@SW-User Actually I broadly agree on many of those.
My water bill props up some quarrying and cement-making company in Indonesia, so like all the services sold abroad, the profits go abroad. When I travelled by train from Southern England to the North, I discovered the Bristol - Leeds stretch helps funds the German State-owned railways.
May as well fill a ship with containers of £10 notes and send it around the world to give them away.
Whether re-nationalising would help improve services is harder to say. It depends a lot on the scale of interference and profits-taking by successive governments who cannot resist "reviews" and tinkering to appear to be Doing Something Useful. Sadly a growing number of politicians of all parties appear to have little or no understanding of How Things Are Done.
Hearing some of the Greens make me sure they not only fail to understand How Things Are Done but also are indeed "green" about How Things Work; in technical, not administrative, ways.
I've not read the Reform manifesto but I am aware it attracts some very unpleasant followers, and I dislike some its ideas. I used to be a UKIP member but left when it started to design a manifesto I opposed almost completely. Its General Secretary, Gerard Batten, appointing Stephen Yaxley-lennon as a so-called "special advisor" did not help me stay - ironically, under UKIP's constitution, SY-L would be barred from membership. (Many parrot that UKIP was hard-Right wing. It was not. Like the EU "parliament", which it revealed as largely meaningless, UKIP was vaguely centrist. It attracting former Labour as well as Tory supporters, and of all races; and it barred extremists and racists of either wing. However, I do not know if Reform has the same membership policy. )
This widespread ignorance is especially so for "career politicians" who gain a degree in nothing too useful, work as some Party HQ administrator for some years then stand as election candidates - having never had any real work in their lives. I am sure they work hard as "Communications Directors" and similar fluff posts, but they have little or no experience in any of the trades, industries and services they help affect as MPs.)
It's common to see British Railways used as a warning against State ownership but it is very unfair. BR's last years was making a trading-profit and modernising the system. The faults were those of Governmental investment-starving, profits-plundering and anti-railways policies - most notably the corrupt Ernest Marples (helped by Mrs. Marples), who let Dr. Beeching carry the can for his (Marples') slash-and-burn policy.
I was "State-owned" for a decade (as a low-level industrial civil-servant) until sold off - and that by Labour, not the Conservatives. Though the Tories started selling or closing everything irrespective of purpose or value, the successive Labour government (Messrs. Blair and Brown) continued that at least as enthusiastically!
I think the parties now overlap so much it is hard to tell one from the other, but it would make life easier if their spokespeople actually tell us honestly what they propose, instead of wasting everyone's time by mainly rubbishing their opponents.
