THE HOMELESS

@gazlan wrote:

@cath 55 wrote:

this is not information i impart usually, but from first hand experience being homeless is very scary and fraught with dangers. when i left a violent marriage with only what i stood up in and a 2 year old daughter i moved down to bletchley to do a living in job, when that job finished milton keynes council wouldnt house me because i hadnt been here long enough and birmingham city council wouldnt house me (where i came from) because i had been gone too long!! i begged them to find me somthing but no one , but no one would help.

this is when i spent 2 weeks homeless, sleeping mainly on new street station because it was well lit and at that time you had a lot of activity overnight, it was before the time of cctv cameras in fact it was 30 years ago and the world to be honest wasnt as scarier place as it is now. i was old enough to remember the documentary ‘cathy come home’ where her kids were taken into caree and i was terrified most of the time. you didnt see beggars in the street then so much as u do now and i basically llived on my wits, stealing small and only absolutely necessary things from shops , using the child benefit to get myself and my daughter warm meals when we needed to, but, we got by.

i wont go into the ins and outs of how we got out of it but we did and i got a council place in milton keynes moved in with a box of toys , a suitcase and 2 matresses the council liaison bloke got for us and i have been here eveer since.

the number of runnaways tho even then , young teenagers ffrom terrible terrible backgrounds there wasnt the network they have now but its an experience i thank god only lasted 2 weeks i had to go the then publiic health place and be deloused tuts , but dont knock anyone till u have walked a mile in their shoes, some very very sad cases out there, theres a lad on our estate who got caught up in the twilgih world of drugs same age as my daughter, i noow always think ‘therebut for the grace of god go I’ and i concur thin, yes we should of course be thinking of those who dont have what we have, not only the homeless here, but evryone who for one reason or a nother doesnt have the luxury of a warm home, and loving family xx

Poor mites, it’s as well they wern’t starved of oxygen isn’t it.

touche’ :wink:

@thin ice wrote:

lets spare a thought for all those are homeless over this festive period
whilst most of us fill our faces in the warmth of our homes on christmas day think of those who rely on soup kitchens and the like
and lets think about the wonderfull work the Salvation Army does
and hope and pray that it never happens to us

If they got a job they wouldn’t be homeless.

You’re quite right thin. At this time of the year when we are all sat in our nice comfortable homes, we really should spare a thought for those less fortunate than ourselves.

@Wordsworth50 wrote:

@minim wrote:

………And there are others who know how to use the system, obtain far more than they are entitled and make it ever harder for the truly deserving.

Well said mimim, but the truth is that it’s not those who fiddle the system who design it. They will exploit loopholes of any kind and there will always be loopholes.

In a society that leave reckless bankers in charge of the economy and forgive “friendly fire” and “collateral damage” the response to a (usually overstated) number of cheats does less to prevent cheating than to victimise the most needy (anyone care to guess whether the retesting of every disability claimant is going to save anything like what it will cost?)

Gesture politics rules! But not in a good way.

All the time I see evidence that people come to this country to abuse our benefit system and to make use of the NHS. Did you know that people come from the middle east and egypt just to have transplants here? Now there has to be something wrong when people who don’t live in this country and can hardly speak the language can come here and be offered expensive life saving treatment and not have to pay a thing, including not having had to pay national insurance contributions for a finite period of time. They get in through the back door using the loopholes you mention. And although I don’t begrudge someone life saving operations, I do wonder how on earth they can qualify for NHS treatment.

And…..making use of the system is all well and good for those that have the mental agility and knowledge to do so, but it does mean that the systems are stretched too tightly and those that are less able to manipulate the systems are abandoned.

*gets off soap box*

It is not based on a newspaper headline, it is what I have observed personally. And, I don’t know how it can happen…..but it does, and as I stated, I do not know how they qualify.