Tory Britain: Homeless children are born on the street – while privileged pensioners have helicopter rides from hospital
In the shadows: the plight of homeless people is overlooked – unless highlighted by the media. Meanwhile others are given every luxury due to nothing more than an accident of birth.
This is the truth of Boris Johnson’s brave new Britain: the public purse can pay for the privileged to have helicopter rides home from hospital, while a homeless woman didn’t qualify for hospital treatment until after she had given birth on a cold Cambridge street.
The woman, aged around 30, gave birth to twins who were around 11 weeks premature on Sidney Street, outside Trinity College, Cambridge on Monday.
Is this the kind of medical care the fifth-largest economy in the world provides to its people?
How did this woman become homeless? Was she unable to pay the bills because Tory wage or benefit policies are so prejudiced against the poor (which means most of us)?
Homelessness has rocketed under Conservative rule – and this can only be because Conservative policies dictated that it should happen.
And a homeless person, living on the streets, dies every 19 hours.
One would expect that pregnant women who are homeless would be particularly vulnerable to an early death – especially those in desperate need of medical help because they were giving birth.
Death during childbirth used to be tragically common, after all.
No doubt this would make the Tories unbearably happy; it’s one less “useless eater”.
I read also, today, that the Duke of Edinburgh enjoyed a helicopter ride home after a four-day stay in hospital due to a “pre-existing condition”.
You see how it is?
The privileged people in our society get to have the very best – a place in hospital whenever they need or want it, and the extravagance of a trip home by helicopter – whenever they want it.
And all on state benefits. The Duke is on the Civil List, remember – and that is a state-funded benefit.
Why aren’t the rest of us afforded the same treatment – why wasn’t the homeless mother offered it, if the cash is available to pay for him to receive such treatment?
I’m not begrudging him the treatment; I’m questioning a government that is happy to fund such extravagance for him, while begrudging even a minimum of treatment for her.
It all could have been different, too. Labour would have provided a home and dignity to the woman, and she would have been able to enjoy appropriate hospital treatment.
But 14 million voted Tory. A child becomes homeless every eight minutes (including the two who were born homeless on Monday).
And the benefits we enjoy depend on the identity of our parents (or spouses) rather than being rights enjoyed by everyone.
That’s something to think about, over Christmas.
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With things like this happening, the ‘Festive Season’ has a particularly hollow ring to it. I shudder to think what 2020 will bring… However, all best wishes to you and yours and keep up the good work.
I’m sure that Boris’s “thoughts will be with her” from his private island in the Caribbean during Christmas..
While BBC itv still attack that who would have brought forth a farer Britain we have the love of our government who crush you by denial of benefits through their schemes that they say will help you while taking more of you each day aktion T4 truly rolling along with much more speed
The gratuitous “pensioners” bit is wholly irrelevant. It’s the Duke of Edinburgh’s wealth and royal position that gets him a helicopter, not his age….
But the reality of the situation is that the british public in their supreme wisdom voted for the continuation of the massive disparity in income streams for the rich and poor. The result of the election indicates that the poor and working class (and other) voters are satisfied to see people starving, homeless and suffering in the streets. Personally, I find it at best stomach churning and think how in the last decade we as a country have ‘succeeded’ in matching third world conditions in our treatment of the poor in one of the better economies in the world – we seem to be in a race back to victorian times. So approaching ten year of coalition / tory rule with at least another five year term – expect more with the anticipated changes coming in? We will at the end of this be truly back to the past in victorian times and policies towards the poor and disadvantaged. If you aren’t very rich you’re screwed! But then off course all those that voted CONservative can afford to??????
They can’t, though. That’s the tragedy.