Shallow Grave

Monitor, the body responsible for ensuring that private profiteers are not so intimidated by regulations that they decline to participate in Twizzler Lansley's health service feeding frenzy, has warned that "efficiency savings" (cuts, in Standard English) may need to be half again as brutal as previously envisaged. In a letter dated 27 April, released on Thursday and published to coincide with some wedding or other, Monitor says that its estimates have been revised thanks to George the Progressively Osborne's simultaneous raising of inflation and flatlining of everything else. Labour immediately accused the Government of doing what New Labour would have done, and trying to bury the bad news. A Monitor spokesbeing hastened to clarify that its "assumptions are a reflection of the risks in the external environment; they are not a directive to make cuts", and that NHS trusts are free to take a more optimistic or a more pessimistic approach depending on whether their individual circumstances have been favourably or unfavourably affected by the economy going into a coma.