Bottom of the pile

[medsec222]

How do you know when you are at the bottom of the pile?

Maybe when you are an ex. serviceman suffering from PTSD who has lost his home, or perhaps someone with a mental illness who has no home, or perhaps a young person who has been forced to leave the family home through no fault of their own. People such as these are living and sleeping rough in Blackpool outside good quality hotels that are presently housing illegal migrants, mostly young healthy men, who have crossed the channel illegally, not necessarily fleeing a war-torn country, but merely looking for a better life in the UK.

We now have a two tier system where one person's human rights is placed above another person's human rights.

Some of these people on the streets of Blackpool and similarly other towns, have been evicted from hotel accommodation to house the illegal immigrants. Where is the fairness in that. What happens when the weather gets so cold that it is dangerous for people to sleep on the streets but all available accommodation has been requisitioned by Serco to house immigrants?

One homeless person who was interviewed took the view that the homeless on the streets felt they were invisible and that people walked past them. Who could blame him for coming to that conclusion when others are prioritised and given accommodation whilst they are left to get on with it.

[cromwell]

I agree Meds.
Many things depend on who you are as to how you get treated.
XR blocks roads and gets the police asking them if they are all right. If that was a right wing organisation the police would forcibly remove them from the road.

[Workingman]

OK. illegal immigrants should not be in hotels. They should be in assessment centres such as former military barracks. If those were good enough for our volunteer military they are a million miles better than where the illegals once lived. I know, I lived in them for 12 years.

Open some of them up from care and maintenance and make them secure holding places for illegal immigrants before deporting them.

Rough sleepers: tough one. We had Gary outside Asda. Last winter I worried about him so I used to get him bits of food and drinks - no money, and then got the council, St George's, Simon on the Streets involved.

He simply disappeared. Asda staff who had know him for a long while said that he simply did not want to be part of modern society. A lot of rough sleepers feel the same way yet rely on society to keep them alive by begging.

[Suff]

Agree totally WM. Plenty of barracks. Just need to keep the press out of feeding on blackmail.

Rough sleepers is a tough one. Plenty of people simply cannot cope with the pressures of modern life. Living rough is not a soft option so a certain level of fatality or desperation has to be in play.

Remember the "community farms" of the 60's in the US that the hippies had? But even there they had to have some discipline and order.

Not sure what the answer is but whatever it is does not include ignoring them whilst putting up fortune seeking illegals in levels of luxury.

[Kaz]

You have a good point Frank. A friend of Mick’s is a long-standing Tory councillor here in Gloucester ( it makes for healthy debate ) and he says there are more than enough hostel spaces for all the rough sleepers here, but that many don’t want to take them - either because they don’t like the restriction of living inside, or because they’re heavily into drink or drugs and have to become clean to access the spaces