ON AND on goes the North West Water profits gusher.

For the results released today by United Utilities - the mega-corporation created by last year's £1.8billion merger of the region's power and water companies - show water making £1million-a-day profits.

And this, mark you, is in a "bad" year for the business.

Exposed by the drought as being a mammoth water waster, with miles of leaking mains, the company has been forced by the outcry to plough £85million into a repair and renewal programme.

So the poor shareholders feel the pain of that in the form of a 10 per cent leap in dividends.

But what about the consumers - those funding this bonanza while still being restricted in their use of the product?

Carry on paying through the nose, folks.

That is the only conclusion for them - as, for all the vaunting of North West Water's increased capital investment, this continual, increasing cream-off of profits into dividend payments proves that water-users are being charged too much.

It is obvious that regulation of this privatised monopoly is inadequate.

To begin with, the consumers' watchdog has been forced to sit back while water charges have risen, with the government's blessing, way beyond the rate of inflation and while the bosses have paid themselves pools-win wages out of the ensuing profits explosion.

Red-faced and afraid of political change, the business has even given back dribbles of the money gusher to the customer - in the form of a couple of annual payments of a few pounds which the company says come from "capital expenditure efficiency savings," but which more-candid cynics call "conscience money."

But where has been the real bite from the regulator Ofwat?

With water, we have seen nothing like the vigilance that the consumer watchdog has put on gas, for example.

Yet, where is the best watchdog of all - competition?

There would be none of this repeated water rip-off if privatisation had not wed monopoly with corporate greed.

And though the suggestion we had from the government some nine weeks ago that water firms might start to undercut each other if pipelines were laid between reservoirs in different regions is an admission that competition is needed, it is no more than a gesture apologising for the fact that it does not, and maybe cannot, exist.

Because of that, consumers are being unfairly charged.

Yet, if we cannot have true competition, or if we would have to wait years for it to arrive through the creation of an incredibly expensive national water "grid," why must we continue to be soaked?

Either these grasping monopolies must be handed back to the public sector or a stiff tax slammed on their windfall pockets - so that consumers share the dividends instead of providing them year after year.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.