THIS £1BN PANIC BUY IS SHAMING ALL OF US
WHAT £1BN WOULD BUY
PANIC buyers have put the nation to shame by hoarding more than £1billion of groceries over the past three weeks.
The supermarket shelf-strippers are buying 50 per cent more food than they need. Yesterday the stockpilers were told to start eating it.
Environment Secretary George Eustice implored them to think of others and insisted: “There’s more than enough food to go around.”
British Retail Consortium boss Helen Dickinson said: “The issue is around people and lorries getting that food on to our shelves, which is why we’ve seen shortages.”
She said of the £1billion glut: “We should make sure we eat some of it.” NHS Medical Director Prof Stephen Powis said hospital staff had wept in shops after a long shift where shelves were empty.
He said: “We should all be ashamed. These are the very people we will all need to look after perhaps us or our loved ones in the weeks ahead.” One nurse who was saving lives in intensive care then found the supermarket shelves bare was critical care nurse Dawn Bilbrough, 51, who had done a 48-hour shift.
Dawn, who works in Leeds, West Yorks, made a heartbreaking video begging hoarders to be considerate.
Tearful Dawn said: “I’ve just come out of the supermarket – there’s no fruit and veg. I had a little cry in there. I just wanted to get some stuff in for the next 48 hours.
“I just don’t know how I’m supposed to stay healthy.
“Those people who are just stripping the shelves of basic foods – you need to stop it because it’s people like me that are going to be looking after you when you are at your lowest. Just stop it. Please.” Tesco has now said the hour before official opening every Sunday will be a shopping slot exclusively for NHS staff, with ID checks to keep out hoarders.
Dawn added: “I understand the fear but we are not a Third World country.
People need to have a bit of awareness and remember other people actually need to survive this.”
Ms Dickinson said shops are used to boosting supplies at Christmas with four months to prepare but the crisis had given them only two weeks. Panic buying is making staff worry
about going to work for fear of being abused or assaulted by customers.
At one Tesco branch in Isleworth, West London, staff were attacked by customers furious about shortages.
A woman said they face hours of verbal abuse from customers often angered by restrictions on items being sold.
The worker said: “Some are okay but others explode and go mad.
“Yesterday a manager had a shopping trolley thrown at him. The girls are coming off the tills crying.” A supermarket worker in Brighton
■■65,000 ventilators
■■22,200 ECMO oxygen machines ■■7,400 ICU beds for three months ■■38,000 nurses for a year ■■32,400 doctors for a year ■■£1billion would almost treble our aid package to Syria
■■And it would feed 1.7 million starving children in Africa for a year