A Long Time Coming

It is said that, over the course of this year, 3500 people will sleep rough in London.
During that same year, homelessness agencies will probably spend something like £35 million ‘tackling’ homelessness. In February just gone, Labour spent a record £35 million on advertising, just for that month.
Over the past year, though, homelessness has increased by 35%.
So, imagine for a moment that you live in a sane world, where people help themselves and each other in equal measure, a place where actions bowl over words and promises are kept.
Imagine, just for a little longer, that each homeless person has been given a strictly monitored yearly budgeting plan of £10,000 a year for the sole purpose of securing housing (under a Government scheme guaranteeing payment to landlords), until such a time that he or she is deemed capable of managing life without aid.
That would take care of the agencies’ budget of £35 million.
Then, imagine a world without homelessness and homelessness agencies.
I know what you’re thinking.
If we make it too easy for them, everyone and his dog’ll be at it. Rough-sleeping? It can’t be that bad. Crucifixion’s a doddle!
Imagine Cheryl and Ashley Cole getting back together after spending an uber-chic weekend rough-sleeping around Waterloo.
‘Limp, lifeless hair? Get the mojo back into your life! Get homeless!’ I don’t think so.
Can you really see your next door neighbour feigning homelessness for the required time, going ‘out there’ to rough-sleep, all for ten big ones?
Really.
What, you may ask, would become of the people made redundant from their tireless mission as homelessness agency staff? Once homelessness was made a thing of the past, how would these crusaders cope?
Well, if they’re normalised human beings (and not vulnerable souls emotionally scarred by a treacherous past and consistently let down), they’ll be perfectly fine.
They wouldn’t be made homeless by the whole dreadful affair. Of course they wouldn’t. Homelessness wouldn’t exist any more.
Aside from the heartache of having to find a new job, I’ve no doubt that this awful blow would be gently cushioned by a sizeable redundancy package for their good work (and to keep Mum).
In the ‘real’ world, this is only a dream; to have away with the cause of the problem.
But what could have gone so wrong that homelessness agencies were no longer able to hide behind the velvety curtains of the political puppet show?
Maybe the thought of having to live next to an ex rough-sleeper put them off finding a real solution to homelessness. Or perhaps they were just scared out of their wits that house prices would fall as a result of the homeless being housed. Whatever.
These agencies have failed the homeless as a matter of priority. They are only professional at being hapless, abysmal amateurs. Their only aim seems to be the targets that they miss, time and time again, confounding the law of averages with every pathetic mini sausage-roll.
I’m constantly finding that things don’t change for two reasons; Pride and Prejudice.
When Allen Carr (not the TV star) wrote his ‘Easy Way To Stop Smoking’ book, he thought that the tobacco companies would be his chief antagonist. How wrong he was.
His real enemies, who thwarted and curtailed his every move for fourteen years, turned out to be those that he had innocently assumed would be his greatest allies; the media, the Government, organisations like ASH, QUIT and the established medical profession.
All these huge organisations were so set in their ways that they couldn’t see the light(er) for the (tobacco) trees. The amount gained in taxes from cancer sticks was too much to bear the thought of actually helping the world’s nicotine addicts, those on a slowburn to suicide with the Government’s generous approval. Research into cancer had thrived from the diseased bodies of smokers. And insurance premiums were much higher for smokers. With less smokers, there’d be less death, and with less death, there’d be a higher population. All this change and less tax from tobacco?
In the end, it was all down to pride and prejudice. Something had to give, and it did.
The stubborn -‘It’s Mine’- attitude of the old school was no match for Allen Carr.
As time wore on, the medical profession’s sour denial lost out to glib acceptance. His theory was finally celebrated by those who should have gratefully embraced it all those years ago. It was, after all, a far more successful remedy to smoking than the entire world’s medical profession put together. The hardest thing for them to accept was that he wasn’t even a doctor. He was just another smoker with a pipe dream. The audacity of the man beggared belief.
In his book, Carr highlighted the incredible plight of one nurse, Sister Kenny, who discovered that infantile paralysis or polio could be treated by re-educating muscles, which, in turn, would allow a child to walk again.
She’d done it umpteen times with a 100% success rate. It was effective and economical in all ways; an obvious winner. The children could play, however awkwardly.
At this time, the established medical method of treatment was to put the children’s limbs in irons, preventing the distortion with excruciating pain, leaving them paralysed for life. These children would never walk again, guaranteed.
The children that Sister Kenny treated showed their miraculous recovery to their doctors, as did the grateful parents. All Sister Kenny lived for was recognition and thousands of children would be saved.
The medical profession rewarded Sister Kenny by not only refusing to adopt her methods, but actually preventing her from practising.
It took Sister Kenny twenty years before the medical profession finally accepted the glaringly obvious, by which time they had subjected many children, and even some of their own, to a lifetime of disability, mockery and disease. These lives were systematically cut short, all for the sake of pride and prejudice.
‘Surely’, I hear you bark. ‘You’re not suggesting that the homelessness agencies are as backward as Sister Kenny’s antagonists, the medical profession, happily throwing water into the frying pan of life?’
That would mean that they were actively encouraging homelessness? That would be insanity!
Now there’s a juicy topic! Mental health! But let’s not go there. It drives me crazy thinking of the horrors the mentally ill endure at the hands of ‘doctors’.
You’ll think I’m nuts when I tell you that I honestly believe that homelessness agencies are diseasing the problem of homelessness into a state of paralysis, all for their warped sense of pride and their brick-wall prejudice.
I also believe, unswervingly, that they are aware of the depravity of their intentional mismanagement. They are fully committed to poor service; programmed to under-achieve, just like the homeless.
There, I’ve said it. Put it on my headstone.
‘A Long Time Coming.’
I mean, how would you like it if you’d spent decades inventing and installing a tram that took people from A to B but not from B back to A (leaving passengers stranded at B), only for some wise guy to suggest ferrying people back and forth, doubling profits and efficiency in an instant?
The Eureka moment, when a Senior Paper Shredding Director at a homelessness agency wins sixpence on a Bingo website, when you realise that she should be banned from gambling at work, or just plain sacked.
Once you’d taken it on the chin and accepted that the tram should have always ferried people both ways, you’d feel like a right twerp for a while, but when the money started pouring in, I’m sure you’d get over it.
Maybe you’d even thank the wise guy who suggested the ingenious two-way tram. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you drop your pride and battle prejudice.
Together and active, they sap morality and replace it with fear and loathing. Analysis is paralysis.
Can you feel it? Do you hate me? If you do, there’s hope.
So who is to blame for the pickle we find ourselves in? The answer is simple.
We are to blame because we are too fearful to commit to change, defiant in our own denial of the shambles, unwilling to suffer for good to prevail, and ultimately destined to poverty of mind and spirit.
We are to blame because we have let our guard down against evil. That’s why evil wins every time. Because of us.
We are to blame because we voted for a Government that condones institutional failure and corruption, turning a blind eye and drip-feeding costs to cloud the grey matter of the masses.
It’s so heart-warming to see The Big Issue fighting for the rights of the homeless.
The crazy thing is, I had to become homeless to actually see that the magazine is well worth the money. Before I became homeless, I’d stupidly congratulate myself for my charity and discard the magazine before I’d read it, as if it was just a by-product; a scam to make me feel good.
I’d flit through it without taking anything in and huff, half-regretting buying it in the first place.
How crackers is that?
By reading John Bird, I now find a kindred spirit, a fellow protester, and I am grateful for his commitment to the cause of not just the homeless but to all those in positions of power whose conscience can be restored if only they would act on what their head and heart tell them. What could be simpler? You’d be surprised.
Writing for The Big Issue has helped to restore my confidence. It’s been a long time coming.
Becoming homeless has given me a new lease of life; to overcome my shortcomings, see through my own facile façade and present my work without fear of rejection. These are my goals now.
This, at 44, is my chance to finally shine, to challenge my senses to see life as it really is.
I am lucky because others may never receive this multi-coloured spectrum. They may never have the need to triumph over the banality of their own lives.
My biggest fear, though, is that, slowly but surely, The Big Issue may ease the constant pressure that needs to be applied on the homelessness agencies, to the point when they feel that they can under-perform in peace.
How can we ever let them hold their bloody hands behind their backs and say that nothing could have been done to help the homeless? What a whimsically bourgeois conscience-massager these agencies are, doomed to failure.
In addition, I fear that, as time goes by and little seems to change, Mr Bird’s greatest allies might lose faith in the cause and dip into something ‘more relevant’. Gamblers or maybe the breakdown of the family.
Although I realise that I may be grossly underestimating Mr Bird’s unflinching integrity, this is my greatest fear for the homeless.
Without The Big Issue, the homeless will continue to bear the brunt of pride and prejudice, chained to the streets and washed from our minds, held captive in the zoo of life.
I think it might be time for Mr Bird to seek help from Allen Carr. Sister Kenny would approve.