Muammar Al Khadafi

Another day, another care home scandal - this time at the St Theresa's Care Centre in Callington, Cornwall, where inspectors found that residents didn't have sufficient food or water, and only 3 of 19 people monitored had received a bath in the previous month.

Not all that long ago we saw the story of the Elmer Sands Nursing Home in Bognor Regis, where patients were left in filthy conditions and lying in their own waste.

Or the Penlee Nursing Home in Weston Super Mare where 75 year old stroke victim Colin Lewis was left to suffer for over a week, and subsequently die, because nursing staff covered up the accident.

We could go on and on, we could point out that in 2 out of 3 of those cases foreign workers were involved in the mistreatment (and that we don't yet know for St Theresas Care Centre), but we won't.

Britain really has become an atrocious place to become old, a nation where we'll shunt you aside like some grubby little secret to eke out your final days in squalor and neglect.

Yes, of course there are many good care homes, but the fact remains that cases such as those above are far too common, and that it is simply disgusting such conditions can exist in so called modern and caring Britain.

Whether it be for want of bigger profits, or for the simple fact that society doesn't really seem to give a damn, or that the people who are supposed to be checking these care homes lack the staffing or the will, doesn't matter. It is simply unacceptable.

Being old in Britain appears to have become something of a crime and a stigma, with the elderly shoved away out of sight and mind.

As well as this it seems rather a lottery as to whether or not you will end your days in conditions not fit for a human being.

Britain supposedly prides itself on its humanity and compassion, we spend £billions every year on improving the lives of people in foreign countries, and yet our eyes are seemingly elsewhere when it comes to our own elderly.

Yet, in case after case after case we fail our own elderly people.

Just a couple of incidents such as these are a disgrace, but the amount occurring in modern Britain is something that shames us a nation.

Not one pensioner should be left to end their days in humiliating conditions like this, but yet again our politicians are looking away as the scandalous catalogue of abuse and neglect goes on.

Our elderly deserve far better, yet they are too often forgotten and ignored, pushed from public view and low down on the list of concerns for our so called caring society.

Indian nurse Ramdai Singh has been found guilty of misconduct and kicked out of the profession after a series of scandalous incidents of neglect and mistreatment during her time as a care home manager.

The care home, Elmer Sands in Bognor Regis, had already hit the headlines back in 2006 when owners Ashraff and Khairool Jaddoo were struck off after details of a catalogue of neglect emerged.

Incidents included a 70 year old dementia sufferer who lost a staggering 11 stone in weight after being fed a starvation diet whilst lying in a urine soaked room, and another elderly woman who was left lying in her own faeces in a room which witnesses described as "nothing more than a kennel".

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This is the price our elderly pay for having their twilight years left in the hands of profit hungry, often foreign, managers who see dignity and care as far less important than making money.

We wouldn't leave a dog to be treated like this, but up and down the country the elderly are suffering every day, left to be little more than cash cows kept in filthy conditions, milked for every penny that they are worth.

As a nation we should be ashamed of a culture where the elderly are hidden away and forgotten, left to live out their latter years in squalor and filth. But, aside from a few headlines, nothing much happens, one isolated incident hits the papers, hundreds go unreported.

Even when those guilty of neglect are caught, nothing much is done. They've made their money, they've mistreated many, and then they just get a slap on the wrist and - if foreign - are still allowed to remain here in the UK. They win, the elderly victims just get to die in their own filth.

It seems that money matters, people don't - too often people become nothing more than figures on a spreadsheet, a source of profit and not a person who has a right to expect dignity and decent treatment.

What we have become as a nation is quite simply disgusting.