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Where Metal Spikes Meet The Homeless: In London "The Destitute Are Now Considered Vermin"
First, the world's oligarchs slowly but surely took over London real estate, where as we reported last week, home prices in May soared by the most in 12 years, and now, according to the Telegraph, in order to make London into an even more exclusive enclave where only the uber-wealthy can rub shoulders, assorted luxury buildings are installing metal spikes on the ground outside to fully deter homeless people from sleeping (and hence living) there. In other words, in London homeless people have been relegated to pigeon status, as the same technique has been long used to prevent rats with wings from landing, and defecating, at select locations.
From the Telegraph:
Andrew Horton, 33, of Woking, Surrey, took the picture of the inch long studs outside the flats on Southwark Bridge Road as he walked to work on Wednesday.
Mr Horton said: "I can't say for certain but it certainly looked like they were placed there to deter homeless people. "It's dreadful."
David Wells said on Twitter: "These Anti homeless studs are like the spikes they use to keep pigeons off buildings. The destitute now considered vermin [sic].
Not everyone is a stud humanist: others defended the metal protrusions.
Gavin Logan said on Twitter: "There will be a context behind those anti-homeless spikes. Possibly a last resort against someone who was aggressive and refused housing." People living in the flats, which sell for upwards of £800,000, said the metal studs were installed two weeks ago after a number of homeless people were seen sleeping there.
One woman resident, who asked not to be named, said: “There was a homeless man asleep there about six weeks ago. "Then about two weeks ago all of a sudden studs were put up outside. "I presume it is to deter homeless people from sleeping there."
A couple, who also asked to remain anonymous, added: "It's because of the homeless. "The spikes have only been there very recently, less than a month."
One guy asked the pragmatic question:
A man looking around the flats, a ten-minute walk from Southwark Underground Station, said the spikes would not put him off. The man, who only gave his name as Peter, a lawyer, said: "But would you want homeless people outside your door?"
Still, yet others prefer to simply ask philosophical questions:
Kathrine Stokes, 39, of Hull, East Yorkshire, photographed studs outside Tesco in Regent Street, London and uploaded the picture on Twitter. She said: "It's sad. It demonstrates a meaness and a lack of humanity for people."
Katharine Sacks-Jones, head of policy and campaigns at homelessness charity Crisis, said: "It is a scandal that anyone should sleep on the streets in 21st century Britain. Yet over the last three years rough sleeping has risen steeply across the country and by a massive 75 per cent in London. "Behind these numbers are real people struggling with a lack of housing, cuts to benefits and cuts to homelessness services to help them rebuild their lives.
"They might have suffered a relationship breakdown, a bereavement or domestic abuse. They deserve better than to be moved on to the next doorway along the street. We will never tackle rough sleeping with studs in the pavement. Instead we must deal with the causes."
Thank the Bank of England.
As for Tesco, it decided to simply lie:
Tesco said the spikes outside its store in Regent Street were not intended to target those in need of shelter. A Tesco spokesman said: “The studs were put in place to try and stop people engaging in anti-social behaviour like smoking or drinking outside our store, which can be intimidating for our customers.”
Anti-social studs?
That said, since the world's central banks have managed to make the world's top metropolises sufficiently gentrified to where only the uber wealthy can afford to live there, the poor should thank their lucky stars that they only have to deal with sharp spikes instead of, say, moats and land mines near luxury buildings (that said it is only a matter of time before that thought experiment becomes reality).
After all, in a world in which justice has a standard for the 1% and everyone else, a few blown up homeless would surely be classified, in the passive voice of course, as "accident that have happened due to glitch."
And now, back to economists writing profound books discussing the record divergence between the world's rich and poor.
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"Become the change you would see in the world."
Mahatma Gandhi
Yeah, what he said!
Two sheets of plywood oughta do the trick...
That's spikeful
Reminds me of the Bundy ranch situation, I think they call them Constitutional Free Areas to Demonstrate IN or stage a SLEEP IN ;)
The Landlords obviously ran out of the "Homelss Glue Traps":
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Real-Kill-Rat-Glue-Traps-2-Pack-HG-10096-3/10...
Plus, homeless have been known to chew their arm or lag off to get out of those traps. Sneaky little Buggers.
I remember hearing a punk song on university radio back in the 80s and the lyric was something like:
"Where are all the benches?
What benches?
The benches that aren't there
Where old people rest with their groceries"
etc..
People sitting on a bench are bad for business.
Use a fat homeless person as a mattress.
and if its cold cut it open and warm yourself in its innards.
A fat homeless person wouldn't stay fat for long.
LOL, it truly is spikeful. They could have installed a planter and roses or something, but no, they want to make sure you get the point!
Ive seen some dudes from India that could sleep on that no problem.
This deters a different sort of sword swallower.
The plywood wouldn't slide around either, keep the sleeper dry as well.
What's sad is the money they spent on the spikes and installation could have gone into a job training or substance abuse program; but that would be so...human.
Or it could go into enforcing immigration laws better, and locking up psychiatric cases, but the left hates that, since the 1960's.
Huh??? The homeless are immigrants? Really? Here in the US too? The Vets? And then because they're homeless they are crazy and they and the homeless kids need to be locked up?
"The left hates that...", oh, I see... never mind...
Nobody wrote anything about homless kids ... here I don't see any sleeping rough ... the rough sleepers are older gents or a woman occasionaly. Runaway teens are usually being exploited off the streets by pimps or predatory queers.
Maybe buy the Homeless some bootstraps with which they could pull themselves up, or maybe some snow shoes with which they could walk 5 miles, uphill each way to their new jobs. Heck minimum wage is going up to 15$ in some places....
That's the same thing I thought. So some contractor got some good money installing these things for nothing.
I can just imagine the D'oh moment when the smug walk out of their building to see some guy floating on their spikes with a plywood raft.
The next step will be to make the transporting of plywood a crime. That'll show 'em!
Most homeless are skinny enough to fit between the spikes
Will 75 cents suffice?
Looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Shitty lawyer quoted in the article doesnt see the forseeability of injury?
Idiot.
Mis-step and fall on one of those and it's an automatic lawsuit.
Sorry but I have to say 'move em on'... I worked in an office across from a stoop where some homeless started to 'live' and within a week the stench of defacation and urine was drifting across the street, the homeless people were abusing/intimidating passers-by and within a month it looked like a landfill with all sorts of disgarded materials piling up. Some evenings the owner of the stoop would bleach it and wash all the mess away but within a couple of days of them returning, the place was just as bad.
I wouldn't expect you to tolerate that kind of thing, so don't try to tell me that I should.
If I ever end up on the street (God help me) I'd like to hope I'd still have enough marbles to at least keep my stoop clean.
There is a distinction to be made between actions that should be controlled/prevented and those that should not be controlled/prevented. Abusing and intimidating passers-by, litter, etc. should not be tolerated. People sleeping on a sidewalk, however, should be tolerated, and should receive a reasonable response from those aware of the people sleeping on the sidewalk. Make sure they know about the nearest homeless shelter, if there is one. Give them a job or convince someone to give them a job. There are things we can do for a homeless person that will actually help them and are not particularly inconvenient.
It appears to be private property, therefore I would let them do what they want with it.
I've been homeless, it is important to stay clean as possible, avoids disease and pests. I usually washed up daily, mostly in gas station rest rooms where I could lock the door.
Is that why Gandhi would beat his wife?
And Proper Rats are considered "homeful"....
PROGRESS! (Just not the way your thinkin'!)
* you're *
if contractions were outlawed we would only have 'their and there' to ID the challenged...
And owners of older tablet computers.
The destitute are always considered vermin. In the UK it's spikes, in the US it's local laws being passed to make feeding the homeless a crime.
It's pretty fucked up when preventing homeless, untreated mentally ill veterans from starving lands you in jail.
Seriously....
Did anyone think that things would turn out any differently?
No, because people are obedient to authority like their fellow primates. So many years of evolution, all for naught.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/uoc-ham102407.php
"Alpha males, who rule the 50 or so macaques in the troop, use threats and violence to hold on to the safest sleeping places, the best food, and access to the females in the group with whom they want to have sex. Like human dictators intent on holding power, dominant monkeys use frequent and unpredictable aggression as an effective form of intimidation. Less powerful members of the rhesus macaque group are marginalized and forced to live on the edges of the group’s area, where they are vulnerable to predator attacks. They must wait for the others to eat first and then have the leftovers; they have sex only when the dominant monkeys are not looking."
In the US, some cities send the homeless to other cities: put them on a greyhound bus and off they go.
I will suggest that at our next town council meeting. . San Francisco would love to slough their psychiatric street folk off on Bay Area suburban towns. But we have families. And children.
whether someone considers homeless to be vermin or not is irrelevant, that's just an opinion and people can have whatever opinions they wish.
passing laws making it illegal to feed homeless people is immoral, it's always wrong to interfere by means of force (government laws) in a voluntary interaction between other people.
however, a building owner placing spikes outside the door because he doesn't want homeless people sleeping on his property, is doing something perfectly valid, he's protecting his property from intrusion.
those 2 situations are not at all analogous.
"it's always wrong to interfere by means of force (government laws) in a voluntary interaction between other people"
Naive.
no, it's not naive, it's a basic, straightforward understanding of right and wrong.
your lazy, 1-word reply, doesn't deserve more of a rebuttal than that.
Have you lived around them? Street people pissing and shitting in the alley and doorway. Mumbling and cursing as if they were on a cell phone to Mars? Petty theft fom cars and stoops. Ever worked at a shellter for street people aka urban campers? The ones that are straight talkers will tell you they do not want off the street ... the others will work a fast con on you for a few $. For most it is a lifestyle choice, for a few a sentence for not taking their meds and for a very few a temporary situation.
WWJD?
Wow spikes on the ground? Thats some sick shit mang
Do let homeless sit outside your place of business harassing your customers, stinking the place up or trashing it with their hypodermics, booze bottles and puke or do you prefer to let them camp on your front porch harassing your wife and kids?
Why not offer the homeless free bum wine and a ride down to the nearest bankster office?
i'll be happy to do that.
can i borrow your car for this task?
Just wait until one of those 'wishes to remain anonymous' trips and lands on those fuckers.
You'll be able to hear the howling for miles.
Unintended consequences and all that.
Wasn't it Vlad the Impaler that invited the poor to a dinner and then proceeded to burn down the building/tent? How far are we away from something like this?
Nope. He did that to invading Turks, not the poor.
He was actually quite nice to his subjects.
What merry olde England needs now more than ever ............................................................................................... Robin Hood and his merry men
Yes we spend all day on here talking about guillotines while they actually put spikes in the ground. Who is really winning #askboe
Cartman Jumps the Homeless
Never been there but from what I can tell London sucks. Always has, always will. Let the billionaires have it I say.
It doesn't. But it's so medieval and creepy...
london is pretty great!
was there last year.
kinda an expensive place, though.
Maybe you should travel there before you form such strong opinions. Might make you a tad less uniformed.
A piece of plywood would fix that situation.
plywood will keep homeless off the street.
literally...
1" spike
1 1/2 " of cardboard
Sleeping like a baby
....... and the spikes keep your cardboard from blowing away in the wind ........... sounds like a winner
A piece of ply tastefully decorated you understand, would also keep your ass off the wet cement, they should thank the spike providers for their thoughtfulness.
Isn't the UK a country where anyone can get free housing just be asking for it? I'm constantly reading about abuses of that system.
Only if you are a Muslim immigrant.
I think it is open to any kind of towel or dot heads from the former empire/commonwealth, not just those who point their asses away from Mecca 5 times a day.
"Isn't the UK a country where anyone can get free housing just be asking for it? I'm constantly reading about abuses of that system."
Dated information. Free housing is only given to the following groups: The elderly, those with children, physical or mentally disability. To claim it the individual - contrary to what the two bigots who posted below - must show to the local council/town hall a catch 22 proof of residency (e.g. payment bill or bank statement in his name at an address) before given social housing. Furthermore alot of borough councils demand that the individual only be given housing after a number of years on waiting list and in London that's usually alot of years.
Contary to what posters claim its not easy to get housing.
Some of the homeless are mentally ill. Many have drug and alcohol problems. But many are just plain lazy. Having worked with the homeless in Houston, I can tell you that they are often their own worst enemy. The lifestyle requires very little and it is very hard for some to leave it even when given a multitude of help. This is not the same homelessness as the family living in their van etc etc because mom developed cancer or dad lost his job.
If you think the spikes are cruel, then you are welcome to invite them into your home rather then have them urinate on your front steps, steal everythingout of your yard, and assult you so they can get a few dollars and get high.
I did. I helped a homeless guy off the street. Let him live in our garage apartment, got him a job he could handle, he bought a motorcycle, got extenisive dental work, and got him involved with the community.
Two years later he is living on the streets and left all of it behind. He does not have mental health problems. He is lazy and he is stuborn.
Good story. Better man than I.
This is why I don't help the homeless. Fuck em.
Is that truley the reason you don't help the homeless?
You do have admire his honesty....
However he should remember that the worm always turns...
In this case, it very very rarely turns.
in my small town, the street people are growing in numbers..the economy is tanking and taking the weak first as in nature the weak are culled. I support relatives who are victims of central planning and out sourcing I have little left for the steet people.
Homie, how about helping the homeless that seek help, and move along those looking for a place to lounge and urinate.
This is perfect with the plywood panel they can still piss in that area and lie on top of it without getting wet thanks to the spikes.
Lazy and stubborn? You should have told him to get a job at the Federal Reserve!
It probably does take two guys. One to push the big red SELL VIX button and the other to hit the BUY SPY button.
You're a good person. Sorry things worked out the way they did.
With respect, but many are priced out of their level in the employment market due to the minimum wage.
Additionally, many have even less opportunities because of the plunder by the pols, crats and their bankster masters.
And also many poorer families cannot to afford to care for "uncle Bill" for the same reasons cited above.
Or put another way, how many homeless were there when the levels of plunder were much lower?!
"My guillotine can bring some of their heads together for a solution."
I took homeless kids to my home. Judges gave me legal tutelage over them. It's been years now. It wasn't easy but they're ok, they work and study and stay out of trouble.
Their grades make sunny days for us very often.
And I have a very large family on my own. We're a bunch of pals. Life can be so warm.
By the way prince Charles recently commented that Vlade the impaler or count Dracula was his cousin. This is for real
Figures the monarch would relish any ties to anyone that impaled the serfs.
Be funny as fuck if Vlad the ObamaReamer turned out to be a distant relative.
dO THEY HAVE wALLMARTS IN LONDON?
Don't you love "Civilization"?
Not sure, have we reached it yet???
For an artist's impression of what future looks like, see The Hunger Games.
That's a kids' story, so it's nice and toned down. The Hunger Games will probably be in the Elysium. Who knows what we'll have down here...
Kinda like those spiky things you see for birds...
They'll come out one morning and find an ancient bearded yogi sleeping there.
soooo, who pays the lawsuit when a visitor or delivery person accidentally looses balance and falls on the spikes?
Who goes to jail for negligent homicide when the person who accidentally falls gets a spike through his/her eye into their brain?
let's start a raffle. pick the number of weeks before they are in a lawsuit.
Ditto. The lawyers are already lined up grinning and awaiting payday. A garden hose would be a good deterrent factor I should think. Or just a sprinkler system that kicks on for 20 secs every hour. I have seen that used somewhere and of course there was n uproar over it. Inhumane or some such lib bs. NIMBY.
‘Do I have to go on my knees?’
- Christine LaGarde
Not unless YOU want a liquidity injection.
All life is a circle ... the people laying the metal spikes and the people trying to sleep there .... both mentally ill
Exactly...
The thought processes that brought us to this point are NOT going to extricate us from it.
Yes it will, just not the way you would hope for,
The current thought processes that are being employed by our leaders, and decision makers will cause a fairly sudden extraction, eventually.
Just say'n
This is a good protest pic of the spikes:
Chinese artist Ou Zhihang decided to protest by posing on the spikes naked, like a fakir.http://observers.france24.com/files/imagecache/observers_full_width/rfi_...
Every major city has those spikes or other "vagrancy" deterrents.
Guangzhou
http://www.ministryoftofu.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/spikes05.jpg
Anti-Homeless’ benches in Tokyohttp://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2006/10/05/anti-homeless-benches-i...
Berlin
http://inventorspot.com/articles/iron_maiden_bench_excellent_unless_your...
In Florida there is an Anti-Blanket ordinance
http://www.dressingconstitutionally.com/2014/02/09/an-anti-blanket-ordin...Rotterdam, Calgary, Cambridge
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131202-dirty-tricks-of-city-design
"
Kathrine Stokes, 39, of Hull, East Yorkshire, photographed studs outside Tesco in Regent Street, London and uploaded the picture on Twitter. She said: "It's sad. It demonstrates a meaness and a lack of humanity for people.""
Someone should discover her address and invite the homeless there............
It's definitely a two-way street.
In my area a homeless young man and his mother were arguing after a night of drinking and drugs around a campfire in a homeless camp in the woods.
The mother was found a few days later by the Sheriffs department buried in a shallow grave after a few other homeless camp dwellers reported it to the police.
The son was arrested and is being held without bond for murder.
At least he is no longer homeless...
/sarc
Rim. Shot.
Smearing Pigeons like this author does is a crime against the animal kingdom. The other mentioned two legged beast excretes far more volume than does the pigeon.
Here's a pay-per-sit bench. You can give coins for your freedumbs to enjoy the park.
http://youtu.be/naPSFR2z-eI
Don't forget the siren to warn you the spikes are about to re-emerge. Otherwise you get prison raped in the park.
Fuck the homeless, especially the deaf ones.
N.I.M.B.Y!
What was it George Carlin said about the homeless and golf courses?
But this IS privately-held property...same as your yard.
I worked in a downtown highrise in the late 1990's that has a backdoor out of the basement that was perfect for a good night's sleep. There was a louver that discharged hot air from the boiler room during cold wether and there was half hight walls to keep the wind off of you and there was a drain to take a piss as a bonus.
You took your chances leaving the building that way. One day there was a few chicken wings, most days just a few french fries and the smell of urine. One day there was a human turd.
You missed your chance; you should have punched Bernanke right in the face.
Exactly, I do not care if people sleep someplace, but pissing and shitting somewhere where I have to go does not cut it. Bad enough that the US government does that all over us. We do not need homeless folks doing it in our doorways. Go find the White House and piss and shit on them.
A lawsuit waiting to happen. Suppose a kid falls and loses an eye?
My first thought as well. This is right by a door. Very easily foreseeable that this is a danger. The first lawsuit will clean them out.
No. It will clean out the residents by the rise in the Homeowners' Association Fees to cover the costs of litigation.
The party responsible, the landlord or Lessor or HOA President, will walk away scot free. There is NO PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY.
LOL..LMAO...ROTFLMAO
(And you still expect justice??? You have not learned yet? Wow.)
When someone falls or "falls" on these spikes and is hurt there could be a personal injury case. Add some psychological trauma to the physical injury and the pounds could add to a tidy sum. It might be a kid playing with a skateboard. The English have as great, or greater, a welfare/entitlement mentality as Americans. I'm sure it won't take too long.
Disgusting.
Property rights. What the owner of the property wishes to do with his or her property is his/her choice.
we are animals first and foremost. Life is a giant free for all. We are wolves for each others.
We all know that there are a zillion of slaughterers and vampires out there much much worse than wolves.
Odd. The homeless always move to the nicest areas of a city.
Not odd at all... Just like traders and brokers, they go where the money is. Why do you think that odd? Everybody's broke, just at different levels.
I'm starting a new foundation. "Plywood and cardboard."
Our motto is, "No borders are too weak"!
When I was the night manager of a grocery store, I used to make it a point to eject the transients whom I found sleeping on the bathroom floors. I did feel pangs of guilt about it, but it was the right thing to do. I had the safety of my employees to consider; and besides, some of those guys were incontinent and would end up pissing down the aisles as they ambled through the store. I don’t think anyone would want to buy their groceries from such an environment.
I no longer work at that job, but a couple of weeks ago I heard a man actually died in one of my old stores. He overdosed on heroin in the john at night.
There are good moral, ethical, and legal reasons for not letting the homeless do as they please and/or directing them to the appropriate and competent sources of help.
Hunh, when I was a stockboy, I would heat-seal shaving cream onto produce flats and label it bull cum, 49 cents. I also dunked your french bread loaves in my mop water.
You think transients are the problem? Think again.
One time, someone dropped a fucking gallon sized glass jar of apple butter in the aisle, and some fat lady slipped and fell in the goo. The manager (you?) said goddammit! Hurry up and get her off the floor! If her ass ever gets suction we'll never get her out of here!
I ain't proud of that shit, but I did it, and I'll bet it's worse now.
Piss off, you douchebag loser. I was talking to the adults in the room. And if you had behaved that way in my store, I would have broken your little faggety-ass neck.
I guess you never watched "Fight Club". Now Tyler Durden, he was a pro. He pissed in the soup and then sued the establishment for the urine content of the soup.
No woman, or, even a faggot would have sex with you so you can go autofellate, you spineless loser. Enjoy giving yourself head.
(It may have helped to have watched the movie so that you have a clue to whom you are responding.)
My address is 12223B Woodside Ave, Lakeside, CA, USA.
Let's go hunting.
Oh shit! I've pissed off the big bad grocery store manager! I'm DOOMED!
Goose, I'm a lot more creative than you are managerial. Are you ready? I'd bet not.
Weigh and consider truth or annilation, truth or consequences...Martin Luther
Love, everything else is an illusion.....Martin Luther
Nobility is defined by ones actions.........Robin Hood
in nature when a mother doe gets hit by a car its fawn is left to wander around and starve to death scared and alone.
when people fail in life and have no purpose they will wander untill they die as well. This gets dragged out a long time with "gererousity and caring".
If your heart is going to bleed for the weak and weary do it for those that are worthy and not for those that reek of alchohol.
don't forget
Nature>human nature.
Some years ago a number of CEO's did the good Samaritan thing and decided to visit and sleep one night with the homeless, I believe it was in Brisbane, several reporters accompanied them, what shocked the CEO's was how many of the homeless were people who had been successful in life until the loss of a loved one for example sent them into an alcoholic spiral etc, many had run their own businesses etc before some issue had affected them to the extent that they lost everything and ended up on the street.
We are not as secure as we think we are in our lifestyles, it really does not take that much for the average human being to go into a spiral and end up on the street, a drug or alcohol problem that gets out of control, the emotional loss of a partner or child, illness, fraud, violence. something to think about before treating the homeless as sub human.
Context is important with so many things in life, you are very correct about our security in our lifestyles however the western lifestyle particularly in the urban environment; without an ample income it really does become an concrete jungle rife with predators. That said, the few Asian countries I've visited I don't see the same level of despair or sense of loss by those who have next to nothing - there have been a few very sad looking cases that I've seen particularly in Singapore but overall I'd have to say it seems countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia the poor don't seem to suffer near as much as the western cultures - but then were do you draw the poverty line?
The grunt shipyard workers in Singapore for the most part come from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar - the average wage for these guys is between 300 to 600 dollars a month and they pretty much work every day of every week all year long 12 hours each day. You see them sleeping outside the gates of various factories and shipyards before the main gate opens for the day - they normally get there an hour or 2 before shift. Some Malaysian villagers I've met make the equivalent of 10 dollars a month but they eat every day and have a roof over their heads - long house actually - and they don't really consider themselves poor they make grow or catch what they need to survive and the work together as a tribe or family. Vietnam has a lot of folks that don't seem to have much of a place to live but they all seem to have somewhere to sleep and can get something to eat - though I cannot claim to have ever seen an obese VN person on any of my visits - that crown belongs to the Western crowd, no shortage of fat bastards there.
We, being the western cultures seem to have forgotten how to take care of ourselves on the most basic levels but we are not so far removed if we think about it - completely country dependant of course. When I was a kid 40 something years ago we lived in a rural area of Eastern Canada, across the road from our house was a very small house by todays standards in which an old couple lived at that time they were in their 90's and they had a small farm but nearly everything they ate they raised or grew on that farm, they had chickens, pigs, a few cows and an ox. they had no telephone, no electricity and no formal education beyond basic reading skills. I used to watch the old man cut hay for his animals with a scythe and after it dried sufficiently he would make a hay stack out of the dried grass using a pitchfork, he worked every day from sun up to sundown tending his animals and milking the cows, his wife would tend the garden, collect the eggs and bake bread every morning in a wood fired oven. Every few days I used to watch this old man take his ox to the forest to cut wood using only an ax and an old cross cut saw the same routine as they had done decade after decade - and they were probably the happiest people I have ever met. We moved out of the area after a couple of years but I heard later that they had been moved into a home by the government some years later after the wife had taken ill and passed away shortly after, at the time they were both more than a century old.
Anyway the point being if we remove our preconceptions and get back to the basics of necessity of survival we can survive and sometimes even be happy... maybe it is true, maybe less really is more; well that's what Les Paul used to say anyway (not the guitar guy, one of my native friends)
There are all kinds of variations in nature. There is no particular reason to believe that one kind of variation will succeed in the longer term over the others. Empathy and caring are not, evidently, as common amongst humans as many would like to believe. But they haven't been wiped out from the human genes yet, so they do have a potential to suvive in the human population.
Those 'luxury' flats don't look very luxurious.
It sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen when someone of "impaired vision" or otherwise distracted should stumble and perforce impale some tender nether parts. of ther body
the only thing worse would be to subject them to spikes of a certain baberious releic that has no other place in society.
In Brazil they allow homeless people to build shacks and the groups of shacks eventually become favelas or shanty towns. The BBC through their Panorama TV programme have been focusing on Brazilian favelas in the runup to the World Cup maybe they should do a programme on the homeless people of London?
That would be the sensible thing to do. After designating for them a space where they can survive, the state can get as tough as they want with those squatting on private property or using public spaces for other than intended purposes. The sooner we accept that the last couple of centuries were an exception in terms of mass prosperity rather than a new norm, the better we will be in adjusting to the new reality.
Vermin are people that put forth the idea that "the rich" have to tolerate squatters unlike the poor, Vermin are animals that think they can live anywhere they please regardless of law, Vermin are people that import vermin.
Good old Wikipedia here to correct your brain dead ignorance.
Vermin (colloquially varmint[1] or varmit) are pests or nuisance animals, especially those that threaten human society by spreading diseases or destroying crops and livestock. Use of the term implies the need for extermination programs. Since the term is defined in relation to human activities, which species are included vary from area to area and person to person.
Invite them inside if you are concerned. Just don't make me pay for it. Next question please.
Maybe we can start s Fakir school for homeless. Fakir those Indian Gurus that lie on spikes. If the homeless sleep in these alcoves then it stops people doing the toilet there, or ram raiding the store.
Looks like they've subdivided the space so two homeless people can sleep there.
Housing is a serious problem in the UK, household formation running at around 200,000 a year, housing completions running at around 130,000 a year and we're already a million homes behind. Kate Barker reviewed the situation in 2004 and all the solutions were ignored in favour of keeping the country a museum for American tourists and our domestic NIMBYs.
easy to send a nessage if your homeless, regularly dumping some faeces in the spiked area, dog or human would send a message and make the residents think about what is prferable the odd homeless person trying to stay safe and warm or the sight and smell of crap every morning.
Like cocktail weenies on a toothpick.
Some years ago a number of CEO's did the good Samaritan thing and decided to visit and sleep one night with the homeless, I believe it was in Brisbane, several reporters accompanied them, what shocked the CEO's was how many of the homeless were people who had been successful in life until the loss of a loved one for example sent them into an alcoholic spiral etc, many had run their own businesses etc before some issue had affected them to the extent that they lost everything and ended up on the street.
We are not as secure as we think we are in our lifestyles, it really does not take that much for the average human being to go into a spiral and end up on the street, a drug or alcohol problem that gets out of control, the emotional loss of a partner or child, illness, fraud, violence. something to think about before treating the homeless as sub human.
The point not about whether they are human or subhuman. It is about whether the property owner is justified in the intentions of discouraging such behaviour. No one can afford to allow access to anyone to their property merely because the others are human. Otherwise why not declare that not inviting homeless people into one's home is treating them as subhuman? Yes, it is a tragedy that so many people have no roof over their heads, but it is not the responsibility of any particular individual with a roof over his/her head to provide it to one of these homeless people.
Non-religious folk think this way. Religious folk have different ideas.
So "religious" people declare their homes as shelter for the homeless? Interesting, because I haven't met any "religious" people of that kind. If there were such "religious" people around, there wouldn't be any homeless around, would they?
The author does not know his topic at all.
These stainless steel cones are nothing like bird spikes used to deter pidgeons as he dramatizes. For a start bird spikes are 6 inches long 2-3mm in diameter and sharp:
http://tinyurl.com/kbxv2xz
The cones he photographed are totally harmless and far more like:
Can I suggest all you bleeding hearts, if you really care about the homeless try donating to programs which aim to deliver people from drug, alcohol, pornography and gaming addictions, which are primary factors that lead to family breakdown and homelessness.
That is a perfect explanation.
How people could not recognize a skating block in the pic is beyond my ken.
Signed: an American.