Windsor: Brouhaha Over Homeless and Royal Wedding
 

https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal...eless-ITV-news

Seems like Windsor has a big problem with homelessness with homeless beggars especially gathering near Windsor Castle to get alms from its many visitors.

But a proposal by a Conservative council member to remove them for the wedding itself has raised a brouhaha over doing this.

Q- Americans think Brits have a huge social net to help such folks - apparently this is not true. I have not been to Britain for five years now but remember scores and scores of homeless in London - especially along South Bank walkway when it goes under underpasses.

Is Britain's social net full of holes or are like in my home town homeless just refuse to avail themselves of help that is available and prefer to sleep rough.

I understand both sides of the debate - what do you think?

Anyways an interesting debate and it seems the homeless will win out somehow.

well, not going to wade into talking about social services and beggars/homeless (some have mental health problems, and not all beggars are homeless), but FYI, according to the NYT, that is kind of not true in Windsor

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/w...y-wedding.html

Well with just 8 people homeless in the whole Windsor area I'd say much ado bout nothing -yet BBC World News potrayed it as many more. 1 in 200 in England homeless - yes many are mentally ill I wouldn think.

<<Well with just 8 people homeless in the whole Windsor area I'd say much ado bout nothing>>

Depends how you are counting them. Rough sleepers are not necessarily wanting to be found and counted:

<<Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: “It’s shocking to think that today, more than 300,000 people in Britain are waking up homeless. Some will have spent the night shivering on a cold pavement, others crammed into a dingy, hostel room with their children. And what is worse, many are simply unaccounted for.>>

They are also a moving target - they move into and out of hostels and there are likely to be fewer actually sleeping on the streets in the winter when all but the most desperate and hardy will find some way of being indoors. I can certainly say that in my local town of Truro [actually a city but with only 25,000 inhabitants it's not very big] there are more rough sleepers this year than there were last. Before Brexit things were getting a bit better, but the Tory Gov's social security cuts are biting and local councils are having to cut down on their social care provision as well so things are definitely getting worse.

So come the day of the Royal Wedding in May, all other things being equal IMO the number of rough sleeper in Windsor is likely to be greater than 8.

Windsor is posh and very touristy, plus Eton College located here, so you are not going to see a lot of rough sleepers. These people are usually moved along by police.

It is the same in Manhattan; you do not see many homeless on the Upper East Side, but see many around Port Authority & south to Chelsea.

People who pay millions for a Park Avenue apartment aren't going to put up with homeless on their doorsteps. Police respond to the rich rather than middle class and poor.

You should read the Road to Wiggan Pier by George Orwell. One of the reasons we hate the poor, he tells us, is because they smell bad, are dirty, have missing teeth, etc.

My mother was born and grew up in Old Windsor.

I am one of those who think the Battenburgs should be thrown into a pool of sharks. Even Brenda.

Thin
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Amusing you should think that we wouldn't have read The Road to Wigan Pier [one G] but otherwise I tend to agree with you save that I would put the Royals out to grass rather than murder them.

Sue Townsend did just that in her 2 books 'The Queen and I' & 'Queen Camilla'. I read one or the other some time back, somewhat amusing I recall but the family is just too easy a target. I liked Alan Bennett's 'The Uncommon Reader' better.

Well, I am not sure Pal has read Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier.

Thin

There's a significant problem throughout the Thames Valley with homelessness statistics.

How can you define where someone lives if she hasn't got a home? Typically: anyone homeless will sleep rough in the place she's likeliest to have the least traumatic experience. So the numbers sleeping on streets etc in heritage towns will almost inevitably be higher than the number the local social serives will record as being homeless.

Currently about to catch a train. Will explain furtther later

Flanner - I think that we are agreeing with each other.

Mme P - I had forgotten Sue Townsend's books - I think I heard the first one on radio, if not the second. I've not read Alan Bennet's, but I think I heard him read it some time - I'll have to look out for it. I do like the way he reads, not just his own books but others too - his Wind in the Willows is just delightful.