Is Privatisation A Good Thing?

This is probably about right, but where UK privatisation has failed is the lack of competition and the lack of decent regulators.

Water should just be renationalised - there is no benefit to privatisation other than shift the borrowing off the government's books. In return the shareholders have laden the companies with debt and walked off with the dividends. There is no competition and non of the businesses can realistically be allowed to go bust. If you are in a Southern Water area you can't buy from Scottish Water because they have better prices, better environmental credentials, etc.

The energy market and energy industry is much much more efficient under privatisation than it was under public ownership, thanks to competition across the whole industry. Where it has failed slightly is longer term investment is much harder to justify when you don't know what prices will do in 5/10/15 years, but your plant has an expected payback longer than you can see. This is why nuclear power has been very slow to get going again, and the only building of new generation has been generally supported by government backing for a period of time.

BR's corporate image and the book of design language produced for it was one of the finest works of graphic design to emerge from that era. I can't even think of a post-93 train company logo, never mind think of a memorable or aesthetically good one.

This is the age of..the train.

Now then now then howzabout that for advertising eh, guys and gals?

SW aren't better, they have sewage discharges in heavy rain etc just like the rest of the UK. I suspect at least some of the differential in perceived performance is due to the scottish population being more or less static since the 80s compared to the rest of the UK.