Singers Against Sewage uses the power of song to help keep Britain's rivers and seas clean
What we want to achieve
We want to drive improvements in corporate conduct, particularly as it relates to the UK’s filthy water companies which have been guilty of pumping huge amounts of raw sewage into our brooks, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, harbours and seas for years.
We want those water companies to be prosecuted for any crimes they have committed; and we want the individuals responsible to be held to account.
Maybe a jail term for any miscreants would work wonders for our waterways?
The situation the water companies in the UK have created is quite literally obnoxious, disgusting, repulsive, repugnant, sickening and just plain filthy – yuck! And it is totally unacceptable that the individuals responsible have been able to get away with it.
Why we want to achieve it
The situation the water companies in the UK have created is quite literally obnoxious, disgusting, repulsive, repugnant, sickening and just plain filthy – yuck!
And it is totally unacceptable that the individuals responsible for this ghastly situation have been able to get away with it. They have been committing crimes against people and planet, motivated by dirty money.
Their greed has led to massive under-investment in the structural integrity of the UK’s water industry because the less the water companies invest in maintenance and development for the long term, the more money they have to pay out as fat cat salaries and bonuses to the very individuals responsible for the attack on the environment that we are all witnessing.
This is bandit capitalism at its very worst; and now the perpetrators even have the cheek to expect us to pay for what’s needed in the future, when we’ve already been paying year in, year out.
No!
We’re not going to stand for what feels like blackmail; they seem to be saying:
‘Give us more money and we’ll sort things out for you now; and sorry for what’s happened in the past, can we forget about all that and put that behind us?’
No! No! No!
This is all a problem of their making, not ours; they are the ones that must take responsibility for once and for all and cough up – saying “sorry” just isn’t good enough!
What’s needed now is very simple – we must hold them to account.
Just the merest whiff of personal jeopardy for the people at the top will drive those miscreant bosses to clean up their stinking companies from within. Main board directors must be investigated and if the evidence warrants it, they should be prosecuted for every crime they may have committed and face the prospect of prison sentences.
Personal jeopardy for the fat cat bosses is the key to getting this dirty job done; it will harness the power of deterrent, something that fining the innocent shareholders just won’t do.
And it’s not just the water companies and their bosses that need exposing.
What on Earth have the regulators been doing?
Have they been ‘asleep at the wheel’ and if so, why? – have they been lobbied into a state of ineptitude, incompetence and ineffectiveness by the water industry and the ‘profit at any cost’ private equity companies behind it? Are there conflicts of interest at work here? Could there be regulatory capture, collusion? – or even corruption?
These are all legitimate questions that must now be be asked – and thoroughly answered.
Musicians of all types throughout the UK are invited to submit music that carries a central message that the water company bosses must be held to account. And when we say ‘musicians’ we mean that in the broadest terms possible - everyone from famous performers to beginners.
How we achieve our goal
That’s simple – we live in a Parliamentary Democracy and the good news is, there’s a General Election coming up.
And there’s no doubt about it, this sickening sewage scandal is going to be a major General Election issue. No politician can afford to sit on an issue if it is made uncomfortably hot for them; and nobody wants to vote for any political party that doesn’t have a coherent, compelling, and convincing plan to take the action that’s urgently needed.
So, it’s a simple case of ordinary people who have a sense of passion and purpose for the change that’s needed, motivating the people with the power and position to make what we want to happen, happen.
And we have a secret weapon on our side – the power of music.
Here’s the plan, in simple outline:
Musicians of all types throughout the UK are invited to submit music that carries a central message that the water company bosses must be held to account. When we say ‘musicians’ we mean that in the broadest terms possible – everything from famous performers that are household names, through to Covent Garden buskers, to school and church choirs, through to a bunch of school mates that have only been rehearsing together in a garage somewhere for a few weeks and have never performed in public before.
You see, it’s not your musical proficiency that matters – it’s your message.
Can you, either individually or as part of a team, re-work some lyrics to one of your favourite songs, to tell the water companies what you think of them? – if you can, you’re in: welcome aboard!
And the music can be in any genre you want – from rock, punk, ballads, funk, jazz, hip-hop, reggae, electronic, folk, and of course old-school protest songs – you name it, we’ll have it.
It can be reworked lyrics to an old favourite, or if you’re capable, something brand new, the choice is entirely yours. And if you do fancy creating something from scratch there’s no problem if you want to be AI-assisted – for a bit of fun, check out what Chat GPT comes up with if you first ask for lyrics and then ask for the lyrics produced to be put to a tune – it really can give you some ideas and a helpful starting point.
It can be meticulously produced, or something rough and ready – it really doesn’t matter and to be frank the greater the variety of styles and proficiencies the better – this is an ‘Everyman/Woman’ effort.
Participants can be any age – why not have a class of schoolchildren singing their favourite pop song, with re-worked lyrics developed in conjunction with their teachers and parents? And yes, they can incorporate some ‘actions’ to go with the lyrics if they want – I wonder how many submissions we’ll have with children holding their noses as they sing “water companies stink!”
We’ll then use whatever gets made as “campaign collateral” both online and at in-person events to take the message to the politicians, the media, the regulators the water company bosses and those big, bad ‘profit at any cost’ private equity firms that are so often the root cause of the issues we are up against.
And for fun we can run mildly competitive ‘battle of the bands’ events with a multiplicity of categories so that every entry has a chance to win something. They can be in schools, local pubs or historically-significant music venues such as The 100 Club in London.
The bigger picture matters too
You might recall that we mentioned earlier that ‘We want to drive improvements in corporate conduct, particularly as it relates to the UK’s filthy water companies…’
It’s important that it’s understood that corporate conduct needs fixing in lots of sectors, not just the water companies. The harsh reality is that we don’t just have atrocious corporate conduct in the water industry.
The literally sickening behaviour of the filthy water companies is symptomatic of a much bigger problem – bandit capitalism, where greed governs; where short-term profit and next month’s bonuses drive the agenda and the decision-making – not what’s good for the many stakeholders that depend on businesses behaving responsibly, including of course our environment i.e. our Mother Earth.
But the water companies’ obscene conduct is so bad, so egregious, so crappy that it actually creates an opportunity – an opportunity for everybody to start to coalesce around the idea that ‘enough is enough – this is as bad as we are willing for it to get!’ and people start demanding en-masse that the pendulum must start swinging back the other way.
The collective sense of righteous indignation that we are all feeling right now may well mean that we are at a critically important tipping point, or an ‘inflection point’ whereby the time is just right for people to work together to drive and demand the change that is so desperately needed.
That’s the bigger picture – using the crappiness of the water companies to act as a battering ram for reform, knocking a great big hole through the wall of vested interests that make up the status quo, allowing other possibilities for corporate governance reform in other sectors to get through afterwards.
In essence, this endeavour is all about harnessing the power of our collective disgust at the obscenity of the water companies to become the clarion call for what we all want to see – responsible people running responsible businesses in a responsible way.
Is that really too much to ask?
This is a time for scrutiny, accountability, and transparency; a time for radical change, for leadership and for refusing to accept the sickening status quo, for all our sakes. We must now seize the opportunity to build on the massive momentum that the likes of Feargal Sharkey and others have created, starting now, through a collective endeavour that expresses our creativity, our musicality and ultimately our wish – clean and healthy waterways bristling with life, just like nature always intended; and just like many of us can remember from our childhoods.
The water companies haven’t been listening to our criticisms, it’s time for some activism.
It’s time to stand up, not stand by.
In short, let’s choose to take collective responsibility for what we have not been responsible for; and let’s do it as quickly as we can – there’s a real need for urgency because our brooks, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, harbours and seas are crying out for help.
Or they would if they could.
They can’t; but we can.
Through our songs.
Let’s do it.
Let’s hold ‘em, hold ‘em to account.
Let’s get ‘em locked up, and throw the keys out.
And remember – we are lucky enough to live in a parliamentary democracy and there’s a general election coming up. Use your vote – don’t support any political party that doesn’t have a coherent, compelling, and convincing plan to take the action that’s urgently needed.
