Circling Vultures

Circle Health is run by a former banker for the corporate tax dodgers Goldman Sachs, is backed by a couple of hedge-fund gamblers and has been making losses for the past seven years; all of which doubtless explains why Daveybloke's Cuddly Coalition regards Circle Health as the ideal company to pioneer Twizzler Lansley's privatisation of the National Health Service by taking over the running of a debt-ridden hospital. After all, Circle's present losses are merely the result of its commercial vitality: in the Gordon Brown prose of a share prospectus published in the summer, "Circle's growth has placed, and its anticipated growth will continue to place, a strain on its managerial, administrative, operational, financial, information technology and other resources and could affect its ability to provide a consistent level of service to its patients". It is as yet unclear whether anyone has bothered to tell the Department of Health about this; we may hope that the Twizzler's moderating influences among the Liberal Democrats are noisier than the excessively discreet minions of the Murdoch spawn and Daveybloke's cat lady, but I doubt it somehow. A Circle spokesbeing shrugged the whole thing off as "a statement of the obvious", since a share prospectus has to account for every possible eventuality, including the vanishingly unlikely one that people who have donated nearly £800,000 to the Conservative Party might not put NHS patient care very high on their list of priorities. Doubtless the Twizzler, and his moderating influences among the Liberal Democrats, will be happy to lay down the law in their usual manner, so that it can be trampled in an appropriate and mutually advantageous fashion.