Creaming Off

Now that the original Milk Snatcher has received the Hollywood treatment (however strange the casting of Meryl Streep rather than, say, Anthony Hopkins or Robert Englund), the spiritual dead-enders of the old bag's ignoble house are indulging in a bit of opportune fulmination about a PFI-style scam in the juvenile resource lacto-provision industry. The extra costs amount to ten million pounds a year, or about one-fortieth of the amount for which Daveybloke's Cuddlies have just stiffed the taxpayer with the sale of Northern Rock; presumably the Conservatives are annoyed because the scale of the robbery isn't big enough. "Taxpayers will be furious that on Labour's watch agents took over this scheme, charged vastly inflated prices and literally milked the taxpayer," spluttered a spokesbeing, evidently blissfully unaware of what happened on the Conservatives' watch to the country's railways, energy, water and health service. Amusingly enough, one proposal to end the abuse is "setting up a system of national suppliers to cut out the middlemen", which sounds suspiciously like the Government getting in the way of profiteering. Daveybloke has said that he "does not like" the idea of becoming Milk Snatcher: The Sequel; but surely even that would be preferable to interfering with market forces. It might even win him back the affections of some of those yapping little creatures on his party's quasi-UKIP wing.