It’s incomprehensible that patients were allowed to lie in their excrement, and gut wrenching for families to later learn that many of the 90 deaths at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, caused by the infection clostridium difficile, could have been avoided.

It made me think about how we care for our elderly when they are vulnerable and most in need. Like an elderly man forced to eat cardboard because he was too poor to buy food.

Age Concern Norwich described this shocking case to their local paper when commenting on news that the number of pensioners going bankrupt has risen eight-fold over the last five year.

How much worse can it get?