1. Dear Dr de Strange 1.1. I am a leading management consultant.

1.2. In your recent columns you often interchange the acronyms PFI and PPP.

1.3. It is important that your readers know and understand three sub-points:

1.3.1. What these initials mean, and:

1.3.2. That PFI and PPP are not interchangeable, indeed one is now obsolete.

1.3.3. A further study is required to identify the obsolete term.

2. That will be£2,500 plus VAT.

Mancon, Leicester What a very strange letter! All those numbers, It is enough to give me a nervous breakdown (or a Kiley as It is known in the trade). Everyone knows what PFI and PPP mean. They are both jolly good ways of building hospitals, channel tunnels and railways, enabling lots of astonishing progress announcements to be made between now and 3 May (or 7 June or 4, 11, 18 or 25 October). PFI means 'Profits For Industry' and was invented by Kenneth Clarke, so perhaps It is not as good as I thought. PPP on the other hand means 'Prescott's Profit Partnership' and is flaming brilliant because it enables the nursing expansion (negative), hospital maintenance improvement (pending) and patient prioritisation plans all to be delivered quickly, fairly and at no immediate cost to the taxpayer. Your cheque is in the post.

I was very upset watching Panorama recently. It seemed to suggest that the NHS treats patients worse than animals. There were some very distressing shots of rich consultants and private sector nurses swanning about drinking Bovril. What do you think of this sort of thing ?

Tony, Rutland Oh, I do so agree. is not it awful that the BBC is still stuffed full of Tory blue rinses? Why these traitors transmit this sort of stuff, with the nation in crisis over the possibility of a delay in the election, beats me.

Especially so when our brave boys are locked in a lifeor-death struggle with hordes of vicious fascist sheep in Merciadonia. Still I suppose a short delay would let all those hill farmers go off to Tuscany for early summer hols, before the Cabinet gets there.