Tory war on the sick: We are sending people to foodbanks so they can take medicine
Langworthy medical centre has referred 263 patients to Salford Foodbank since 2014 [Image: Leon Neal/Getty Images].
The claim was that it is entirely wrong to compare what my critic called “controlling benefit expenditure” with genocide.
But here’s the thing: It is precisely the control of benefit expenditure that makes it impossible for some people to take their medicine.
If they can’t take their medicine, they can’t control their illnesses.
If they can’t control their illnesses then, ultimately, they die.
The Tories and their cheerleaders will swear blind that any such death is nothing to do with them.
But who is depriving them of their ability to survive, if not the Tories?
The icy wind outside the Height medical practice in Salford is a clear sign to practice nurse Janice Hussey that she will be sending patients – stuck with the choice of eating or keeping warm – to the local food bank.
More than half of the practice’s 4,000 registered patients are classed by GPs as “very deprived”, with high rates of alcohol and drug problems, social isolation and homelessness. Increasingly, a referral to Salford Foodbank has become more crucial to their care than anything she can offer from her clinical training.
“It’s a life-and-death situation with some patients,” says Hussey. “Some can’t take their medication without food, so they are going without that too because they cannot afford to eat. It drives me up the wall.”
She refers to a man in his 50s who has type 1 diabetes and requires insulin three times a day with carbohydrates. Since he does not necessarily eat even once a day, neither does he take his medication. She is struggling to persuade him to go to the food bank. “For many people, it’s an admission of failure,” she says.
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Referrals to foodbank mean 5 miles out of town and back with probably no transport and maybe a couple of kids, pram, grannie and wheelchair in tow.
And foodbanks can tend to have little selfish politics or relgious agenda. Tressell Trust is a religious organisation. The local foodbank in the local Born Again Kings Hall who highjacked the service wont distribute the food to churches and halls closer to town and on the estates and in the areas. It has been suggested. But NO they want everyone crawling up no matter how ill tired old or mums with toddlers and prams 5 miles there and back so they can come to Kinsg Hall and be served the gospel and inveted/nagged and pestered to goto church and be born again or go to hell.
and their ideas about women disabled and relationships in marriage as welll as being gay is a sin is unaccepable when they are supposed to be serving everyone.
a mate with a double buggy twins and 3 year old traised there and back no help but a bloody lecture
Too many politics, egos in this and no knowledge of any disabuility or illness or expecially mental illness (possessed by demons) or learning needs at all.
Takes all the time to say Get Off I dont need a hug and they wont accept it.
Then there is the sexual creeps hanging around such places looking for vulnerable to give favours in return for help.
This is why Bevan and Beveridge brought in the welfare state, happened then, happens now.
I would rather starve I did not go back for my 2nd and 3rd foodbag and know others who dont. rathere starve and sleep on streets
a brittle bone man with diabetes avoids even though it may mean his death
Recently This Writer was attacked for suggesting that the Conservative Government is committing covert genocide on people with long-term illnesses and disabilities.
yes its called aktion t4 rolling along without much of a ado. jeff3
It’s a well known fact that the rotten Tories do, and want to, kill very poor and vulnerable people. The problem is that we have such a gutless electorate in the UK that they help them by self interest and indifference.
Many in the Nasty Party would like to commit genocide on any working class people who will not agree to be their slave labour. They are no better than the Nazis in the 1920s – the Holocaust didn’t start with genocide, it began with killing of the disabled and the mentally ill. Tories are evil.