So, Theresa May is too busy to come to Glasgow and meet people living in poverty, the very people she promised to help when she took over as Prime Minister.

Of course she is too busy, she has a packed schedule.

She is busy continuing with the austerity agenda of David Cameron and George Osborne that places the burden of reducing the deficit on the backs of those who can afford it least.

She is busy encouraging an economic model that trumpets a rise in employment even though it is mainly in the form of part-time, low paid, often zero hours contracts and by the growth of the so called gig economy.

An employment model that promotes itself as flexible for the worker but offers low pay, no holidays or sickness cover and no long term prospects and which gives the company all the benefits of an employer without the financial responsibilities.

She is busy pursuing a rigid jobseeker system of pushing people into unsuitable and exploitative work with the threat of sanctions to get more people off the jobless total and reduce the benefits bill.

She is also busy closing Jobcentres and forcing people to travel longer distances that will increase the risk of being sanctioned, leaving them with no money.

Then she is busy denying that the above policies have anything to do with the shocking and shameful increase in the number of people who have been helped to feed themselves and their children by a foodbank.

So yes, I can understand when Theresa May says “pressures on her diary” make a visit to Glasgow’s east end, where she will find people suffering from every one of those policies listed and she will find them in abundance, not possible.

But the Prime Minister doesn’t like meeting people. Unless they are people who agree with her.

In the very same week as she knocked back the genuine and serious request from Glasgow East MP David Linden to come to Glasgow, she was able to accept another invite.

She was asked if she would visit the West Midlands by a Conservative MP and she accepted.

Ms May who said she couldn’t come to Glasgow because her diary was too busy said she would visit the West Midlands to meet the new Tory Mayor when her diary allows.

So a busy diary doesn’t prevent her meeting a fellow Tory but it stops her meeting people living with the consequences of austerity and a harsh and unnecessary obsession with welfare cuts.

During the election campaign, which she now no doubt regrets calling, she came to Scotland and her visit was so closed and remote that it seemed she was a fugitive being smuggled into the country.

One way or another Theresa May knows her days as Prime Minister are numbered and she knows that a visit to somewhere like Easterhouse would only highlight the damage caused by her party and government to the ordinary people who she pledged to help and would hasten her departure.

She’s busy all right, busy looking after number one.