CAN you hear those little sounds? Yes, it is the latest set of pips being squeezed out of hardworking families by private companies with a virtual monopoly on public services.

Yesterday commuters found out that once again there will be an inflation-busting rise to their rail fares, just 24 hours after Thames Water made its latest pitch to grab more cash out of millions of household budgets.

Now, we realise some of our readers may point to the recent price rise of this newspaper. A fair point, but (despite wishing otherwise), the Oxford Mail is not a product that hundreds of thousands of people have to purchase with little or no choice, whereas railway travel and water supplies are.

The justification from both Thames and the train companies was effectively the same mantra they chant each time they ask the Government for permission to plunge their hands into your pockets: pay today because we need to invest in infrastructure for better service tomorrow.

It’s almost the argument that can never end because the promise is better public service.

But the problem is these are private, profitable companies that decided to take on serving the public – nobody put a gun to their heads.

Thames’ whinging about increased bad debt is particularly rich. For all companies bad debts is a cost of doing business and we struggle to see why Thames Water should be allowed to get the Government to effectively decree every red cent of this should be arbitrarily slapped on bills of customers by what is a monopoly.

Of course we want to see better services, but still those pipes leak and still those commuters stand on their way into Paddington.

If only both sectors could make service improvements as efficiently as they make the case for extra cash.