It is scandalous skint families crippled by tax burden will be forced to foot soaring water bill

Water torture

IT is stomach-churning to watch water utility executives being obscenely rewarded for serial failure, then hiking our prices by an average of 36 per cent.

Your increase announced yesterday will be bad enough. But spare a thought for those relying on Southern Water.

Some 73,000 homes in Southampton and Eastleigh lost their water entirely this week due to a fault. Schools and restaurants had to close. Bottled supplies proved a shambles.

Yet chief executive Lawrence Gosden insists his firm’s 53 per cent rise by 2030 is vital “to deliver the improved performance and infrastructure required”.

Vital, too, to fund his £764,000 pay package, we would imagine.

Six out of ten water firms handed the boss an average of £180,000 last year. That’s not salary. That’s their BONUS.

And for what?

Their sewage-spewing, leaks and supply interruptions have made the industry a byword for failure. Yet these staggering pay deals are supposedly crucial to attract executive “talent”.

It is a scandalous racket . . . with skint families, already crippled by the highest tax burden in our history, forced to foot yet another soaring bill.

Bravo, Gisele

AS the 51 monsters who raped her begin jail terms, let us salute the ­monumental courage of Gisele Pelicot.

Over ten years she was drugged by her husband, then abused by scores of perverted strangers he met online and invited to their home.

Gisele made the trial, and the graphic details of her ordeal, public so “society could see what was happening”.

 “Shame,” she said, “must change sides”. She has certainly achieved that.

How did her evil ex-husband Dominique tempt so many outwardly ordinary men living near him in France to join in those depraved assaults?

Women are asking that question. So too are the vast majority of men, who are utterly and equally horrified.

Gisele deserves all the praise she is receiving.

Many of her abusers, sadly, deserved far more prison time than they got.

Money pits

THE normal advice to politicians in a hole is to stop digging. We’re glad Keir Starmer, for all his woes, isn’t following it.

We cannot recall our roads being in such a dire state — and the £1.6billion he has allocated to mend potholes next year is a hefty sum.

Cue eye-rolling among the Tube commuters of Whitehall. But outside the M25 potholes are a damaging menace to drivers, bikers and cyclists: A very ­visible sign of a country on its uppers.

The PM deserves credit for recognising that — and shovelling money into it.