Great idea, can’t be made to work

State control of national assets, e.g. water, power and the railways, is a fundamentally sound idea beset by two severe practical problems. 1. Competent management is severely lacking in the public and quango sectors from Parliament down. 2. The workforce, via its unions, feels entitled to unrealistic levels of pay and pensions because, whilst private companies can go bump, everyone knows that the taxpayer has lots of cash and can be squeezed indefinitely. And the above doesn’t address the problem of raising enough revenue, by treating the asset as a business, to fund repairs and replacements when other government departments insist on grabbing any profits for their own use.