Health service funding siphoned through tax haven

Here's another story in our occasional 'the-rot-runs-deep' series.

The BBC has reported that HSBC set up a Guernsey-based company to reduce tax on profits from funding National Health Service hospitals provided under the notoriously opaque private finance initiative.

What can one say? This happened on the watch of HSBC's former chairman Stephen Green, a Church of England minister and also trade minister in the British coalition government.

As we said earlier, the rot runs deep: very, very deep.