Reforming Characters

An NHS accounts worker has been convicted of funnelling money meant for cancer drugs into the hands of various smallish units of the private sector. Some of the money has been recovered, but the hospital in question is still more than three hundred thousand pounds short. It is fortunate that so many sick people these days are shirkers whose treatments can be cut back in the name of efficiency; otherwise the Minister for Health and News Corporation might very well be displeased. The fraudsters spent the money on such things as luxury shopping and mortgages, which epitomises their tragic underachievement. With a little less hedonism and a little more dead-eyed financial acquisitiveness, their scheme could probably have qualified as part of the Private Finance Initiative.