Tag Archives: homeless

55 homeless children die in the UK as a result of government policy

Not coming back: in deference to good taste, it seemed reasonable to run an image of a child running away down a back alley, as symbolic of those who have left us and are not coming back because of government policies on poverty and homelessness.

Today (March 5, 2024), This Site published an article about the starvation of children in Gaza, quoting the famous line that if you want to know what politicians would do to you if they could get away with it, look what they support abroad.

Here’s what they are getting away with, here in the UK:

In that other article, I made reference to the late Tony Benn’s words: “The way governments treat refugees is the way they would treat the rest of us if they could get away with it.”

It seems that, here in the UK, they are getting away with it.

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ONS consults on plan to axe data on people who die while homeless. Why hide it?

Frozen: These snow effigies of homeless people were created in 2018 to demonstrate that rough sleepers were freezing to death. Has anything changed since then?

Is this another Tory government bid to hide the effect of its policies on the people of the UK?

It seems the Office for National Statistics is consulting the public on whether to scrap its annual count of the number of people who die while they are homeless.

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Read the following – and the source article too, if you want more information – and then please take part in the consultation here. It is running until March 5 so please share it with your friends.

Official statistics counting the number of people who die while homeless in England and Wales could be axed despite frontline organisations warning rising homelessness means “now is not the time”.

The ONS count uses death certificates to ascertain whether someone died while homeless alongside modelling to produce an estimate. The most recent count, published in November 2022, found an estimated 741 people died in 2021.

“This proposal does not reflect our view on the seriousness of the issue of deaths of homeless people. However the current homeless deaths statistics have included major caveats around factors including time of death, the definition of homelessness and their alignment with statistics on the total number of homeless people,” an ONS spokesperson said.

“ONS is open to re-establishing these statistics in future, and would value users’ views on their relative importance compared to other health and social care statistics through the consultation currently running.”

The move has faced criticism from frontline homelessness organisations.

Balbir Kaur Chatrik, director of policy and communications at youth homelessness charity Centrepoint, said: “Of the more than 700 deaths in 2021, 31 were under 25, thirteen still teenagers. Youth homelessness has increased significantly since then and we’re worried even more lives will have been lost.

“Statistics alone won’t end homelessness – but without a solid evidence base it will be impossible to tell how far we have to go.”

Again: the ONS consultation on whether it should stop publishing information on people who die while homeless is here until March 5. Please take part and share the link.

Source: Anger as ONS plans to axe data on people who die while homeless


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Asylum seekers on Bibby Stockholm are doing better work than Tory politicians

The barge: Bibby Stockholm seems to have become home to a group of people who are having a hugely positive effect volunteering to help homeless people in Portland and Weymouth. Perhaps asylum-seekers are better than Tory politicians have pretended?

Asylum-seekers who have been detained by the Tory government on the Bibby Stockholm barge are doing charity work in Portland and nearby Weymouth, it has been revealed.

They aren’t allowed to work for wages while they wait for the Tory-run Home Office to assess their asylum claims.

Instead, some of them are filling the huge amount of free time on their hands by volunteering for charities:

Azad [not his real name], an asylum seeker currently living on the Bibby Stockholm barge, is devoting his time to volunteering for homeless charities in Weymouth… and Portland, helping to cook and distribute food for those who are living on the streets during the coldest months of the year.

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Several of the asylum seekers living on the barge have now begun volunteering with local charities – and in particular, charities working with homeless people.

Some of the men on board the barge have experience in charity work, having worked for organisations in their home countries… Others have volunteered at charities in London or other parts of the country where they were housed before moving to the Bibby Stockholm.

The asylum seekers receive around £9 a week as an allowance to spend on food or leisure in Weymouth or Portland… Azad said he spends the majority of his weekly allowance on food to give to homeless people in Weymouth.

Compare this with the antics of the Tory MPs in Parliament, whose policies seem designed to make as many people homeless as possible – and who seem unlikely to spend any time working to ease the lives of those their policies have ruined.

Source: Portland barge: Asylum seekers helping homeless charities | Dorset Echo


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Once again, ’tis the season to be homeless – if you’re a CHILD in the UK at Christmas

I used to write this story every bloody year.

Lost track a bit after2020. Back then, 131,000 children were set to be homeless at Christmas. That was a helluva lot more than in 2013, when I wrote my first article based on figures from homelessness charity Shelter. The total then was around 80,000.

Now it’s closer to 139,000.

So the number of children who are homeless in the UK has nearly doubled in 10 years.

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I’d call that a Tory policy failure but here’s Shelter’s version:

Nearly 139,000 children in England will wake up on Christmas morning without a place to call home. This is the highest number on record.

Yes, we are outraged too.

Forced to stay in cold shipping containers, badly converted offices, cramped B&Bs (sometimes with six people to a room), or in places where the locks don’t work properly.

This is not a home.

But how did it come to this?

A lack of affordable homes in the UK means the housing emergency is spiralling. More people are struggling in temporary accommodation or being forced onto the streets.

“My first six weeks living in temporary accommodation left me traumatised for life.”
– Fashmina

This is unacceptable.

We must act now.

Your donation today could:

  • answer an emergency call from a family who are facing the fear and uncertainty of being made homeless

  • help to pay for legal advice to help a family in crisis keep their home

  • advocate for access to secure and permanent homes for everyone

Your donation won’t be restricted to a single project but will be used wherever it’s needed most to help those fighting for their right to a safe home.

Yes – this is an appeal for financial help, to make life endurable for people like Fashmina – whose words above should chill you as much as they did me.

Get yourself over to Shelter’s appeal page now – and do what you can to help.

And remember it was Tory policies that have traumatised children like Fashmina.


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Braverman’s legacy: tents of homeless people are destroyed by council(?) and police

Braverman’s last wish: tents belonging to homeless people are loaded onto a rubbish compactor lorry.

There’s a couplet in Moby Dick that runs like this:

From Hell’s heart I stab at thee,
For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

One of Suella Braverman’s last breaths as Home Secretary, if one can put it like that, was to suggest that being homeless is a “lifestyle choice” and call for rough sleepers to have their tents taken away from them – just as the autumn and winter chill started to set in.

Then last Friday (November 10), this happened:

Even now the facts are unclear.

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But a BBC report provides this information on what it said was a Metropolitan Police operation:

Refuse workers threw the tents into the back of their lorry on Huntley Street, Camden, at about 15:00 GMT on Friday.

The Met said it “worked with University College London Hospital and other partners in response to concerns”.

It is understood that the NHS hospital trust, which has a building entrance on the road, requested the dispersal of rough sleepers but not the destruction of tents.

Refuse company Veolia was contacted for comment.

A University College London Hospital (UCLH) spokesperson said “public health concerns” prompted the action.

Elodie Berland, who volunteers with outreach organisation Streets Kitchen… said the homeless men “had everything taken away from them”.

She said that about 10 tents were destroyed along with the men’s personal belongings as the Met issued a S35 dispersal order, which requires people to vacate an area for a maximum of 48 hours.

It seems Braverman’s final hate-filled wish as Home Secretary has been granted – ironically, by the police force she attacked in the newspaper article that prompted Rishi Sunak to sack her.


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Pie bites chunks out of Braverman [STRONG LANGUAGE]

Braverman: I’m using this image again with a story about the Home Secretary and the homeless because she probably thinks not paying energy bills is an advantage for people who don’t have a home to heat. Of course, her own bills are paid for her – by you.

No, I haven’t got them the wrong way around in the headline.

Jonathan Pie has turned his attention to Home Secretary Suella Braverman after she had the bare-faced, ignorant cheek to say that being homeless is a “lifestyle choice”.

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She deserved what he did to her as a result and, if you can stomach the spicy language, here it is:


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Just as it’s getting cold, Suella Braverman wants to ban the homeless from having tents

Suella Braverman: she’s warm and cosseted – and couldn’t care less about anybody less fortunate.

Here’s the story:

Here’s what Braverman herself has to say about it:

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Here’s the response she has (rightly) received:

Any questions?


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UK prime minister asks homeless man if he works in business

Typical Tory: he opens his mouth and we all see the silver spoon.

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak was working in a shelter for homeless people last Friday (December 23, 2022) – most probably because his advisers would have told him it’s a good wheeze that always generates support for people like Jeremy Corbyn.

Sadly, Rishi Sunak isn’t a person like Jeremy Corbyn.

That is the reason this happened:

Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner shared the clip and called it “excruciating”.

You may feel that’s an understatement.

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Are you ready to lose your home to Tory economic stupidity?

The rise in interest rates means people with mortgages are having to pay more to keep their homes than at any time since the late 1980s.

Many of them won’t be able to sustain the payments at a time when the cost of living is rising across the board. That means people are going to lose their homes.

Here’s a video to explain it:

The issue was also discussed on the BBC’s Any Questions – with politicians predictably disagreeing wildly about the solution (I’ve had to split the audio file into three for upload purposes:

So we can have cheap, new housing – but it will be built on our valuable Green Belt land.

Or we can have cheap, new housing – but in unregulated zones created by the Tory government, and therefore probably won’t be worth having.

Whatever housing is offered to us, it probably won’t have the social infrastructure surrounding it that people actually need in order to live there.

Let’s be honest: This Writer can’t see any of the above as being a solution.

This Tory-created nightmare is just creating problem after problem.

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Tory London mayor candidate thinks homeless people can save cash to buy a house

Shaun Bailey: he was already Conservative candidate for Islamophobia, sexism and misogyny. Now we can add ignorance.

Shaun Bailey has a history of stupidity to which this may now be added:

The Tories’ London mayoral candidate has suggested homeless could people save up £5,000 for a deposit to buy a house.

Shaun Bailey plans to use some of the capital’s affordable housing budget to pay for shared-ownership homes for sale.

And he has been branded “completely out of touch” over the remarks.

“Out of touch” is a mild criticism compared to some of the things that could be said about him.

We can all look forward to the elections – whenever they’re likely to be. Would anyone like to lay a bet on how badly this goon will lose?

Source: Tory London mayor candidate suggests homeless people could save £5,000 for house deposit – Mirror Online

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