Two in three of the UK’s health trusts are ignoring new orders to offer cataract surgery to all those sufferers whose doctors believe they would benefit. Instead most of the trusts are only offering to treat cataracts where patients are nearly blind with them, on the grounds of saving costs.

This has been described as “inhumane” and “profoundly stupid” by the Daily Mail newspaper which, along with the Royal National Institute for Blind People (RNIB) and Age UK point out that denying cataract sufferers the simple and quick operation is a false economy since those with failing sight are more prone to falls, incapacity and mental illness, ending up costing the NHS even more.

A charitable scheme to supply cars for disabled people in exchange for their state disability allowance has been slammed by MPs after it emerged that its chief executive was taking £1.7 million a year out of the scheme.

This was the “totally unacceptable” salary paid to Mike Betts the CEO of Motability Operations, a taxpayer-funded monopoly organisation with no competitors that pays some of its other directors £1+ million salaries and allows banks to rake off £700,000 a year from their involvement. Motability is also hoarding £2.4billion of public money and Betts lives in a £5million flat overlooking Tower Bridge.

Initial investigations into the greed at Motability were carried out by the Daily Mail and the firm is now being probed by the National Audit Office (NAO).

A new government scheme has been launched to kill badgers, a protected species, in areas of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) outbreaks, even where it is unlikely that badgers given the disease by infected cattle are re-infecting the cattle. Infected cattle moved by farmers from one farm to another are usually the reason for badgers and deer catching the disease.

To encourage the killing the government’s Natural England office is offering shooters, who can also be farmers, up to £50 per badger corpse.

The scheme has been described by the RSPCA as “inhumane, ineffective and costly” and by the Wildlife Trusts, which has banned the culling on its 2,300 nature reserves, as “scientifically unsound”. The Badger Trust also describes the cull as “flawed science” and is supporting a High Court challenge to the government in the form of a judicial review.

A jail sentence of one year has been given to a charity finance officer who stole more than £53,000.

Gemma Mason, 36, bought more than 1,000 items from Amazon using the credit card issued to her by NSA Afan, a community regeneration group. The items included luxury handbags, and shoes, fake tan, diamantes and frilly underwear.

Admitting fraud the mother of two from Neath, West Glamorgan was told by Judge Geraint Walters “This was a serious breach of trust”.

The Church of England has been accused of hypocrisy for attacking greedy City bonus cultures after it has emerged that their charity investment manager was paid a bonus of more than £250,000 last year.

Tom Joy, 45, was paid a total of more than £500,000 by the Church Commissioners for England, making him one of the highest-paid charity executives in the UK.