Both may be government lead initiatives/screw ups - but it is the private sector operators who have screwed up on more than one occasion.

Bus de-regulation was supposed to increase competition. Where locally has that happened? Who is at fault for that? The operators or the government?

On the railways, operators have jumped ship, had contracts cancelled or performed so poorly, that on renewal they are ignored from the bidding process.
Some operators don't even have enough staff to run services.

Your thread on the new Lord Adonis scheme mentions that the ferry should be reinstated back to Norway. Who cancelled that?

At the end of the day, unless there is some sort of benefit to shareholders, these private organisations are not going to break their neck to run services.
Several of the rail and bus operators are foreign owned, so the country see's very little of the profit.

DOR have made a fantastic success of the ecml and in turn generated £500m in profit to the Government. If managed properly, that is then reinvested into the service and other parts of the country/economy.
If DB or RATP win the next contract and make the same sort of profit, who benefits?
If Virgin win it, who benefits?
If things go wrong like it did with GNER or National Express, who picks up the pieces?

Froth or not, it needs looking at.