I'm gonna get you in my tent, tent, tent, tent, tent
Where we can both experiment, ment, ment, ment, ment
Yeah, yeah it's so convenient, ent, ent, ent, ent
Let's take a taxi to my tent
So tested by the existence of tents is Ms Braverman that she wants to see fewer of them. The FT has told its readers “Suella Braverman pushes to restrict tents for rough sleepers … Proposals include new civil penalty for charities giving tents on public nuisance grounds”. Yeah, proper rough sleepers don’t need tents, do they? They have no problem with getting soaked through and frozen stiff, right? And too many of them are FORRIN!
You think I jest? Here is the Home Secretary in her own words: “The British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice”. Yeah, it’s one of them Lifestyle Choices! There was more.
“Unless we step in now to stop this, British cities will go the way of places in the US like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where weak policies have led to an explosion of crime, drug taking, and squalor” says another of those Here Today And Gone Tomorrow Politicians from the party that has, since it came to power in 2010, overseen a 74% increase in the number of rough sleepers.
But do go on. “Nobody in Britain should be living in a tent on our streets. There are options for people who don’t want to be sleeping rough, and the Government is working with local authorities to strengthen wraparound support including treatment for those with drug and alcohol addiction”. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham was not impressed.
Taking drugs is always bad when the Tories’ wrong sort of people do it. But those who have plenty of money, and with whom the Tories often mingle, can snort away to their hearts’ content. That includes many in and around the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press. If Ms Braverman wants to be consistent, she should go after them too. She isn’t, and she won’t.
Littering is another area where she and her fellow Tories won’t act consistently. Hence many who are not homeless having developed the habit of not bothering with such trivialities as litter bins. And as for Tories and stealing, with all those billions sprayed up the wall on the Covid pandemic and the VIP lane, well, if she wants to set an example, she knows where to look, and it isn’t inside the tent of some poor homeless person.
As for the idea that living out of a tent is a “lifestyle choice”, to use her happy phrase, consider what pundit Marina Purkiss said about that: “A lifestyle choice, to me, is going vegan, or switching to an electric car. Last time I checked, it wasn’t being homeless. And I think it shows how completely out of touch, insensitive, and heartless she is”. She and many of the media class.
We have Government ministers pushing the idea that peacefully showing solidarity with the Palestinian people is a form of hate, that bombing the crap out of defenceless civilians is self-defence, and that demonstrating empathy is a form of anti-Semitism. So it is entirely predictable that this mindset now claims that the homeless keeping dry, and less cold, is a lifestyle choice.
This Government is gripped by sickness. Hopefully it will be terminal.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
It's not just this government "gripped by sickness". It's Britain's entire sociopolitical culture. Been that way with all governments since 1979. The public record speaks for itself.
ReplyDeleteBraverman is a logical product of it, as were Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Bozo, Truss, Sunak and all their fellow travellers. The same goes for Starmer, Reeves and co. The differences are of a tiny degree, but always amount to the same evil. It worsens as the perpetrators gain confidence the British electorate will remain apathetic.
The unpalatable fact is Britain is owned and run by malevolent far right xenophobic thieves and tenth rate barrow boys and girls working out of the most corrupt capital city in the world. All of them subservient to US warmongering fascism and an economic system of organised thievery.
Sooner or later this will reach a flashpoint which will make the Gaza mass murder look like a minor skirmish. It will be 1914 and 1939 all over again.
The real tragedy is that too many in Britain don't give a shit. They prefer dry rot of the soul. Hence the continuing appearance of sheer cold, evil thugs like Braverman.
I wouldn't describe her as insensitive. Just evil.
ReplyDeleteThe statistics are easily available from the House of Commons web site. They show in increase in rough sleeping of more than 170% between 2010 and 2019. I'm sure the usual purveyors of lies and spin will try to blame Gordon Brown for this.
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ReplyDeleteOr Blair maybe?
Percentage of Gulf War and Afghanistan veterans in those totals would be interesting.
Katherine Burble-Thingge, on the other hand, will blame the anything-goes liberal education policies in the 60s.
The ironic thing is though is that the Tories under Joe's bro Johnson did very effectively tackle rough sleeping during the first Covid lockdown by relaxing planning rules and repurposing empty buildings for a temporary period, it's probably the only genuinely good thing bojo ever did. But of course as soon as the epidemic was over the previously housed homeless found themselves kipping under railway bridges and in shop doorways again. it is as Starmer rightly says a political not lifestyle choice
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