Here, with the beach at Sewage-on-Sea in mind, is a scrap of dialogue from The Enforcer, a film released in 1976…

Harry Callahan: “You’re not making us feel too welcome.”

Koblo: “Oh, you welcome! ‘Bout as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool!”

Callahan was a role for Clint Eastwood, as anyone thrashing about in the turd-infested swimming pool of modern British life surely recalls, while Koblo was played by an actor called Bernard Glin.

Glin doesn’t seem to have been in anything else, but at least he was given a line that speaks across the years.

Around 90 of Britain’s beaches, from Bognor Regis in West Sussex to Swanage in Dorset, are said to have been polluted by raw sewage – in the past shitty month alone, according to the pressure group Surfers Against Sewage.

Looks like we could do with Harry Callahan to enforce good behaviour from the privatised water companies. You’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky – or shall I take a dip in the sea at Bognor Regis?”

Instead of Callahan, we have Ofwat, the strikingly ineffective regulator that seems reluctant to regulate the moneyed ruination of our rivers and seas, all in the name of mouldy old Thatcherism.

Between 1991 and 2019, in case you were wondering while retreating in haste from a stinky beach, English and Welsh water companies shelled out £72bn in dividends, while taking on some £55bn in debt – and seemingly doing little to stem sewage or stop water leaks.

The idea behind all this was that private companies would invest more in infrastructure, but it seems that they misread that bit of the contract for “putting money in own pockets”.

A No 10 truth massager told the BBC that “since the industry was privatised in 1989, the equivalent of £5bn had been invested to upgrade water infrastructure”. As Feargal Sharkey, singer turned environmental campaigner, heckled on Twitter: “Let me remind you during the same periods WCs have paid out over £72bn to shareholders.”

And to think that the EU used to have the nerve to order us to keep our beaches clean. Then we got our country back thanks to Brexit and were finally free to fill the seas with raw sewage.

Rule Britannia, Britannia, rule the shit-brown waves

Britons never, never, shall be slaves to common sense…

Nigel Farage should be made to swim in that sea in tattered union jack trunks. And Liz Truss should be pushed in there with him, too. Turns out the frontrunner to lead the tax-cutting, sea-polluting Tories ordered cuts during her time as environment secretary, slicing away millions earmarked for tackling water pollution. And, wouldn’t you know it, this included £24m cut from a grant aimed at stopping the dumping of raw sewage into the sea.

While Farage and Truss are in that foul and fetid sea, they should shout for all those Tory MPs who voted against plans to stop sewage being dumped in our rivers to join them.

Come on in, the water’s horrible, but it does offer a perfect metaphor for the smelly ways of extreme free market fundamentalism.

And should you be worrying about those water bosses, rest easy – in the past three years, 12 chief executives are said to have taken home £58m between them.

All that money and still there is shit in the sea. Water privatisation has clearly failed. True, we don’t know what the industry would be like if it had stayed in state hands, but it couldn’t be any worse. Oh, hang on – we do know as Scottish Water remains publicly owned and has invested 35% more per household in infrastructure than the English companies.

As for the tax cuts promised by Truss and her rival Rishi Sunak, the University of Essex’s Paul Whiteley points out in an interesting comment piece on The Conversation that Brits suffer from “cakeism” by expecting decent public services but not wanting to pay for them.

Prof Whiteley adds: “The way to stimulate growth is to invest in both private and public assets at the same time, rather than by impoverishing public investment in the mistaken belief that this will stimulate private investment.”

Even someone who has trouble keeping control of his own bank account can see that cutting taxes merely benefits those who already have money, while further depleting a state tattered by years of cuts and needlessly austerity.

Anyway, here to close is a childhood reading memory, altered to suit the times we live in…

“I can smell the sea,” said Topsy

“I can smell the sea,” said Tim.