The Goatleys
Sir: Your medical correspondent may be good on blood pressure, but he is .not very perceptive about poverty 'The strange case of William Goatley' (December 1). Dr Linklater attributes Mr Goatlev's "sense of doom" — which has led to his drinking problem and marriage break-up — to the "addictive pattern of life on social security." Even to an amateur psychologist it is surely clear that for a man of fifty-four with five children the loss of his job combined with illness would be sufficient cause of stress. More important, Mr Goatley — whose previous income is not revealed — has for two years been supporting seven people on less than E40 a week. Dr Linklater states that they spend £13 on food and have £16 quaintly described as "cash surplus." I wonder how Dr Linklater would feel on 27p a day for food and just over £2 a week to cover all clothes, heating, fares and other necessities?
Yet he has the impertinence to suggest that Mr Goatley should have been encouraged to accept "any kind of work" — even though he is a skilled craftsman — when this would have meant a reduction of £5 or more on his subsistence income. The fact that Mr Goatley is demoralised is indeed a fault In the system — a system which pentilises a man who falls sick, which creates unemployment and then ex
pects its victims to be shunted into low-paid jobs. Dr Linklater is lucky to belong to a profession where there is a labour shortage and to have the chance to air his views on some of his cases to readers of The Spectator and Daily Mail. But he is hardly helping the health of the sick unemployed by suggesting that the DHSS is too generous in its provision.
Frank Field
Child Poverty Action Group, I Macklin Street, Drury Lane, London WC2
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