Lord Tebbit,
Of all the Conservatives who have been in government since I first became politically aware back in the 1970s, you are the only one for whom I had any respect. That respect was created following your appearance on the Sky TV programme “Target” in the 1980s with Austin Mitchell, MP, in an episode in which you stated that “not one penny of your National Insurance is spent on the NHS.” If I remember rightly, Thatcher gave you something of a ticking-off for that piece of unscripted honesty at the time.
What a shame, then, that you have, in one sentence, managed to kill that respect stone dead by parroting the Party line about food banks. I had thought that you were a man of integrity, honesty and common sense. Instead I find that you are a mere Party creature for whom the sound-bite and getting your face into the papers once again is more important than resolving the poverty crisis that the monster at the head of the Department for Work and Pensions has created.
Do, you honestly believe that that anyone with even a shred of self esteem would willingly attend a source of charity in full view of their neighbours? People in front of whom they have to hold their heads up at the supermarket. Would you do it? The problem with those who have wealth and privilege is that you tend to forget that everyone, no matter how lowly our station might be, has some level of personal pride to be maintained. The charity that I work with – The Biscuit Fund – now has almost 100 case histories of women with children who, having exhausted the food bank option, are terrified of their inability to feed those youngsters. Two stories have made the press of women who have taken their own lives and those of their children, rather than allow the suffering to continue. They jumped from high buildings, Lord Tebbit, holding those children – those seeds of our nation’s future – in their arms. Just two statistics among the thousands who have died as a result of your Party in government’s abhorrent policies. They were people who spent their cash on junk food, were they. Does it not occur to you, in your silk-cushioned ivory tower, that junk food is possibly all they could afford? Processed garbage in cheap cardboard packaging, which packaging probably has more nutritional value than the garbage it contains?
I am deeply disappointed by your ill-considered and completely out-of-touch remarks. As far as I am concerned now, should you ever turn up at my door you would be told to get on yer bike, old son.
Sincerely,
Darren Lynch
