Send James out, they’ll believe him – he’s got a lovely smile
The rise in homelessness, according to housing secretary James Brokenshire, is not the result of government policies.
Yes it is.
I’m getting very tired of Brokenshire’s complacent face as he defends the indefensible. He knows the facts. He and his miserable government are responsible for them. Now another homeless person has died outside the “mother of parliaments”.
How can we end this nightmare? A general election would be a start.
A solution not just for Christmas
The charity Crisis says that 12,300 people are sleeping rough on the streets this Christmas – (official government figure 4,751) – and in addition 12,000 people will spend the night in tents, cars, sheds, bins or night buses.
Hundreds of people have raised more than £9,000 to come to the rescue and house 28 homeless people in Hull over Christmas after their charity booking was revoked by a leading hotel chain. But the truth is that nobody should be homeless, and nobody should have to rely for Christmas, or any other time, on the whim of a hotel chain weighing up whether it would be better for its reputation and profit margins to go with the homeless or play safe and reject them. The choice Britannia group made was likely to be, according to a homelessness worker, because of “fear that [the homeless] are drunk ex-servicemen on drugs, rather than being on short-term contracts or suffering problems with welfare”.
So a general election then. We need a government that will focus on people’s needs. Forget the parliamentary panto. We need home-grown Yellow Vests, a Labour government, and then continued action to hold that government to account so that, amongst other things, it brings the unnecessary scar of homelessness to an end.
“Deadlock [on Brexit] is blocking vital policy reforms”? No it isn’t.
Judging by this Guardian article (see link below) we are supposed to think that if it wasn’t for Brexit the government wouldn’t be “letting people down” on (and it provides a list) the NHS and social care, rising knife crime, failing public transport, chronic homelessness and the environment.
Oh come on. What we surely know is that the government will be “letting us down” (if we were ever “up”) on all these issues Brexit or no Brexit, “people’s vote” or no “people’s vote”, leave or remain. They don’t want to reform their policies. They believe in them. When their cynicism and inhumanity in any of these areas is ever exposed they may talk reform – but then reinforce and extend the policy (witness Windrush).
The Guardian has its “shocked” hat on here. But why is it shocked? Except in the sense of “appalled” – at the typical and expected policy choices of a Tory government. We need, at the very least, a general election.
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