I’m trying my best to contain my excitement because this Saturday it’s only the Varsity Boat Race, that’s all. You know the one, where two top universities race each other along the Thames and, at the end, they kiss their cox. (It’s best not to read that last bit out loud.) It’s part of the British sporting calendar, it says here. The only thing I find a little tiresome is the fact that the same two teams reach the final every year. This year, though, things are slightly different. Organisers have told the rowers not to leap into the river after the race and cover any open wounds, the Guardian reports, “after levels of E coli were found to be nearly 10 times higher than levels found in bathing waters graded as “poor” by Environment Agency standards – the worst possible rating.” If anything sums up Britain today, then this is it.
Whatever you think of the Boat Race it is nonetheless world famous and people all over the world, as well as in this country, tune in every year to see the boats meandering down the river. This year, the world will be made aware that the river that runs through the capital is an open sewer and that crew members who enter the water after the race could become seriously ill, unless they avoid swimming with human excrement. Makes you proud, doesn’t it?
The ailing Thames Water blames excess rainfall, which make it necessary to tip extra shit into the river. You can understand that, can’t you, because it rarely rains in Britain these days, does it? During the long hot year of 2023, barely a drop of rain fell. Whatever the reasons, they are just excuses. Following Margaret Thatcher’s insane privatisation of our water, billions have been funnelled away from water companies and handed out to shareholders, who include domestic and foreign pension funds as well as wealth funds from China and Abu Dhabi, having already run up vast debts incurred by its previous owner Macquarie, an Australian infrastructure bank. This is what happens when you flog off the things we already own to sharks whose only motivation is to make money and lots of it.
Thames Water is technically and literally in deep shit now, getting closer to the point where it may need to be taken into public ownership and guess what that would mean? Customers and the national taxpayer bailing them out. After 14 years during which the Conservatives have broken Britain, looking after their fat cat friends, the rest of us will have to pay the price for their greed and incompetence.
Where I live in Bristol, we are covered by Wessex Water. Here’s why it would probably be a bad idea to swim in waters under their control:
In 2023, there were 41,453 sewage spills, each lasting nine hours. The total duration of spills in hours was 372,341, the duration in terms of days was 15,514.
Last year, people were allowed to swim in Bristol’s harbourside for the first time in years and some hardy folk braved the conditions. Well, good for them. A friend of mine who enjoys ‘wild swimming’, or ‘swimming’ as everyone else calls it, until last year when they swum at Clevedon’s outdoor pool and observed what appeared to be – how shall we put this? – some kind of faecal matter floating by, next to their head. Upon returning home, they had the longest hot shower in the history of mankind.
As is traditional in our house, we will be giving the Boat Race a miss this year and all that is left for me is to wish both crews every success and hope that they do not find their oars covered in human excrement as they cross the finish line.
Old Father Thames, that most famous of rivers, is full of shit. Come to London and enjoy the smell. How the mighty have fallen, eh? We used to be Great Britain. Now, not so much.
