Coventry council cave in to bad publicity
Mr & Mrs Rowley now to be allowed meals on wheels
The pressure from the media was probably simply too great for them. While the newspapers played their part, BBC West Midlands have been magnificent in getting this council's bizarre decisions reversed.
The big worry is, how may more elderly and/or vulnerable people are being neglected by the very people paid (in some cases, handsomely) to serve the community?
Coventry Council's shame part 2
Perhaps it's a little unfair to complain of the council's penny-pinching, they can afford to be generous elsewhere.
Next chief executive may earn £200K/yearSo the current incumbent, Stella Manzies, has to make do on a measly £145,770? Not much for instituting a regime that denies meals-on-wheels to vulnerable pensioners, is it?
It's laughable when the deputy council leader claims it's because what the market demands - it's the likes of him that are
making the market.
It all meshes with the society we've become, in which the rich get richer at the expense of the poor. The great banking rip-off and the MP's expenses scandal are all symptoms of the same disease.
Coventry Council's shame
Recently making the local and national news has been this story of how an elderly and partially disabled couple were denied meals on wheels by Coventry Council despite being unable to cook for themselves.
Coventry Evening Telegraph storyDaily Mail storyDaily Telegraph storyThey were also featured on the BBC TV local news programme.
The denial, presumably part of the Conservative Council's penny-pinching (are you reading this, David Cameron?), comes despite them raising their charges to £4.10 per meal, which for 2 pensioners for 2 meals a day, would cost a staggering £16.40. What the social worker who made the assessment did offer was a shopping service at a princely rate of £20 an hour. One might accuse the council of not merely neglecting the vulnerable, but actually seeking to rip them off, perhaps.
The storm of publicity seems to have shamed the council into a
rethink, though they're still capable of delivering insults: they've phoned Mrs Rowley to offer to send someone round to teach her how to lift stuff out of the oven. Presumably they have a cure for rheumatoid arthritis?
Still, full marks for former Labour councillor, Brian Patton, who brought this whole episode to the attention of the press.
This blog was made with recycled bytes.