had been murdered there. They were even more horrified when they learned that the two perpetrators were just 12 years old.
Star who led a sometimes scandalous life celebrated with blue plaque in home town of Budleigh Salterton
She was regarded as Britain’s answer to Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, leading a glamorous and sometimes scandalous life in Italy and the US. This weekend Belinda Lee, who died in a car crash in California in 1961 aged 25, is being celebrated in her home town, the rather less glitzy Devon seaside resort of Budleigh Salterton.
Lee, the daughter of a hotel owner and florist, left the town – dismissed in a Noël Coward play as a place of potted palms with a damp golf course – in search of fame and fortune. She found it in London, continental Europe and Hollywood but was also saddled with a degree of notoriety over events in her private life, such as having relationship with a married aristocrat.
Crystal Palace playmaker reflects on his journey from rejection to the national team, and returning from injury
When the text came through from the Football Association this time, it is reasonable to assume that Eberechi Eze had a flashback – and a harrowing one as well – to the episode he describes as “the biggest test” he has faced. And it is certainly worth saying that the bar is set high in this regard.
Before the previous European Championship, played in 2021, Eze clicked on a message to say he had been included on Gareth Southgate’s list of players for the tournament, before the announcement of the provisional squad a week or so later. It was Eze’s first senior England recognition. The problem was that he had just been helped off the Crystal Palace training pitch, having ruptured an achilles tendon.
A school in west London is trying to give children their childhood back – by extending its hours from 7am to 7pm. Will it work? Helen Pidd reports
From the isolating effect of the Covid pandemic, to austerity and the cost of living crisis, schools are on the front line of the problems facing the communities that surround them. And on top of those challenges in recent years worries have been going of the effect that mobile phones and social media are having on the mental health of pupils. Now, one school has decided to take drastic action.
For the last seven weeks, All Saints Catholic college in Ladbroke Grove has been opening its doors to children from 7am to 7pm. It’s part of a pilot scheme running for 10 weeks with the aim of addressing some of the problems teachers have seen grow over the past few years. The school is in the shadow of Grenfell Tower, many children are eligible for free school meals – and it is thriving. Now it wants to help parents ensure their children do their homework, play games and socialise face to face.
Midfielder reveals rejection after trial as teenager
Gallagher was eligible through maternal grandfather
Conor Gallagher has revealed he was rejected by Scotland as a teenager. The midfielder has Scottish ancestry through his maternal grandfather and it was not always certain that he would represent England.
“My dad’s side is Irish and my mum’s dad is Scottish,” Gallagher said. “When I was 15 or 16 I wasn’t good enough to play for the England youth team so I think I went to train with one of the Scotland teams to see what I was like, and I wasn’t good enough for them either. I managed to work my way back into the England youth set-up and was lucky enough to stay in it.”
Relatives of motorcyclist killed in 2019 are looking forward to ‘working with next government’ on public inquiry
The parents of Harry Dunn, a teenage motorcyclist killed in a road collision, accused the US of “obstructing” their son’s inquest, as they said they were looking forward to working with the next Westminster government to establish a public inquiry.
No representative of the US embassy nor the driver responsible, the American Anne Sacoolas, attended the four-day inquest, which concluded on Thursday. The absences prompted the Dunn family’s spokesperson, Radd Seiger, to say Washington’s position was that “lives of UK citizens like Harry ultimately do not matter”.
In the run-up to July's general election, the Guardian video team is touring the UK looking at the issues that matter to voters. After swimmers and rowers fell sick from sewage discharges into the River Thames we went to the seat of Henley and Thame to see how environmental concerns rank for voters in a seat that has been Conservative for more than 100 years
Hundreds of thousands of disabled residents in high-rise buildings are at risk without evacuation plans, firefighters have warned, seven years on from the Grenfell Tower fire.
The Fire Brigades’ Union (FBU) and the charity Disability Rights UK said the government’s failure to implement evacuation plans for vulnerable residents, one of the main recommendations from the first-phase report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, meant “disabled people will continue to face unnecessary and avoidable danger and/or death”.
When Shah Aghlani helped his mother, Sakina Afrasehabi, move into flat 151 of Grenfell Tower in 2016, he was full of concern. Afrasehabi was partially sighted, had severe arthritis and walked with the aid of a frame, yet she was housed on the 18th floor of the 23-storey building. “I felt scared because it was so high up in the air,” Aghlani recalls. “My fears turned out not to be baseless.”
Just a year after moving, on 14 June 2017, Grenfell Tower was engulfed in flames in one of the worst disasters to happen in modern history in the UK. On the night of the fire, Aghlani rushed to the tower after receiving a distressed phone call at 1.20am from his aunt, Fatima, who was staying with his mother.
New DfE figures reveal big jump in children requiring support, putting pressure on schools and councils
The number of children and young people in England requiring support for special educational needs and disabilities has increased sharply, putting further pressure on schools and councils to meet their needs, according to new data.
Local authorities issued 84,400 education, health and care plans (EHCPs) last year, according to figures released by the Department for Education, a 26% increase compared with 2022. That takes England’s total to a record 576,000 children and young people with active plans in January this year.
The Canal & River Trust is launching 3.5-mile paddles through Standedge Tunnel, from West Yorkshire to Greater Manchester
“You’re in a canoe, not a boat, so you are very exposed,” said Gordon McMinn as he prepared to paddle into the UK’s longest, highest and deepest canal tunnel. “You’re vulnerable, you’re under your own steam, you are up and close to history … it is quite an experience.”
McMinn, a volunteer team leader at the Canal & River Trust, has coordinated what it is hoped will become a bucket-list experience – the opportunity to paddle under the Pennines.
Former nurse accused of attempting to murder Baby K by displacing breathing tube days before death
The mother of a newborn baby allegedly attacked by the nurse Lucy Letby said it was the “hardest decision of my life” to switch off her daughter’s life support, a court has heard.
Letby, 34, is accused of attempting to murder the infant by displacing her breathing tube when she was being treated at the Countess of Chester hospital’s neonatal unit.
Karen Foster, 62, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after shaking nine-month-old Harlow Collinge in 2022
A Lancashire childminder who killed a nine-month-old baby by shaking him to death has been sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison for manslaughter.
Karen Foster, 62, had been due to stand trial at Preston crown court for murdering Harlow Collinge on 1 March 2022 but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter before the jury was sworn in.
Guy Mukendi, 39, from Brixton sentenced to four years and three months for rape
A man has been jailed for four years and three months in a rare conviction for “stealthing” – taking a condom off during sex without consent.
Guy Mukendi, 39, from Brixton, was sentenced on Thursday at inner London crown court for the rape of a woman last year. The woman had consented to sex with Mukendi on the condition a condom was used, but he removed it without her consent.
‘We are doing things differently,’ says Mark Bullingham
The Football Association has funded a special unit within the British police to help them prosecute anyone who abuses England’s players on social media. The governing body has long been committed to passing on the evidence of such instances to the authorities and there has sadly been too much of it.
But as England prepare for their opening Euro 2024 tie against Serbia on Sunday night, the FA’s chief executive, Mark Bullingham, revealed a new move.
FA insists it has not spoken to potential successors
‘We will evaluate everything after the tournament’
The Football Association’s chief executive, Mark Bullingham, has insisted the organisation has a succession plan in place for the possible departure of Gareth Southgate after Euro 2024.
Bullingham gave little away on the detail, preferring to reinforce Southgate’s line about the only focus being on success here in Germany, where England get under way against Serbia on Sunday night. Any discussion over what to do next in terms of Southgate’s future is to be parked until a post-tournament review.
Labour should take lessons from the Netherlands, where public sector firms are funded by a state-owned bank
The private sector provision of water services in England is an oddity in the world: 90% of countries run state-owned operations. Even in Europe, it is the only country to have sold its water resources – including pipes, reservoirs, boreholes and treatment plants – to private owners, now mostly a collection of sovereign wealth, infrastructure and pension funds. The decision to put water – a natural monopoly – in private hands defied the Thatcherite logic of competition and efficiency. There was never any possibility of pitting rival companies against each other to raise standards. No other water supply is competing for a household’s business.
The result has been the creation of a series of sinecures upon which large firms and their executives stake their claims, protected from competition by legal rights over scarce liquid resources. The hundreds of thousands of pounds paid in bonuses to the bosses of Severn Trent and South West Water’s parent company, despite the companies pumping sewage into Britain’s rivers, seems a textbook example of rent-seeking by oligopolistic capital. Rather than invest in infrastructure to deal with a growing population, the country’s private water monopolies, which began life with no debt, borrowed £64bn over the past three decades and paid more than £78bn in dividends to their owners.
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