Camden New Journal - Letters: Means

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Camden New Journal - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 1 November 2007

In fear of means-test

• JOHN Gulliver’s article on the old lady who lives in fear of Camden Council and also the letter (Care means-test amounts to a loss of human rights, October 25) shows the critical social condition in this borough and probably the whole of England.
I do some part-time care work and I wrote to the leader of Camden council Keith Moffitt about a very elderly lady I care for and got the stock reply when I explained how she was in tears and in fear of what would happen to her because the home care service would be stopped because she refused to be humiliatingly means-tested in her home by social workers.
Living in an elderly person’s sheltered accommodation hardly made her ‘wealthy’. Because means-testing is law or governmental or council policy, does not automatically make it right. Bad laws are made to be broken.
There is an insidious erosion of the old people’s state of mind and their inability to fight back through their being elderly and lacking the energy to do so and this type of inquisition can ultimately kill them off through worry and poverty.
Monty (Field Marshal Montgomery) was once asked if he, as a wealthy retired man, felt guilty taking his old age pension.
He said no, it was his right, and this should be the case for us all. For one day we will all grow old and need this service. As a mark of a civilised society we should care for the old. They have worked, paid taxes and national insurance and usually only in later life do they need care and assistance.
If politicians and government gave priority to spending not on wars killing innocents in far away countries in order to keep the military industrial complex in business but on building a truly welfare society then I am sure fear of councils and government agencies would rapidly disappear.
CLEM ALFORD
Tavistock Place, WC1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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