There’s a homeless shelter near my house, which is one of a few reasons why I’ve never seriously considered the possibility that anyone might freeze to death on the streets overnight. The news is full of previously unfamiliar phrases about emergency cold weather provision for rough sleepers “kicking in” when the temperature hits zero. When it gets cold enough, no one is turned away. Shelters start to open during the day. Local politicians, mayors especially, talk determinedly about how to combat homelessness, and charities are mollified and surprised. Yet deaths on the streets have been happening quite regularly since the start of winter. Walking past a guy I see every day, in progressively worse shape, the question mark over whether or not he’ll survive the month arrives not as a thought, more as a disembodied echo. Is it blase not to worry? Or melodramatic to mention it?
Hundreds of rough sleepers in Scotland to be offered homes
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The sense that a Conservative government might be callous is not an unfamiliar one: the contention that actual deaths have resulted from discernible policies is one that only slick-looking men on magazine-format current affairs programmes put any gusto into denying. Yet there is a creeping suspicion that the government has completely ground to a halt. Crises don’t erupt, because there is nobody to deal with them.
Source : theguardian
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