Pensionerpoverty

One old lady in Edinburgh that I used to visit as a GP was always wrapped in rugs and shawls all winter.

She sat in her cold house in front of an unlit gas fire that she could only afford to use for a short time each day.

She told me that she managed fine by shopping once a week for a cheap cut of meat and all the cheaper vegetables and potatoes she could find. This she turned into soup and ate with bread as her main meal of the day in measured amounts for the rest of the week.

The rest of the day she made do with tea and bread with the cheapest butter and jam she could find. It wasn’t much of a life.

An old man I met told me that he used to get on a circular bus and sit there in the warm bus for a morning’s circuits until he had to go home. It passed the day, he said, gave him folk to blether to and anything was better than a cold house.

Things have improved since those days. There are foodbanks that bring person to person contact and something to swell an empty larder.

But pensions have not improved since then and current inflation means that they now buy less, even though Sunak has told us that he has raised them.

He would have been better to have saved the money on postage and given it to the recipients. They could have bought food with it. A letter with an empty promise is not edible.

What more can we do? The Sikh Church in Calcutta feeds200 people a day with a sustaining meal. I believe the one in Leith does the same. Should the Church of Scotland come out of hibernation and feed its poor?

I know it is important to mitigate poverty in third world countries and that is what our collections go to, but there are needy people nearer to home and until Independence allows our government to care for our pensioners it would be nice to think our collections might be used for a weekly meal and get together for the ancient who have worked all their life for us.

I’d almost be encouraged to go to church more often. ELIZABETH SCOTT

Edinburgh