The Politics of Homelessness

In late Summer, flowers and a couple of photographs appeared sellotaped to the wall tiles outside my local supermarket, along with chalked messages on the pavement 'RIP' and 'Always loved'.

The photographs showed a pretty young woman with red hair, in one dressed up as if going to a fancy dress party, in the other, donned in hospital gown, identity bracelet on wrist, bending over a cot holding a baby's finger, but looking into the camera.She had apparently lived outside the supermarket, homeless.

A gofundme page was duly set up to raise money for the funeral.

While haunted by this story, I was also puzzled as I walk past the supermarket at least once a day, sometimes more, and never once had I seen this girl, even sitting outside, let alone living. And she was certainly striking enough to make an impression if I had. Nor could I imagine such a girl would have been short of offers of help.

Moreover it had been more than a year since anyone had attempted to sleep outside the supermarket on a regular basis, a young man who had a habit of stuffing the local phone box full of his belongings overnight.

I asked the staff about her. She had sometimes begged outside the supermarket they said, but had never lived on the street outside, and to the best of their knowledge, had not died there either. One was quite distressed that anyone should think they had allowed a helpless young woman to die on the streets outside their shop and was at pains to point out that outreach workers visited the area daily.

Fast forward four months and the coroner's report has just appeared in the local paper.

The young woman *Yvonne turned out to be a 24 year old with a flat in Hove and a young son, although she had apparently known instances of homelessness in her life. She and her partner had taken drugs together one night and he had woken up to find her dead in bed the following morning.

My sympathy immediately evaporated.

Who decided to set up a tribute to her outside my local supermarket and claim she was street homeless, rather than an addict with a home begging for drugs money?

Was her death politicised by putting tributes outside the supermarket, despite the fact that her death had had nothing to do with the supermarket? Apparently cardboard gravestones are now appearing in street locations around Bristol, as if every death is attributable to society's failings, rather than poor life choices (and according to Shelter, two thirds of homeless are homeless owing to addiction issues).

Did those who gave *Yvonne money realise they actually financed her to commit passive suicide?

She had died by her own hand, albeit presumably accidentally, in her own flat leaving a motherless baby behind. And nowadays we are apparently supposed to feel sympathy for 'victims' like this.
Granted, some individuals have difficult and even terrible starts in life (and I speak as one of the former).  But surely, if they then bring a baby into the world, they either give it up for adoption to someone who can look after it or vow the child will have a completely different childhood and life to themselves? What happened to a child as a wake up call and motivator to turn one's life around? What happened to a child as a serious responsibility?

I began to mull on the curious modern cult of victimhood we are seemingly supposed to accept and subscribe to, and in many cases treat as lifelong, rather than a temporary state.

Why too are we supposed to accept this hideous drug culture sprouting up all around us without question as the new normal? How can drugs ever be regarded as 'recreational' when they can just as easily kill or maim as offer a few hours escapism?

Recently I read the autobiography of a forensic pathologist. Tellingly, when he embarked on his career in the early 1980s, he came across his first cocaine overdose death in 1985, some four years after he had qualified and he was very surprised by it. Nowadays it is not unusual for him to come across more than one in a day's work, just from cocaine. And not just young people either, He is increasingly finding middle aged cases on his slab. According to him there has been a seismic shift in the number of unnatural deaths owing to substance abuse over the last few years.

I wonder what Charles Dickens would make of street life today. What novels would he pen? Where would his sympathies lie? Somehow I don't think he would disagree that even poor people are capable of self respect and taking some degree of responsibility for their life choices. Moreover, local hostel places often go unused by those who seem to prefer the streets and are allowed to remain on the streets, despite the law.

Notwithstanding, I regularly support homeless charities, particularly Emmaus, who do an amazing job of full support and rehabilitation (for those who commit to their programme) but I question the efficacy of many other approaches and ideologies. For example every time a local premises doorway or public area is secured from rough sleepers overnight, there are some who deem this 'unacceptable' or 'an attack on the homeless' as if it is perfectly acceptable to sleep in shop doorways or on beaches, open to attack and the elements, rather than in hostels. We also had a local MP who thought 'shooting galleries' were a good idea to facilitate the illegal activity of drug taking! The only people that might help would be park users who don't want to keep finding syringes everywhere, not the homeless.

*Note: I have chosen not to use a photo of the real life street tribute, but this image seemed just as apt,

The Drug-Free Pursuit of Happiness

At what point does an individual decide they are too young, too beautiful, too healthy and their lives are going too well so they will muck it all up with drugs?

At what point do they decide it is morally acceptable to support a trade which kills thousands of people worldwide every year, not just users, but individuals all along the supply chain from production to distribution in crimes and murders? 

Then there are the countless crimes, murders, accidents and suicides committed by those under the influence of drugs. 

As if this wasn't a high enough social and economic price to pay,  let's not forget the mental and physical ill health, time off work and additional social and health care costs to society by people rendered sick and disabled before their time.

People are terrified of dementia when old it seems, but not of risking their lifelong sanity and mental/physical functionality when young. 

It is not unusual nowadays to see relatively young men and women looking twenty years older than their age staggering along our streets in broad daylight, permanently raddled and disabled by their addictions. Worse still, this kind of self-inflicted disability no longer appears to carry any social stigma and even qualifies those who've let their lives spiral for lifelong benefits. Society is, in effect, rewarding them for dropping out rather than sorting themselves out.

Mental health issues are often cited with 'self-medication' used as an excuse, but few of these people are doctors. Why would they assume they can cure their mental ills with street drugs of unknown ingredients, provenance and purity any more than they would assume that they can cure a cancer by eating talcum powder? Plus we all know that if you are in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. Drugs are never a ladder out of that hole, just an ever deeper and more nightmarish hole, removing those in it further and further from the light at the top.

The legalisation that stoners clamour for would simply create new and even more complex issues by sending out the very dangerous message that drugs are safe, socially acceptable, and even sanctioned by our government. I doubt they would save a single life in reality. Quite the reverse as more and more people took up drug taking and we saw more and more crimes, murders, road traffic accidents and suicides as a result.
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The war on drugs is failing through lack of enforcement and corruption in high places, not because it isn't a good idea. 

Taking drugs will never fit in the good ideas box. It is an undeniable waste of time, human potential and life. Those sucked into this world become a flaky waste of time to associate with and selfish to the point of violence in some cases to those who dare to try and put themselves between the addict and their supply. 

Stoners are quick to point the finger at alcohol as equally insidious (as if that somehow makes drug taking ok) but no one has ever suffered psychosis or lifelong mental health issues as a result of one pint. The road to alcoholic ruin tends to be a much longer and more committed one with many more opportunities for redemption along the way.  Furthermore a drunk person can be sober in 24hrs. A stoner can take days to fully recover their wits, by which time they have often imbibed further 'hits' so that their system is never fully clear.

Behind every addict invariably lies a trail of angels with broken wings who tried to help or save them from themselves.

It is understandable that human beings should enjoy being high and escapism from their problems and the weight of the world. 

But there is another and better way and that is to study meditation or NLP for free, safe and natural highs. No downers or health prices to pay either. 

Volunteering is said to be one of the best cures for depression, but any activity instilling self-respect, confidence or pride or involving giving something back to society will see a similar blossoming of mental welfare. It is self-obsession and fear-based behaviour which promotes depression and addiction. 

To those who subsequently find the strength to face their fears and slay their personal dragons one by one, the greatest gift of all awaits - contentment and peace - leading to happiness and living in the magic of life.

Addiction-Free World

Once upon a time 'bread and circuses' were all it was believed were needed to entertain and placate the masses and keep them from revolting.

Today we live in a world where addiction is almost encouraged whether it be to street drugs, prescription drugs, alcohol, food, shopping, gambling, gaming, tattoos, porn or just good old fashioned social media.

The size of dishes and plates have increased and wine glasses have grown to the size of goldfish bowls.

Everywhere excess is encouraged and even celebrated. Street drugs may not be legal, yet are easily obtainable on almost every street corner. It is no longer a shameful thing to see a young woman blind drunk on a pavement with her limbs akimbo and scant clothing compromised, but a commonplace sight.

Not so long ago only the elderly or disabled used motorised mobility carts. Now they are fast becoming the legs of an increasingly obese population.

We are expected to be connected to our electronic devices (including work-related) 24/7, no matter that we might be on a date, driving, or in the middle of a theatre show. And the programs on them all inter-connect so that a thousand different unknown sources have access to our activities, finances and movements at any given time.

Betting shops proliferate, particularly in poor areas where you often see as many as half a dozen within a few hundred yards of each other, typically next to a pawn or payday loan shop. Keeping a nation in debt (once an imprisonable offence with debtors jails in Victorian times) also keeps the risk of industrial action down for those who are in work.

Young people vie with each other to be the best looking on selfies, spiraling into narcissistic personality disorder, if not eating disorders and cosmetic surgery addictions into the bargain, if they believe they are anything less than a 'perfect 10'. They even bully and troll each other over minor human differences and imperfections.

Debt, relationship breakdown, ill-health, disability and mental illness are the end result of an unbalanced perspective and lifestyle - yet more ways a cynic might assume - to occupy the mind and keep a population tame.

Granted, all these human wrecks will cost the state a bomb in healthcare and benefits, but the good news is not for long, particularly once assisted suicide is legalised and they've been driven to it.

I believe we are watching the deliberate dismantling of our society and it all began in the 1960s with the nuclear family, the community, the church etc. For what purpose, I know not, as you would not assume it is in this country's interests to have a population so apparently useless and uneducated (and permitted to remain so) we seemingly need to import thousands of foreign nationals to do the jobs we once did, a country which continually borrows more money than it can ever pay back and has sold many of its assets off to overseas concerns, losing us national power and food security among other terrifying core assets and functions.

John Major promised a 'classless society' but what we've ended up with are two extra classes, the underclass and the super rich. Thanks to Tony Blair we've also been dragged into not just a war that had nothing to do with us, but which has cost us more in national debt than the whole of WWII (which we had only just finished paying off prior to first Gulf war), to the extent that our public services are now claiming dire financial hardship/threatening ever more draconian cuts, despite continuing to extract ever more taxes.

Perhaps there is no long term plan. Perhaps it is all about the super rich being the real ones in charge and finding ever more ingenious ways to leech all the wealth and assets out of the classes beneath by preying on their human weaknesses and engineering disadvantageous financial products for them so that they spend their entire lives in debt. More liabilities for the poor, more assets for the rich. Certainly there has never been greater financial and social inequality than there is now and no one even mentions 'social mobility' any more.

Ultimately I believe we now inhabit a world where we've never needed our wits about us more and on that basis I don't intend to lose mine, much as I have had my flirtations with social media addiction and some pretty hard core chocolate!

It is said we only use 5% of our minds. Imagine if we all decided to learn how to harness and use the other 95% of our minds through mindfulness and assorted mental training. No one would ever be able to push us around or give us their cr*p again and we could be the most incredible force for good in the world, which in itself would prove a natural anti-depressant, and even high, in the face of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Time to stand up against being turned into sheeple and take back control of our lives! If we are not in the driving seat, who is? Addiction is not 'self-medication'. It is digging an even deeper hole than the one we are in and throwing away a criminal waste of human potential.

I firmly believe an addiction free-world of mindfulness and learning to master our own minds is the only way we will ever engineer a world where drugs are not needed - the paradise would be real! The high would be permanent with no crash or hangover to fear. Moreover it would be accompanied by the pride and self-satisfaction of having achieved it through our personal intention and hard work.

Contactless World

Some individuals may feel they already live in a contactless world, without meaningful relationships in their lives, and even going days without talking to another human being, particularly if constrained by physical or mental health issues.

Many doubtless lack the comforting touch of a pet, never mind a human being. Moreover, it may have nothing to do with age. There is an alarming rise in depression and loneliness in the young too, no matter that their Facebook output may paint a picture of enviable perfection. Even a third of middle-aged Brits are now living alone.

Well here is the bad news. The world is set to get a whole lot more contactless.

We have become a more tolerant society to those who might once have found themselves on the margins (and rightly so), but meantime we have seen families, churches, communities and most elements that used to bind people together and offer a solid support structure swept away. Nor does a job for life exist any more.

In a so-called green age, we have seen the rise of the ruthless and throwaway society which extends to people too - at both ends of life. We are constantly encouraged to 'get over' and 'move on' irrespective of whether we are mourning a relationship break up or a deceased loved one. Most of us now spend more time on social media exchanging opinions and funny photos with random strangers than we do nurturing our real life friends and relationships. Social media also gives the opportunity for some anonymous trolling, when not virtue-signalling or falling out with someone over some trivial difference of opinion. It is no accident that mental health issues have risen in almost direct proportion to screen addiction.

Meantime the creep of the cashless society is afoot. Forget maintaining control over your finances, Silicon Valley won't stop driving cash out of town until they own us, lock, stock and barrel and can charge what they want for all the currently free services they have got us addicted to and on every other transaction too. Not so long ago the banks ruled the world. Then they became casinos and crashed, leaving the pitch wide open to the electronic players.

Some people call this 'progress' but I think we swallow the sugar-coated pill called 'convenience' at our peril. If cash goes, we will see even more social isolation and societal disenfranchisement. From children no longer receiving pocket money to homeless and other vulnerable individuals suffering and starving and charity donations taking a nosedive. The excuse is that banning cash will destroy the black economy and force everyone to pay their taxes leading to a more equal society, though as long as corporations are let off the hook and Russian gangsters are allowed to buy up half of London, this is patently untrue. Notwithstanding, preliminary trials and experiments in other countries have demonstrated that the black economy simply goes underground and finds a new way to operate, just as it always has, even if they have to start using another currency or create their own. In the legal world going paperless can backfire as we have seen with the road tax disc which used to have to be prominently displayed in every vehicle by law. Since scrapping this paper disc in 2014, yet continuing to require all vehicle keepers to carry on buying it in ethereal form, our government has lost £80m in revenue and counting. If no vehicle displays one, where is a parking enforcer to start in scanning every last vehicle on a daily basis to ensure compliance? Particularly when they have parking ticket targets to reach!

I have never been more grateful to see my new (and probably last) cheque book arrive in the post this morning. I may not write many cheques, but I still value them for some transactions but what I value even more is having the CHOICE as a consumer. When I grew up (not so long ago), being issued with your first cheque book was an important right of passage into the adult world. Credit cards were generally used for big ticket items and travel and only tended to be issued to home owners in their forties. No one my age had one.

So not content with the attack on the cheque book (thankfully postponed owing to public outcry), we see our bank and Post Office branches closing down, our free ATM's under threat and our bank notes reduced to toy town money. Meanwhile our parking machines are being turned into card/phone payment only, travel  and theatre ticket office closures force us to use our cards and pay 'booking fees' and we are propelled to the self-service checkouts in stores (contactless) and encouraged to use contactless cards (despite the warnings of security experts) so that onlife shopping becomes as soulless as online shopping.

Electronic payments may be seen as convenient by some, but what happens when they go wrong and you have a faceless non-accountable organisation to argue with to get your overpayment back? A mistake on a card is so much harder to rectify than getting the wrong change back in a cash transaction. And let's not forget the fees, fees, fees on virtually every transaction, as if they are doing you a favour by sacking all their staff and replacing them with machines! In addition I have seen so many passengers with bus ticket apps whose phones fail them when getting on a bus to the point they often have to pay cash anyway! I have also never bought a train ticket online or via a machine which was cheaper than the one I queued to pay a clerk in a booth for, a human being who can advise me on the best prices, times and routes. Self-service is NOT service. I may not be an old lady yet, reliant on a shop transaction as my only human interaction of the day, but as a human being I still demand to be served by other human beings. We have also seen whole systems brought to a halt by hackers and this risk can only increase, aside from all the individual cases of online fraud, which experts admit, are becoming ever cleverer and harder to avert. But at least the banks are currently obliged to try to offer some assistance and compensation. Who will help and protect consumers when Silicon Valley has taken their place and they operate entirely outside UK legislation?

Anyway. let's not kid ourselves. All the free goodies we enjoy on the internet now are but a 'gateway drug'  to lead us up the garden path to the hardcore reality of a contactless, control-less future which not only charges us at every turn but can cut us off electronically and condemn us to an electronic gulag cast out from society if we do anything to displease its masters! Hence I am writing this blog while I can!

The sexual world has become such a minefield, society almost deems it more desirable to go contactless there too, with live webcam shows and pernicious free porn, lest the brush of a real life knee or waist is misinterpreted, and which can doubtless only lead to disappointment after a hardcore porn addiction, when it is not! On a related note, the teenage pregnancy rate in UK has almost halved since the advent of social media as young girls would seemingly rather flirt online than meet boys in real life. Online, girls can control their image, so presumably those who don't match up to their glamorous photo-shopped selfies or made up personas can stay safe!

Finally, lest we get any ideas about remaining in the driving seat of our own lives, we have the joys of self-driving vehicles being foisted upon us - ostensibly to prevent accidents - but in reality we will most certainly be tracked and charged for whatever by whomever at will and there won't be a damn thing we can do about it! And what if the car is still involved in an accident or traffic violation? Who or what will be held responsible?

I can't wait!

Meantime I shall carry on being the cash backlash, watching my old skool DVD/VHS collection, reading my paper books (mine, all mine, for you never own electronic data!), meeting friends IRL (in real life) and supporting my High Street, whilst ensuring I keep my mobile notifications firmly switched OFF, for that way madness lies. Nor have I any intention of ever connecting my mobile phone to my bank account and indulging in phone apps. It may not be off-grid living exactly, but I choose real life insofar as it still exists. As the famous scene in Network declares; 'I'm a human being goddammit!'

For those who share my concern that we are sleepwalking into an unelected world we have diminishing personal control over under the guise of 'progress', I recommend reading The War Against Cash by Ross Clark and Done by Jacques Peretti. (available in all good bookshops too - support them while they last!)

My Drugs Hell

Perhaps it was a strict childhood deprived of sweets that had me exploring my parents' medicine cabinet in search of succour and happening upon the delights of New Era Biochemical Tissue Salts No. 4 at about the age of five.

Once I started guzzling them I couldn't stop and before I knew it the contents of three bottles of them had been crunched into delicious melted powder upon my tongue and I was avidly ransacking the bathroom for more when my parents discovered me.

My next memory is of being held down on the floor while they poured salt water down my throat to make me sick.

Whilst I admit I hadn't quite got the hang of the (less is more) principle of homeopathy at that age, my taste for these little tablets has remained undimmed and to this day I don't trust myself to have a bottle of them in the house.

In fact even writing this is rather dangerous as it makes me want to rush out to my 'dealers' at Holland and Barrett to procure a bottle (or three)!

The funny thing is they don't actually taste of a great deal, but to me the texture and taste is utterly irresistible.

Nor am I aware of any sort of high resulting, let alone any of my ailments being cured. Just an insane compulsion to keep eating them.

Worse still if it's true you can now buy a fix of coke for slightly less than the price of a cappuccino, New Era Biochemical Tissue Salts are a whole £4.49 a bottle, so I'd be better off being a conventional junkie!

On the plus side, I do hear they are about to develop a Biochemical Tissue Salt No. 13 remedy for 'addiction problems'.

Help! I'm A Binge Makeover Show Addict!

Hah, I thought smugly in my other capacity as a comedy addict when viewing the new Mitchell & Webb TV series last night featuring the hilarious excerpt from their new Sensitive Freakshow Season - 'The Boy With An Arse For A Face' – at least I don’t watch the worst human freak shows.
But is a diet of Diet Doctors, Ten Years Younger, Spendaholics, Property Ladder, Location Location Location, The House Doctor, FreakyEaters, How Clean is Your House? How to Pay Off Your Mortgage in Two Years, Grand Designs, A New Life In The Country, It’s Me Or The Dog & Colin and Justin any more edifying? Any better a use of all the hours of my life I’ll never get back?
Well all the house stuff I can justify as ‘research’ for my job in property (albeit not usually private houses), but all the personal makeover shows are a little harder.
Voyeurism?
Since the dictionary definition of 'voyeurism' is someone who gets a sexual kick out of watching others, a response I am hitherto unaware of while watching makeover shows, I think it unlikely.
Nosiness? Well of course. The human condition is unfailingly fascinating and it’s amazing how not being able to clean their house, living with a nose the size of the Himalayas, being hopelessly financially incontinent, or unable to stop gambling ends up being the key to revealing the whole person through that very weakness.
However it’s easy to watch these shows and be lulled into a false sense of security about oneself, ie; however much of a failure I am at least I have a clean house and no gambling addiction.
So while they can work on the one hand to cheer oneself after a bad day, one has to be very careful not to let the fact that one would make dull television by comparison, be confused with succeeding in life!
Notwithstanding there is something inspiring, even moving about watching a programme featuring someone who has scarcely left their house for ten years owing to some personal tragedy, finally being given the courage to overcome their agoraphobia via the expert help they wouldn’t possibly have been able to afford otherwise, and knowing that their life really has improved for the better, even if they invariably continue to experience the odd wobbly day now and then, or how a house de-cluttered and fully steamcleaned for the first time in twenty years inspires the inhabitant who was ‘stuck’ in that mindset for whatever reason, to then want to revamp and brighten every aspect of their lives.
The ‘big reveal’ or transformation of the house or individual at the end of the show is as irresistible and magical a moment as redemption. Perhaps it is a kind of redemption.
Of course television will exaggerate, bend the truth and even exploit, and not all such shows do more good than harm. Supernanny in particular has been singled out for criticism recently for deliberately making parents look worse and more inept than they really are, and even deliberately winding the kids up to exacerbate their bad behaviour for the cameras! Cosmetic makeovers don’t always last long, though of course the participants need to do their bit to maintain their new looks.
As for the sad endictment all these programmes are on a society which has seemingly forgotten how to clean their houses, manage their money, raise their kids, rule their dogs, enjoy functional relationships, well yes that is rather alarming, though thinking about my own areas of ineptitude, I am bound to believe that we must all fall short on at least one major area of basic lifeskills, and this has merely been untalked about/unrevealed until the last ten or fifteen years.
So to sum up, makeover programmes for me are:

a. a yardstick by which I measure my own progress in life against other peoples’
b. learn how other people deal with and get through life/how they think.
c. Absorb all decent tips & advice dished out in addition to seeing how participants fare on their programme ‘journey’.
d. Enjoy the transformation at the end. I believe in personal renaissance and second chances!

Is that enough junkie justification for the fact I wasted one whole hour on a young green-fingered gay man with transformer toy addiction spending more than twice his monthly income on Gucci products, followed by another whole hour on a DJ who was terrified of fruit and vegetables last night? In my defence, I no longer tape a single one of these programmes (digital ensures they are all repeated about five minutes later!)

Photo from Channel 4's Ten Years Younger