Quote Originally Posted by Vindec View Post
In theory I agree. But one of the main advantages of privatisation from the government's perspective was that any money required for infrastructure improvement would be paid by users rather than the taxpayer. When utilities were in public ownership, infrastructure improvement requirements had to compete for government money with other things and sadly revenues earned by public owned utilities were often diverted elsewhere.
I agree that money could be diverted elsewhere and that's one of the risks of nationalisation. However, the users would pay for infrastructure improvements whether nationalised or privatised and I suspect there's less bill avoidance in this country compared to tax avoidance.