Can You Fix It, Andy? List

The rapid expansion of datacentre infrastructure has become one of the most consequential industrial pressures on electricity and water systems in advanced economies. Hyperscale computing, cloud platforms, and artificial‑intelligence workloads now require levels of power, cooling water, land, and grid capacity that rival traditional heavy industry. Yet the way these pressures are experienced by communities differs sharply between countries.

This report examines those differences through a comparative political‑economy lens, focusing on the United Kingdom and the United States—two nations with similar levels of digital‑infrastructure growth but fundamentally different governance structures for electricity, water, and planning.

In the UK, datacentre expansion interacts with a nationalised cost‑allocation system, centralised water regulation, and increasingly centralised planning powers. The result is diffuse national bill impacts, regional water stress, and limited local control over siting decisions. In the USA, vertically integrated utilities, competitive water‑rights systems, and local zoning authority mean communities experience direct increases in electricity bills, visible water scarcity, and political conflict over industrial subsidies.

By combining empirical evidence with explicit mathematical and probabilistic modelling, the report shows how datacentre clustering transforms existing infrastructure constraints into high‑probability hazards—drought‑year water shortages, peak‑load instability, and rising household costs. The analysis is grounded in material systems rather than policy rhetoric, and is written in the Dyslexic Politics style: forensic, comparative, and structurally focused.

The aim is to provide a clear, evidence‑based account of how digital‑infrastructure growth reshapes resource allocation, community risk, and political‑economic tensions in both countries—and to demonstrate why governance design, not technology alone, determines who bears the burden of the AI era.

Your recent commitment to “fix the subscription problem” acknowledges a real and growing public concern. Across the UK, millions of people are paying for digital services they do not want, cannot manage, or cannot exit. The political recognition of this issue is important, but the evidence shows that the problem is not simply political. It is structural. Subscription traps are produced by measurable economic incentives, behavioural dynamics and digital‑system design choices that systematically extend the life of unwanted contracts. Government research confirms that 9.7 million unwanted subscriptions remain active in the UK and that consumers lose £1.6 billion every year as a result. These figures demonstrate that subscription‑based harm is not the product of isolated bad practice but a predictable outcome of the way digital subscription systems have been allowed to evolve.

The government’s own consultation documents acknowledge that current systems do not allow people to exit easily. They confirm that traders frequently fail to provide straightforward cancellation routes, do not send adequate renewal reminders and do not allow online cancellation even when sign‑up was online. International regulatory sweeps show the same pattern across Europe and North America, demonstrating that subscription traps are embedded in global digital architecture rather than confined to domestic regulatory gaps. 

Behavioural‑economic research reinforces this picture. Studies consistently show that friction, inertia and information asymmetry significantly increase retention even when consumers intend to cancel. Digital platforms exploit these dynamics by embedding friction at multiple layers: login requirements tied to obsolete credentials, nested menus, multi‑step confirmation processes and renewal reminders that do not reach consumers.

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 introduces important reforms, but it does not yet address the deeper mechanisms identified in empirical research and formal modelling. The mathematical appendix to this report demonstrates that cancellation friction increases retention exponentially and that credential dependency can reduce cancellation probability to near zero. It shows how firms extract substantial lifetime value from unwanted subscriptions and how even small increases in friction produce large increases in revenue. These mechanisms are structural. They are embedded in the design of digital subscription systems and reinforced by commercial incentives that reward passive continuation.

For these reasons, political commitments to improve cancellation routes or strengthen consumer rights, while welcome, do not resolve the underlying problem. The structural failure remains in place until friction, credential dependency, reminder suppression and behavioural lock‑in are regulated directly. This report sets out the evidence for that conclusion and explains what must be done if your commitment is to fix not only the political problem but the structural failure affecting millions.

Most people do not notice the moment a subscription becomes a problem. It happens quietly, somewhere between a free trial that seemed harmless and a renewal email that never arrived. A payment goes out. Then another. Then another. And by the time the consumer realises what has happened, the contract has already rolled over, the cancellation route is buried behind account menus they can no longer access, and the company continues to take money every month. What feels like a small oversight becomes a long‑term financial drain.

Across the UK, this experience is not unusual. It is widespread. The government’s own figures show that millions of people are paying for subscriptions they do not want and cannot easily stop. These are not isolated mistakes or moments of forgetfulness. They are symptoms of a system designed to continue charging unless the consumer intervenes at exactly the right time, in exactly the right way, with exactly the right credentials. When those conditions are not met, the subscription continues — sometimes for months, sometimes for years.

This article examines how that system works, why it has become so pervasive, and why the government now recognises it as a structural failure in the digital economy. It draws on the government’s consultation documents, the new DMCCA regulatory framework, and a mathematical model that explains how friction, inertia and auto‑renewal combine to generate predictable financial gains for firms. The aim is to show, clearly and precisely, how millions of unwanted subscriptions have become an accepted feature of the market — and why stronger protections are now essential. 

We ask 

CAN YOU FIX IT, ANDY?

A national call for action to protect people from subscription traps

Millions of people across the UK are being charged for digital subscriptions they cannot cancel. Government evidence shows:

• 9.7 million unwanted subscriptions

• £1.6 billion in annual consumer loss

• cancellation systems that require old or inaccessible credentials

• renewal reminders sent to inactive inboxes

• no human support when account access is lost

• digital platforms that continue charging even when the consumer cannot sign in

This is not a customer‑service issue. It is a structural failure in the digital economy.

We are asking Andy Burnham, as a national leader with a record of consumer‑focused reform, to help fix this problem by pushing for stronger, clearer, and enforceable digital‑market rules.

This is not party‑political. This is about consumer protection.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Across the UK, people are trapped in subscriptions because:

• they lost access to old email accounts

• cancellation requires login credentials they no longer have

• support routes demand information they cannot provide

• cancellation menus are hidden behind friction

• renewal notices go to inboxes they cannot access

• banks cannot stop payments without merchant cooperation

When account access is lost, rights become unusable.

The government’s own documents state:

“It is easy for consumers to become tied into subscriptions they do not want.”

This is a national problem that requires national leadership.

WHAT WE ARE ASKING ANDY BURNHAM TO DO

1. Mandatory non‑login cancellation routes

People must be able to cancel even if they cannot access the original account.

2. Maximum friction standards

Cancellation should take a small number of clear steps, with no hidden menus.

3. Human support escalation

A real person must be available when digital cancellation fails.

4. Credential‑independent cancellation

No more lock‑in caused by expired domains, old emails, or forgotten admin accounts.

5. Renewal‑reminder rules

Reminders must reach active inboxes, not outdated accounts.

NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) was created as a universal entitlement, yet over time it has become one of the most inaccessible parts of the health system. The principle is simple — fully funded care for people whose needs are primarily health‑related — but the practice has been shaped by decades of policy decisions that fragmented responsibility, hardened the boundary between health and social care, and embedded gatekeeping into routine administration. What should function as a clear national right now operates as a postcode‑dependent obstacle course.

This report examines how that happened. It traces the structural evolution of CHC from a universalist promise to a system defined by variation, inconsistency and procedural resistance. Using published evidence, it shows how eligibility rates diverge dramatically between regions, how assessment volumes differ by factors of eight or more, and how rural areas face additional structural disadvantages. These inequalities are not accidental; they are the predictable consequences of policy choices that left CHC under‑resourced, poorly standardised and administratively fragmented.

In that environment, a private market has emerged around access itself. Companies such as Compass CHC sell paid advocacy to help families secure a benefit that is already free in law. Their business model depends on the very features that make CHC difficult to obtain: complexity, opacity, and the catastrophic financial consequences of being denied. The rise of this market is not a story about entrepreneurial innovation; it is evidence of a system that has failed to make rights meaningfully accessible.

CHC has become structurally unjust, and the growth of private advocacy firms is a symptom of that injustice. Why does the state tolerated conditions that allow commercial actors to profit from vulnerability. Can Andy fix it?

A Criminal Sentence That Confirms Every Warning in This Report

Today, Robert Bush was sentenced to twenty years in prison for sixty‑seven offences committed at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull. The scale of the harm—decomposing bodies, financial exploitation, and systematic breaches of the most basic standards of dignity—has horrified the public. But the deeper truth is this: Bush was able to operate precisely because England and Wales have no statutory regulation of funeral directors. His crimes are not an isolated outrage. They are the predictable outcome of the regulatory vacuum documented throughout this report.

Our investigation shows, step by step, how this failure was engineered. The Unregulated Dead sets out the structural void: no licensing, no inspection, no mandatory standards, and no statutory oversight. Consumer Warning demonstrates the consequences: collapses, misconduct, lost deposits, and a system where harm is invisible until it becomes a crisis. When Your Funeral Director Goes Bust explains the financial architecture that leaves families unprotected when funeral homes fail. And the Sidebar Guide shows how consumers must protect themselves because the law does not.

The Bush case is the clearest evidence yet that the current framework cannot safeguard the dead or the bereaved. A man with no mandatory qualifications, no inspections, and no regulatory scrutiny was able to run a funeral home until criminal behaviour became undeniable. The state intervened only after catastrophic harm had already occurred.

This sentencing must be a turning point. Government and Parliament now need to come together to close the regulatory gap that allowed this to happen. Mandatory licensing, statutory inspection, enforceable standards, and clear consumer protections are not ambitious reforms—they are the minimum conditions for dignity, safety, and public trust.

The Hull case proves what this report has shown throughout: without regulation, abuse is not a possibility. It is an inevitability. The question now is whether Westminster will finally act to ensure it never happens again.

A shared problem: untaxed and undertaxed wealth

Across our economies, we face a common structural challenge. Wealth grows faster than wages, and the tax systems we inherited were designed for a different era. They tax income annually but allow appreciation to accumulate for decades. They treat borrowing as liquidity without tax. And they treat death either as a moment of erasure, as in the United States, or as a moment of preservation, as in the United Kingdom, Canada, the EU, and Japan. These choices shape inequality, investment behaviour, and the fiscal capacity of our states.

If we want fair, modern, and economically coherent tax systems, we must confront the architecture itself — not just the rates.

A call for structural reform, not cosmetic adjustment

We cannot continue adjusting the edges of systems built in the mid‑20th century. The question is not whether capital gains should be 20 per cent or 28 per cent. The question is whether unrealised gains should be allowed to escape taxation entirely, whether borrowing should substitute for selling, and whether death should erase or preserve decades of appreciation.

The United States has shown what happens when step‑up in basis makes capital‑gains taxation optional. The UK, Canada, the EU, and Japan have shown what happens when gains persist across generations but are taxed only on realisation. Both models allow long periods of deferral. Both models concentrate wealth. Both models leave large amounts of economic income outside annual taxation.

No country can reform alone.

Capital is mobile.

Wealth is mobile.

Tax avoidance is mobile.

If one jurisdiction modernises and others do not, the system simply shifts the problem across borders.

We need coordinated reform through the OECD, the G7, and the EU–UK frameworks. We need shared principles for taxing appreciation, shared rules for borrowing against assets, and shared approaches to intergenerational transfers. We need transparency, comparability, and stability.

This is not about punishing wealth. It is about recognising economic income wherever it arises, ensuring that tax systems reflect modern asset behaviour, and rebuilding fiscal fairness in an era where wealth grows faster than wages.

We stand at a moment where the architecture of capital taxation determines the architecture of inequality. If we do nothing, the gap widens. If we modernise, we can build systems that are fair, efficient, and economically coherent.

The question is simple: Do we continue with tax systems designed for the 1960s, or do we build ones fit for the 2030s?