As we approach the festive season, it is in the spirit of Christmas that we remember those less fortunate than ourselves. This year, I would like to highlight the plight of families in the UK who don’t have enough to eat.
Nadine Dorries MP has the distressing and poignant details:
“I was with an MP the other day, and his wife rang him. She was at the supermarket checkout and her debit card had been refused. They had no money in their account. He was just distraught, and all because he’s too scared to claim travel expenses, scared of what the local paper will write if he does. People are starving, poor things.”
Sometimes I despair for our society: care assistants in need of medical treatment are allowed off work despite being able to use Twitter, yet genuine public servants go hungry, despite what Edwina Currie might have to say on the subject.
Fortunately, Dorries’ own “local paper” fully understands that investigating MPs’ expenses is a form of stalking and to be deplored, and this means that she herself is able to be an activist for reform. She led the way in July 2010, when her copy of the expenses guidelines for MPs “accidentally” fell from her office window onto a nearby roof – she posted a photo of this on her blog, as a rebuke to busy-body officials and ungrateful elements of the general public.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
