That musky odour

When the English and Welsh water companies were privatised in 1989, the government took on their debt, about £5 billion in, I presume, 1989 pounds: so about £13 billion today. What that means is that the citizens of England and Wales (and probably Scotland as well) paid off this debt out of their own pockets. Since that time the water companies have paid about £72 billion in dividends to their shareholders: presumably considerably more when corrected for inflation. Today they have debts of £5...