I LIKE others would have been shocked to read in the Greenock Telegraph on October 12 about Inverclyde Royal Hospital patients being admitted with Victorian era diseases like rickets and malnutrition.

This is truly awful, and purely a result of political policy.

But what an absolute brass neck Councillor Martin McCluskey has taking a headline on this issue in what is an opportunist attempt to portray himself as someone who will fight poverty.

His own position on the two child benefit cap, also known as the 'rape clause', which has increased poverty in many of our communities, is very telling in how committed he really is.

For readers and voters who don't know, Councillor McCluskey does not support scrapping the Tory policy, willing to keep a policy that starves families and pushes them to use foodbanks and payday loans, a policy widely criticised by real anti-poverty campaigners, not hypocrites who say one thing while supporting another.

What does this say about the morality of our politicians that they are willing to condemn families to a life of poverty if it helps their career?

It is this sanctimonious self-righteous idiocy that has turned so many people off politics and politicians.

Paul McEwen

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