Over the last few days, it has emerged that the foundation set up in Captain Tom’s name (not NHS Charities Together) not only paid out more in management costs than it did in grants during its first year, but also paid over £50,000 to two companies run by Ingram-Moore and her husband. The revelation has provoked outrage. But more illuminating, really, is what happened to the £33 million that Captain Tom raised himself, and what it tells us about the NHS’s increasing reliance on charitable giving.

Once, in a time beyond political memory, charity was touted as part of the government’s big thing. Conservatism in its ethical moments takes warmth from the idea of the well-off writing cheques drawn against their sense of richesse oblige, and the not well-off selling jumble and raffling gin to aid the needy in lieu of the state; indeed, this is how the Conservative Party itself has long been run. Its Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, introduced just before the recess and hurried back to Parliament for its second reading yesterday, sets up a statutory register for lobbyists.

The Oxford Student recently ran – and later retracted – a story about a Bullingdon Club initiation ceremony which allegedly included burning a £50 note in front of a tramp. Whether or not the story’s true, it pales beside Baudelaire’s narrative prose poem ‘Let’s Beat Up the Poor’.