Pause for a moment to consider the surreal mess that has engulfed Thames Water.
Being a monopoly supplier of water is about as safe a business as it is possible to imagine. You are selling a commodity that no one can live without to a captive customer base that has nowhere else to go, at regulated prices designed to ensure you can make a profit (and which have risen far faster than inflation since the industry was taken out of public hands in the late 1980s).
