The sick price of getting into bed with Thatcher

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This is what happens when you turn over public services to the money men.

Hospital bosses give themselves six-figure salaries and patients die. University vice-chancellors behave like bankers and students are forced into greater debt.

Fire service chiefs sack firefighters and cut cover provided by their brigades, while trousering huge bonuses for showing how well they can ape the private sector.

Public service morality goes out of the window, while greed and mismanagement come in the front door. None of the services we once relied on to do the job properly, for the right money and with the right attitude towards the people who need them, is safe from the corrosive impact of privateering greed.

At least 400 men and women died because hospital chiefs in Mid Staffordshire wanted Foundation Status to gain independence from the NHS.

They cut 150 medical, nursing and staff jobs and closed 100 beds so they could save £10million to win their freedom to make money.

The top man was on as much as £180,000 a year. He's suspended on £3,500 a week.

Hundreds of deaths and misery on the wards, with patients drinking water from vases, was a price worth paying for this coveted prestige.

University chiefs - who earn more than the Prime Minister - are no less avaricious. They want a minimum 66% increase in tuition fees to £5,000 a year, to develop what used to be places of learning but are now ruthless businesses.

Some even demand 233% rises, presumably on the principle that while you've got your hand in the till, you might as well steal as much as you can before it snaps shut on your fingers.

Nothing is safe, anywhere. Ambulance chiefs in the North-West of England want to privatise the 999 emergency response service. I wonder what's in it for them.

And no wonder Royal Mail managers want Lord Mandy to sell off a chunk of their business. They can smell the swill in the trough.

It stinks. The collapse of decency at the top in our public services may be the nastiest aspect of New Labour's embrace of Thatcherism.