@element[0] said:I've never understood privatising industries that were never profitable and quite frankly were never meant to be profitable.  Now we pay more for a worse service and with all the goverment subsidies/hand outs to keep the private company going it costs about the same amount of tax dollars anyway.It's usually to keep expenses "off the books".  That way politicians can claim they lowered spending and then simply funnel the money required to run the unprofitable enterprise through a backdoor, such as subsidies or tax breaks.  It's a pretty classic political move that appeals to those who want to lower spending on a superficial level, but eventually the government-subsidized debt accumulated by the enterprise becomes too massive and the government has to resume control of the company.  This happened recently in the US with the mortgage-lending government agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.