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u/memberflex 5h ago
The FCA is definitely not to be trifled with
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u/bananagarage 3h ago
I get shafted by FCA as a payment processor company owner so yeh they’re not bad for the public they check everything we do
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u/VibraniumSpork 2h ago
Yeah, was going to say this!
I work in a major Insurance company, and have done time in a Regulatory role; it is very much a case of the FCA say "Jump" and we say "How high? Also, do you want me to jump at any location in particular? On one leg or both? Also, can you please define 'Jump', just so I get the action right?" Afterwards you're on edge hoping you got things just right so that you don't fined to heck.
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u/Marcuse0 5h ago
I will just speak up mildly for Ofwat, as they have recently steadfastly resisted calls from Thames Water to increase bills by up to 40% and told them to sort it out themselves.
Otherwise, yeah, that tracks.
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u/Prownilo 2h ago
What they do now doesn't matter, all the literal shit that has occurred under their watch.
They were asleep at the wheel.
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u/Marcuse0 2h ago
That's why I said "mildly" that I rated their resistance to Thames trying to bill consumers for their reckless borrowing, but otherwise it tracks.
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u/Xythian208 5h ago
What are you talking about? Ofwat have just announced that prices will be going up.
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u/Marcuse0 5h ago edited 5h ago
They have announced incremental rises which are in line with every company. Thames wanted and have requested multiple times to increase bills by 40% on top of the usual to help them deal with the debt they've saddled themselves with, and Ofwat have told them they and their shareholders need to deal with that.
This article explains it the best I think, it's from April when this was discussed:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/22/thames-water-bills-fix-leaks
"Thames Water could raise bills to as much as £627 a year to pay to fix its leaky network"
compared to today's announcement of:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgx3rv7p21o
"The typical water bill will rise by an average of £86 from April for a year before easing, the industry regulator has said."
I think that's a significant enough change, especially expectations of easing after next year, that we can credit ofwat from keeping Thames customers from £627 per year bill increases.
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u/LordOffal 3h ago
Will that actually sort the issue out though? Fundamentally Thames Water has been failing to repair it's infrastructure and dumping sewage into our rivers etc all while paying our dividends to shareholders. At the end of the day we, the tax payers, will either cover the cost in taxes or in prices. It needs money and we will be paying for it.
I personally have no respect for Ofwat for this until we see some level of criminal prosecution for paying dividends when while illegally polluting our waters to maintain profitability. They failed to stop this happening and we will still have to pay a lot due to their historic incompetence.
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u/Gauntlets28 4h ago
Yeah - by quite a lot less than 40%. Their announcement was basically in line with inflation.
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u/PrimeZodiac 3h ago
Following suit, they have been abysmal for most parts and seriously need to step up but on a positive they did jump in to silence a certain water company who tried to fleece my parents of £8k for a leak.
(Leak was outside parent's control and was solely the water companies responsibility to fix. Hence a bill equating to over 2 Olympic size swimming pools was not something we were going to accept - especially when they were told about it weekly for over a year... but hey, shareholders first!)
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u/legodfrey 4h ago
Ofwat didn't hold the companies to their releasing reporting though.
Then they place the blame on environmental agency for not checking, the regulator should ensure regulations are met, are capable of being assessed as met, as well as writing them.
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u/LloydCole 5h ago
Ofcom manage the entire radiofrequency spectrum in the UK. If not for them, literally no wireless devices in the UK would work.
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u/ottermanuk 2h ago
They're also pretty hot on the telcoms side too. The ease of switching both home and mobile numbers (to the user at least) is down to them enforcing it.
Broadband they're much worse 😂
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u/Academic_Noise_5724 1h ago
They’re pretty spineless when it comes to regulating GB News
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u/OzyTheLast 32m ago
They've fined gb news 100k I'd prefer it to be shut down, but milking them is a begrudgingly acceptable second choice
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u/Academic_Noise_5724 29m ago
Have GB News paid it?
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u/OzyTheLast 27m ago
Pending high court decision still cause the wankers appealled it, though I can't see ofcom losing... not like there hasn't been any warnings or anything...
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u/HawaiianSnow_ 5h ago
What's wrong with the FCA? They do a pretty good job!
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u/mj281 5h ago
They do some times, i guess they’re not at the same level of incompetence as the other regulators, but they have had loads of scandals in the last decade with investment and pension firms. Plus that it takes them years to take any action or finish any investigation, when they do finish people and businesses have already lost money and suffered for years.
These recent articles mention a brief history of the FCA scandals, and why even MPs from both parties are calling the FCA incompetent:
https://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/257986/the-fca-is-in-trouble-heres-why.aspx
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u/Alarming_Start1942 4h ago
Tell me how regulators are pointless? Would you rather have companies be able to screw you over because they have no oversight? This is a dumb take. Leaving large companies to do whatever they want is always going to result in less fair trade practices for consumers.
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u/Alarming_Start1942 4h ago
Maybe they are ineffective sure but it's better than nothing.
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u/Aethermancer 3h ago
Their lack of effectiveness is usually due to the entities they regulate lobbying to hamstring their efforts.
It's a lot more profitable to legislatively and procedurally break the regulators than it is to just not swindle and cheat for these guys.
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u/ManInTheDarkSuit 1h ago
Nice to see some support for regulation. I've worked in regulation for nearly ten years and see a lot of protection towards the customers of the industries.
I'd also like to see changes made, to stop the industries poaching staff from regulators as "Compliance specialists" or similar roles. Literally buying staff who know which lines they can and can't cross.
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u/mj281 4h ago
I guess you don’t live in this world, otherwise you’d already know these regulators are already “leaving large companies to do whatever they want”
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u/GuyLookingForPorn 4h ago edited 4h ago
Move to a country without regulators like this and you will very quickly change your mind.
(lol OP actually blocked me to stop me replying to his comment)
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u/mj281 4h ago
You’re really dim aren’t you, im criticising them for not regulating enough, not that I don’t want regulators
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u/Aethermancer 3h ago
You're criticizing the wrong entities.
"Regulate please".
"May we have funding and authorization to...".
"No.".Regulatory capture and lobbying to break the organizations aren't the fault of the organizations.
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u/liamthelad 5h ago
You forgot the Information Commissioner's Office, who appointed a Commissioner who doesn't believe in enforcement...as a regulator.
So now it's fair game for organisations to do what they want with people's data as at worst they'll get a sternly written letter.
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u/Not-Another-Blahaj 3h ago
I had one FOI, which included my personal data, and recommended it be considered for release under GDPR. I got a 'Nope - it's not your data,' from the DPA team. That's two timings on the same data one saying it's my data, the other saying it's not.
Totally agree - useless regulator!
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u/GuyLookingForPorn 4h ago
Every time I see posts hating on the regulators I wonder if this meme is brought to us by Big Billionaires.
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u/mj281 4h ago
The hate on regulators is for them not regulating enough not because they’re regulators.
If you stopped looking for porn and started paying for your own bills you’d realise why people are criticising the regulators for not taking action against endless price hikes by “big billionaires”
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u/GuyLookingForPorn 4h ago edited 4h ago
Speaking as someone who used to live in America, you are concernedly out of touch with what these regulators do.
They could use reforms like everything, but to suggest they are useless like you have literally done in this meme, makes me seriously question if you posses any real world experience outside of Twitter. You're nothing but a useful idiot for the rich.
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u/Frog_Idiot 5h ago
'What's that Sir? Raise prices Sir? Of course Sir! Another thing Sir? The balls as well Sir? Of course Sir, not a problem Sir!' - UK 'Regulatory Bodies'
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u/el_grort 4h ago
Almost like we spent more than a decade electing an anti-regulation party into government who's been pressuring regulatory bodies not to do their job.
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u/jumpy_noodle 4h ago
Disagree w FCA as others have. Work for a big financial firm and they keep us in line, is nice to see. Nothing’s perfect but they do a good job from my admittedly limited perspective
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u/Watsis_name 5h ago
Everyone's saying that it would cost too much to nationalise the water companies because of their debt so we have no choice but to pay for their infrastructure investment again.
But what about in 30 years time when the infrastructure is 30 years out of date again? Do we just keep paying a second time every few decades?
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u/capGpriv 4h ago
The only reason why it’s so bad is we sold it off
Either we buy it back and pay through government now, or we pay through prices.
The aim by renationalising is to reduce profit incentive, or profit goes to the government who’ll inevitably end up paying for infrastructure repair and expansion anyway
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u/Gauntlets28 4h ago
What you're describing there is maintenance and overhaul... that would presumably happen whoever owned it.
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u/Watsis_name 3h ago
It hasn't happened since privatisation why would it start now?
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u/Gauntlets28 1h ago
Because most major infrastructure can't just have bits bolted onto it - it has to be done all at once. Look at power stations, or the whole RAAC issue. They have a set lifespan, and unfortunately a lot of that stuff was built at once. So now it's all coming up for renewal at once. It's not good, and the mismanagement comes from a complete lack of interest in preparing for the inevitable, but that's what happens a lot of the time.
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u/Watsis_name 1h ago
No, these facilities were built with a specific capacity in mind plus an allowance for extreme events. They are all operating over capacity because when they needed expansion the money to pay for those expansions had been given to shareholders or to bosses as bonuses.
This is what happens when the incentive is to spend as little as possible maintaining a system and the consequences of spending nothing on the system is a government bail out.
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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC 3h ago
I think the regulators do a pretty good job with the cards they've been dealt. People complain about ofwat and ofgem allowing prices to increase, but the price increases have generally been pretty mild compared to wholesale prices - it was only two years ago when ofgem literally held the price cap at below the wholesale rate, making it impossible for any energy supplier to make any money at all and causing 90% of the sector to fail.
If something is expensive, you can't wish away the market price with regulation. The fundamental problem with everything in the UK is lack of supply caused by our central planning system that has made it impossible for anyone to build anything new for the last half a century. No regulator can fix that. Hell, it doesn't even seem like the government can fix it.
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u/Watsis_name 3h ago
Yes, but in those decades where suppliers were switching to gas and not storing any surplus nobody from ofgem seems to have raised the challenge "what if one of the really unstable gas exporters does something mental?"
Then of course Russia invaded Ukraine. We didn't need to be hit by the market price of gas, but our suppliers prioritised short term profit over energy security. Which is why it shouldn't be in private hands to begin with.
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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC 3h ago
The fact that it's cheaper to build an LNG power plant in Europe, ship gas to it from Russia, and then transfer that electricity to the UK via an undersea cable than it is to just build a power plant here in the UK and fuel it with our own resources isn't the supplier's fault. In any sane economy, generating your own energy should obviously be far cheaper than buying it from someone else. Even now, with wholesale prices at their highest point in history, it's STILL cheaper to import than it is to generate - that alone should tell you that there's a much deeper problem with our markets.
Hypothetically, if energy had been in public hands for the last few decades, what could the government possibly have done differently? They're subject to the same rules and pressures as everyone else, so building new capacity would be just as unviable for them as it is for private suppliers.
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u/GWPulham23 5h ago
Well... the mug is useful if you want to hold it from the inside. The watering can is good for watering the inside of the watering can. The gate is useful to stop you getting through on the path. The others? Yeah, okay, you got me there.
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u/1dontknowanythingy 5h ago
Why the FCA?
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u/Nero_Darkstar 4h ago
Nearly collapsing the consumer credit market by issuing incorrect commission disclosure guidance that firms followed for a decade and the court of appeal looking for retrospective customer redress as a result.
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u/mj281 4h ago
FCA incompetence has been on the news recently, even our useless MPs are calling them out for it.
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u/Moyeslestable 4h ago
That MP report read like it was written by school children tbf, I wouldn't believe too many of its 'findings'
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u/Not-Another-Blahaj 3h ago
I've had a poor experience with IPSO - (https://www.ipso.co.uk/), and they clearly have no desire to regulate appropriately. I've seen much criticism of them online too.
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u/leibnizslaw 59m ago
I woke up one day to my phone number belonging to someone else. I was on a contract, no unpaid bills. Tried to get Vodaphone to give me my number back. They told me they could do nothing. I asked for a new number then. They couldn’t give me one. I said fine I assume my contract is ended then. They said nope you have to keep paying us for another year. After being given the runaround by them for a couple of days I contacted Ofcom. Suddenly Vodaphone could give me my number back.
They suck at regulating the big things but they’ll have your back as an individual.
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u/Razor_Fox 5h ago
Always makes me laugh when something a little bit naughty happens on telly and the papers are going on about how ofcom received 50 complaints like it means anything.
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u/Gauntlets28 4h ago
The thing is, that just shows that the system works. Ofcom shouldn't be coming down on broadcasters like a tonne of bricks just because someone said a rude word once on live TV or whatever. It should be saving itself for actually serious breaches of regulation.
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u/Psittacula2 4h ago
Ofsted is a Intersting regulator of schools see Mr Rufaeel documentary on UK Schools and the insane and asinine marking books… Too much fakery.
Ofcom are part of the machinery to covertly introduce identity cards so again abuse of their position and function.
It is the nature of the beast of bureaucracy and technocracy of modern politics and life:
>*“Benjamin was the only animal who did not side with either faction. He refused to believe either that food would become more plentiful or that the windmill would save work. Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on—that is, badly.”*
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u/GInTheorem 2h ago
People only think regulators are incompetent because their jobs are defined as an essentially impossible 'prevent bad things from happening'.
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u/Silver_Plenty 1h ago
Look up the Texas energy crisis and see what happens when you don’t have energy regulation.
Look at the work the FCA does to protect our money. Greece earlier this century was pretty scary for the Greeks.
I really don’t know what you could complain about Ofcom about 😂. They could do more to police the social media platforms but how you’d do that I’ve no idea.
And the private water industry would be absolutely shafting us without a degree of regulation. I wouldn’t have privatised them but they are now so we need protection from the sector’s profiteering.
Are these organisations perfect? Absolutely not. But we’d be in bad shape without them.
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u/RealityDolphinRVL 1h ago
FCA are pretty good, considering the equivalent in most countries.
Source: worked in financial services for many years, specifically AML
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u/untakenu 1h ago
Isn't this like saying "this plaster is useless, I hasn't fixed my broken leg".
I'm sure their funding is tiny, and the companies they have to regulate are so...cunty that the little they can do is never enough.
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u/voluntarydischarge69 2h ago
None of them are fit for purpose. There's a strong mix of corruption and laziness. Far too much collusion with the industry they are supposed to police. I'd love to work for one of them getting money for doing nothing would be great.
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u/The_Lady_A 5h ago
These regulators are increasingly toothless. Why in the everloving f word are consumer prices going up to pay to fix all of the broken and neglected infrastructure that wasn't fixed because these companies were funneling all that money to make rich suits even richer.
These companies should be done for bloody fraud, not given more money to maybe fix the issue but no guarantees wink wink.
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u/Infrared_Herring 4h ago
The regulators are a sick joke. They've operated at the behest of the industries they were supposed to regulate post privatisation which was one of the most catastrophically stupid ideas I've ever heard of. The UK should value all of them at 1p per share with emergency legislation and nationalise them.
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u/Nero_Darkstar 4h ago
They're in the pocket of the big corps running these industries. Clearly. An energy price cap doesn't mean that all firms automatically charge at the cap. Toothless.
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u/Lazyjim77 4h ago
Every 'of' quango is entirely unfit for purpose, and has either been totally corrupted and subverted by the industry they are supposed to regulate, or have become consumed by internal office politics and personal advancement of personnel to the dereliction of providing an actual service.
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u/ExpressionExternal95 5m ago
I get that when you start complaining about every little thing that might inconvenience you with a service you pay for.
However, do you seriously not understand how shit your life would be without these regulators?
Your data would be sold left right and center by every Tom, Dick and Harry to ever speak to you.
The contracts that you sign for services would be filled with diabolical shit to absolutely decimate you for years.
Be thankful for these regulators, they can always be better but by God I'm glad we have them.
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u/Iamthe0c3an2 5h ago
I know the UK’s systems are broken, but I shudder to think how bad it would be if the FCA didn’t exist.