Not a lot of people here in Britain may know this but the country that has delivered capitalism in its most liberal forms continues to operate a state-owned universal postal service.

As it happens that same nation has in place a nationwide passenger rail network that is not in private hands.

Yes, we are talking about the United States.

Indeed, the United States Postal Service (USPS) is actually an independent agency of the US federal government that is responsible for providing just such a postal service for the population.

The USPS is explicitly endorsed by the US Constitution and legally obliged to serve the public - regardless of geography - at uniform price and quality. It has not directly received taxpayer funding since the early 1980s.

And the US National Rail Road Passenger Corporation, otherwise known as Amtrak, is a publicly funded organisation that provides an intercity passenger train service. It is managed and operated as a for-profit business.

Amtrak runs more than 300 trains daily on 21,300 miles of track at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour, connecting more than 500 destinations in 46 states and three Canadian provinces.

A similar situation exists in many European countries. Leading examples are France, Italy, Poland, Norway, Finland and Greece where the postal services and rail systems are owned by the state.

France's rail operator SNCF also has profitable interests across the globe.

In Austria and Belgium the rail networks are state-owned, and in other European countries like Germany, Sweden and Denmark either the postal service, railways or both are mainly state-owned. The Russian state, too, owns and operates its postal service and railways.

Some of these government-owned organisations are run as businesses to show a profit - and what's wrong with that?

But not so here in Britain. Royal Mail has effectively just gone into private hands. Now the renationalised East Coast Main Line is in the process of being handed back to a private operator, while the rest of Britain's train network has been in state-subsidised private franchisee control for many years - but not without some major criticism of the reprivatisation.

Indeed, the fire sale of 60 per cent of Royal Mail is simply the latest public-sector casualty at the hands of the bunch of super carpetbaggers who pose as defenders of the nation's resources.

The balance of the holding of this now very profitable state-owned asset - it posted a profit of more than £400 million in 2012-13 - is likely to be flogged off in like manner next year.

The National Audit Office (NAO) probe into the Royal Mail sell-off is unlikely to make any material difference to the status quo whatever its outcome.

But it could shed some light on the truth behind the government's explanation for the widely condemned bargain-basement initial public offering price of 330 pence per share. At the time of writing, that price had risen by a stunning 242 pence to 572 pence a share.

It might illuminate certain other aspects of the privatisation that currently are not clear.

Perhaps the NAO can look at how and why the government and its adviser Lazard decided to appoint the chosen seven investment banks, four of which led proceedings, to manage the sale.

It might care also to examine the pedigrees of these banks so as to judge their suitability to properly fulfil such a role. There appear to be question marks against the acceptability of at least three out of the four banks that led the sale of Royal Mail.

Between them, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and UBS have been involved in or associated with money-laundering, manipulating Libor and Euribor rates, tax avoidance, tax evasion, insider trading, bond-market rigging and controversial conduct of other kinds.

Collectively, they have received fines totalling many hundreds of millions in US dollars and pounds sterling in relation to certain of their activities over recent years.

Some senior personnel implicated in wrongdoing here have even received convictions. The detail of these cases is in the public domain and not hard to find. As recently as November 1 it was reported that Barclays had suspended six of its traders as the worldwide investigation into the alleged manipulation of the global currency markets deepens.

It begs the question on why the government and Lazard Bros were unable to find a group of banks with better credentials to manage the Royal Mail sell-off.

The forthcoming reprivatisation of East Coast Main Line will be a grab at another of the nation's assets by this repellent government. As reported in the Star on October 25, the Department for Transport launched its tendering process to franchise this profitable and peerless renationalised intercity passenger train service back into private hands.

One has only to look at East Coast's annual report and accounts for 2012-13 to see that this is a successful and well-regarded state-owned train operator. The company even returned more than £200 million to the taxpayer in premium and dividend payments during the year.

Doug Sutherland, chairman of Directly Operated Railways which manages East Coast, said: "East Coast remains Britain's busiest train operator, with average loads per train exceeding 225 customers, which is more than 36 per cent ahead of the next busiest operator."

It's no wonder that the government is in haste to return this little gem to the private sector. Doubtless it's under pressure from its City benefactors to get a move on.

The question remains on whether, this time, the winning franchisee will come up to scratch. It would be humiliating if the state was to step in again and pick up the pieces. But that's not going to bother this government.

Britain's probation service looks like being the next victim of the privatisation drive and there may be more of the same in the pipeline.

So let's not be in two minds about this dreadful Tory-led regime's agenda. It is to grip tightly on to its rolling bandwagon of hell-bent privatisation of all that remains of the nation's most profitable and otherwise valuable resources and institutions this side of the 2015 general election.

To this breed of administration privatisation is merely a euphemism for "lawful" theft on a monumental scale that transfers the state's assets to a small coterie of wealthy corporations and individuals at a knock-down price. To put it another way, it's ideology gone criminal.

Perversely, also, successive British governments over many years have found it perfectly acceptable for foreign state enterprises to own what was once the property of the British state. Tragically, Labour has picked up a dose of some of this privatisation fever too.

The Tory Harold Macmillan once said of Thatcher's privatisations that she was "selling the family silver." How much more he could add today.