HARDLY was the ink dry on our observations on the water industry's rocketing profits - and the need for them to be pegged by lower charges to consumers - than North West Water reveals by how much the customer comes second to the shareholder.

For it is disclosed that parent company United Utilities is to write off £83million after problems with a project in Bangkok in Thailand.

Yet, apart from the matter of NWW going after foreign orders when it has, along with the rest of the industry, to be threatened with penalties by the government for lagging on mending miles of leaking pipes at home, what does the absorption of such a massive loss tell us?

It would, in ordinary circumstances, suggest that the company has suffered a setback that shareholders and profits performance would have to withstand. But in this case United Utilities' profits still climb by 22 per cent to £475million and shareholder dividends increase by 14 per cent - double the upper level that water industry regulator Ian Byatt recommended last year for the pay-outs.

So who is doing the absorbing? Step up the already-soaked customer.

If a loss on this scale can be written off and profits and dividends continue to soar, it must be that it is being passed on to the customer or that investment on improving services to the customer is suffering.

Either way, the consumer is the real loser.

And, yet again, we have an eloquent example of how customers in the North West are being made to pay too much for their water.

Will the new government now redress the rip-off?

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