Liverpool is leading the way in tackling homelessness – by ignoring homicidal Tories
A homeless man sleeps rough while shoppers walk past [Image: Alphotographic via Getty Images].
And thanks are due to him for the statistic that the average rough sleeper dies before reaching the age of 50.
It tends to confirm This Writer’s belief that the Tory plan to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it by 2027 depends on homeless people dying out, rather than being any strategy to help them.
The government’s response to dealing with homelessness and rough sleeping across England has been woeful.
‘Unacceptably complacent’ was the term used. That’s one way of saying that leaving 9,100 human beings to sleep on our streets is a shaming, infuriating disgrace.
Since 2010, the number of households in temporary accommodation has risen by 60 per cent, while the numbers of rough sleepers has soared by 134 per cent since 2011. Most shockingly, the average rough sleeper dies before they reach the age of 50.
Councils are struggling to cope with unprecedented demand for services – with less and less money to pay for them.
We are also expected to ignore part of the problem.
Some of our rough sleepers are asylum seekers and eastern European migrants who have fallen on hard times. In Whitehall-speak they have ‘no recourse to public funds.’ We are supposed to leave them alone.
As the elected Mayor of my city, I won’t be told who I can and cannot help.
I am proud that we spend £11million every year tackling homelessness – intervening early to help families and individuals avoid falling between the cracks – even though our central government funding has been slashed by two-thirds (£470million) since 2010. While our Citizen Support Scheme includes help for people facing benefit sanctions – ensuring they don’t get evicted.
Source: Ministers Can Go And Whistle. All Rough Sleepers Will Get Help In Liverpool
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Where I live people give to them in the street, churches open theirs doors and give free meals out. More needs to be done to change this, not less and one thing the homeless and people who have no work is stay away from the job center, for the moment, it is no help, it degrades you, ruins your physical and metal health and you are lucky after all that whether they give you anything anyway.
May 2018 is local election time.
Mayor Anderson’s seat is up for grabs.
Mayor Anderson criminalised 5 activists who were jailed for giving food and shelter to homeless people in the city a couple of years ago.
Mayor Anderson stole £89,000 from city funds to pay for his own private employment case, which he lost.
Mayor Anderson has been steadily trying to destroy the family of this autistic man who was beaten up by an untrained carer several years ago.
https://wirralinittogether.blog/2015/03/03/the-liverpool-mayor-versus-the-mainman-how-power-abuse-targets-vulnerable-people-2/
Finally, this information is available when you do some research. Why do you risk alienating those of us in the know by saying “Bravo” to an opportunistic rogue like Joe Anderson?
Even an opportunistic rogue can do the right thing sometimes.
And I wasn’t aware of all those other things. Why not?
Problem is it’s right for all the wrong reasons – through personal greed, self-advancement, seeking to cling to power, and not because he has any desire to enact deeply-held principles.
Because he doesn’t have any.
The Liverpool Echo love him for this latest stunt because it helps to sell newspapers (i.e. there’s those *wrong reasons* again).
Local knowledge tells us he is also heading for a showdown with regional Mayor Steve Rotheram. There is a building enmity between the two. This electioneering stunt is likely to key in to that particular personal feud also, and will be aimed at influencing the minds of gullible voters. There will be more in the pipeline. Do you say “Bravo” to public money being squandered with the sole aim of feathering a power abuser’s nest?
It may briefly do some ephemeral good, but what comes next, after he’s been elected and takes his foot off the gas? Will it be time to start clearing the posh streets of L1 and fining homeless people £1,000 each for making it look untidy?
Anderson flies similar emblems to the leaders of Bristol, Wirral and no doubt other right wing ToryLabour councils. He will use government cuts and austerity as a foil for driving through his own personal agenda of hardship, conveniently blaming central government for tying his hands. But nothing could be further from the truth.
We can also expect him to bluster and blow hard about stopping the steamrollering NHS STP privatisation programme, coming to a town near you soon. But he will lay prostrate, sit mute and do absolutely nothing to challenge or prevent it.
We’ll all have to watch further developments closely.