What struck me about the announcement (and I've not seen others pick up on this) is that BW is to become a mutual.
The best known form of mutuals at present must be building societies. It implies that BW will be owned and run by its members. There are other forms of third sector organisation which do not give members such rights. Mutuals and co-ops are currently a political flavour of the month in both big parties (though they are more interested in making bits of the public sector into them, rather than recreating a strong mutual sector in finance - but that's beside the point for the future of BW). This is potentially very interesting as it immediately begs the question about who will be the members of this mutual. I share some of the concerns that others have expressed about moving to the third sector being a way of removing an ultimate public guarantee to fund BW infrastucture (though not necessarily at navigable standards), but this might be a more radical change than we were expecting. Members may not be too keen on current BW board salaries and bonuses for example. -- Nigel S
