Don't mind if I've been beated by a hundred others...
You're not paying for the water. You're paying for them to clean it, to build the pipes that get it to you, to maintain these pipes and for them to make sure you never go without.

You're paying for a service, not the water.
( vix0r was not Matthew on, Mon 27 Oct 2008, 12:55, 1 reply)

which is fully understood by most, I believe,
but the point is it should be provided by the government out of income tax revenue.
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Mon 27 Oct 2008, 13:02, closed)

The utilities were privatised
... by the government and they spent the money on lowering income tax.

So we used to own the water companies, and any profits they made were passed back to us through the dividend to government, which lowered taxes (like the post office has on occasion done). But now, we don't own it, so we have to buy (cleaned) water from companies, who pass the profits back to their shareholders, as a reward for them stumping up the working capital for the business.

This isn't true for all the UK - Scotland's water is still public, and I think Hyder in Wales and Kelda were either renationalised or are not for profit companies.
(cheesehead, Mon 27 Oct 2008, 15:16, closed)

The utilities were privatised by the government and they spent the money on lowering income tax
That's a very optimistic rose-tinted view of things. When Thatcher sold off all the utilities in the 80's, tax didn't go down at all.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Mon 27 Oct 2008, 17:02, closed)