* insiders say UK water firms knowingly break sewage laws.*

If the government really wanted this to stop, it could stop them. Seeing as the UK government can make it a crime to protest in "annoying" ways, it could, it could clearly make it a crime, punished by imprisonment, to intentionally pollute the waters.

So why doesn't it? I speculate that it is a matter of values. Under plutocratist rule, letting the "investors" extract money they are supposedly entitle do takes priority.