No-one likes sitting listening to recorded music over the phone, so I felt sorry for the bloke the other day who was saying he'd been held in an HM Revenue and Customs phone queue for over an hour. But then he said, "They're probably all sat there eating doughnuts instead of picking up the phone. They ought to privatise it!"  There's an answer about the doughnuts*. But first of all, there's the idea that the private sector could run HMRC's functions better. Here's my top five reasons why it couldn't. 5 - It's been tried before. From 1992 to 1994, the Government set up a 'Market Testing' programme, to measure Civil Service efficiency against the private sector. Customs and Excise completed 40 market tests in one year, with 90% of the in-house bids successful. In other Government departments over 12,000 jobs were cut from the state payroll by being TUPE'd out to private contractors. But the National Audit Office pointed out to MP'...