Carrying the Cross

For anyone still in need of a clue, the corpse of the Secretary for Corporate Pandering has clarified the Government's position on care for the vulnerable. There is, the lich slobbered, "no way we can bail out" Southern Cross, the largest care home operator in the country, which is on the brink of bankruptcy as a result of gambling on the property market by its foreign owners. Southern Cross' difficulties have emerged in spite of an evidently laudable degree of fiscal responsibility in such minor matters as recruiting, training, paying and supervising staff, so that the company can still afford to pay its lawyers, accountants and, inevitably, bankers to the tune of half a million a week. That, of course, is what the care home business is all about, and it may possibly go some way towards explaining why the maggots' leavings are reluctant to expose the taxpayer to such materialistic temptations. Instead, the suppurating pile of dead flesh said: "I have asked my officials to look carefully at the business models of companies that provide public services and ensure they are stable and the sector regulators responsible for them are able to act responsibly"; which, translated into Oldspeak, presumably means that it has placed the remains of its fingers in the remains of its ears and ordered its minions to find a scapegoat.