The Tories: Two Faced And Loving It.

After Cameron's speech about a new "caring capitalism" it wasn't long before the truth reared its ugly head to demonstrate the shallow, vacuous sound bite nature of his words. Wringing his hands he told us that he is "powerless" to do anything about excessive banking bonuses and that re-regulating the finance industry is unrealistic. Then, even before his weasel words had ceased to echo around various TV news studios, Andrew Lansley calmly announced that financial rating agencies, the very people who spectacularly failed to realistically rate their own industry and now insist tht entire countries pauperize themselves in order to pay back the unwise investments made by the banks, will be the arbiters of the NHS. No longer will the NHS be judged on its clinical excellence or even on patient care - it will be judged on credit-worthiness. For the gang of two, Cameron and Lansley, the advantages are obvious. They will be able to wash their hands of the NHS and pretend that they are no longer responsible while, when hospitals begin to close, they will be able to point the finger at the likes of Standard & Poor's, shrug their shoulders and reiterate their lack of power over such organizations. Like Judas before them, they will hand us over to our enemies, take their thirty pieces of silver and deny all responsibility. Unfortunately neither of them will then have the decency to hang themselves from the nearest tree.