Nick Clegg? - I don't think he'll be getting MY vote!

The other evening I had a phone call from a pleasant person called Angela, who was hoping to secure my vote for Nick Clegg, the incumbant LibDem MP in my constituency. I explained that although I had voted for him previously, I was not inclined to do so again because he had done nothing effective to help me as a steroid victim, and by extension had done nothing effective to help the scores of thousands of other victims of NHS medical negligence who suffer drug-induced obesity but have not been given the vital information they need to reduce or to prevent it. Patients are not being warned to avoid salt and salty food when taking steroids and HRT and the many other drugs that cause sodium and water retention, and so these drugs initiate morbid obesity and a host of other grave and painful health problems in the innocent patients.

My understanding of how Angela and I left it at the end of the phone call was that someone would ring me to arrange for one of the LibDem local councillors to come to see me to discuss the matter, because as a steroid victim I am too ill and disabled to go to see him at his 'surgery'. Instead, unfortunately, I received this afternoon a most unpleasant phone call from one of Clegg's staff, who clearly has a personal agenda and holds an entrenched position, and does not want people to know the truth about steroids and salt sensitivity and how obesity is caused. I asked her never to call me again as I had found the phone call very distressing. I suggest that such an abrasive, combative person is wholly unsuitable to ring ill, disabled people, and furthermore I find it disgraceful that a party worker should seek to deny a disabled constituent a visit from her MP or from one of her local councillors. Goodness knows we all pay a great deal of money for these privileged political beings who, we are told, "work for us", and we should at the very least be assured of courtesy and proper help.

If you would like to help me in my mission to prevent/reduce great and needless suffering you might like to write to my MP, Nick Clegg, at nickclegg@sheffieldhallam.org.uk asking him to visit me, Margaret Wilde, as soon as possible and not be in a rush as he was when he came in 2006.

If you want to read more about the politics of this matter and about Nick Clegg's previous involvement, see my 'political' page.