Homelessness - Pod Scheme Solutions

In the run up to Christmas I am thinking about the discrepency between the Christmas myth & reality. The happy family, roaring fire, traditional dinner, presents under the tree of the big stores adverts is the myth. People on the streets in sleeping bags, people sleeping in cars, people sofa surfing or living in a single hotel room is the reality.

We must be capable of solving this. Why don't the homeless go into shelters you ask? Many reasons;- 

• The shelters are unsafe or have strict rules
• Fear of theft or violence
• Mental health & addiction issues
• Desire for independence
• Shelters are not a long term solution
• Shelters are not available to certain immigrents
• After getting people off the streets in Covid many shelters closed.

https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/rough-sleeping-everyone-in-covid-pandemic-homelessness/ 

I do not believe homelessness is a lifestyle choice. It is a state brought about by numerous factors. There has been a 21% increase in acute homelessness in England since 2022. Rough sleeping increased by 10% on any given night. Various charities will give you an informed picture, rather than the provocative & unbalanced view from some quarters.

https://england.shelter.org.uk/media/press_release/at_least_354000_people_homeless_in_england_today_ 

There are successful & innovative schemes in Europe that provide relatively safe shelter at relatively low cost. For example in Germany, the UK & the Netherlands. Crucially they also provide privacy. I saw something about an innovative idea of putting lockable garden sheds in a big warehouse. 

 

Ulmer Nest

 

Solohaus

 Amazing Grace pods

None of these solve the root problem, but at least they are a start. It cannot be beyond the wit of an intelligent species to solve homelessness. We should not be tolerating individuals & families who do not have a safe shelter to live in. We lucky ones who have homes should remember the story of Christmas & a baby born to a family in a stable. 

Over 2,000 years & very little has changed.  

Childhood & Christmas

Whatever you think about the immigration issue I want you to consider another perspective. 

When I was a child we didn't have sleepovers. We played in the street or the back garden. But we did play. We played with marbles, balls, water, sand. We had swings & parks. I lived in Birmingham, but I could walk to grassy open areas, two of which had rivers or canals. So it was like being in the countryside. Children were connected with both other children, adults & their environment in a way that they aren't now. We didn't have TV, but we listened to the radio & read books, which sparked our imagination, made us concentrate & think.

My childhood shaped me.

I'm not going to dwell on childhood today in the UK. You all know what it is like. It's light years away from what I remember. In some ways better, but in many I think children have lost something important.

I do want you to think about children in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan, Somalia & the DRC. Children who are living in war zones. I doubt that you can imagine what it's like to constantly be surrounded by death, destruction, shooting, bombs & noise. I can't. What sort of a childhood do these children have? Even survival is not guaranteed - Theirs or their friends & family. The risk of life changing injury is even higher.

Then there are the children living in countries where humanitarian law doesn't apply. In Nigeria for example, mass child abduction is fairly routine. Children in many countries do not have a childhood, they work, voluntarily or not, from a very young age. The family needs them to work in order to be able to survive. Children are sold & trafficked. It's a form of modern slavery in every country in the world, including the UK, the US & Europe. In Africa children are sold for as little as 15$ - 70$.

 

I'm going to stop there. It's too harrowing.

My point is today is the start of Advent - Leading up to the "money fest" of Christmas. We are sold a tinsel & Santa image of happy families. The projected spend on Christmas in 2025 is £41.6 - £46.6 billion. 

More & more I find that unacceptable. Just think of the good, even a small part of that money could do, for the children & their parents living in the conditions I have described. Where is our humanity? Why are we demonising refugees & immigrents? 

Life Lessons from a Squirrel

There is a squirrel in my front garden this morning as I work on my computer. It is industriously dashing back & forth across my front garden, presumably burying or unearthing nuts. It is so fast I'm not sure which. It needs to work to survive. It buries food to be able to survive the winter when there isn't much around. The squirrel plans for the future & works hard to survive. It has no support mechanism other than itself, no family, friends or community to provide for it. It has to be self reliant. 

I think there is a lesson there. 

We have just had a budget. Personally I cannot imagine the complexites of being chancellor of the exchequer or a member of the treasury team. Simply managing my own life is sometimes a challenge. I cannot rationalise "quantitative easing" or running a country on massive borrowing & debt. None of it makes sense to me. I don't think I have ever been in debt apart from a mortgage. I certainly don't keep a running total of debt on my credit cards. If I can't afford something I don't buy it.

I believe in fair wealth distribution. I believe that the wealthy & the poor should be taxed in a way that means a similar proportion of their wealth should be taxed. That is not the case in the UK today. I think the most the very wealthy pay is 35% some pay 30% & some as little as 10% while the poorest pay 48%.

It's relatively simple. Our adult population needs to work in order to live. Adults need to pay taxes in order to fund all of the infrastructure of life in a society. The work individuals are capable of doing varies hugely according to age, skills, experience & capacity. Some people are not able to work because of ill health or disability. Unless we all do contribute to that equation, society as we know it cannot survive. 

We are now in complete imbalance & our system is failing. Demographically we have an increasing retired population & a decreasing birthrate. We also have an increasing population on benefits - The number of working-age adults (16-64) claiming disability or incapacity benefits in England and Wales grew from 2.8 million in 2019 to 4 million by March 2025. This represents a rise of over 1 million people, or about a 38% increase. That is not sustainable.

In simple terms we need more young people to be workers to generate taxable income to support all of the infrastructure & pensions for the old that we all take for granted. We cannot go on borrowing money to get us out of trouble. The interest on the debt is crippling & our productivity is lower than France, Germany & the USA. Our growth is half of the Eurozone. 

Unfortunately I don't have the solutions to this. Fortunately I am not the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do think that our tax system is ridiculously complicated & needs complete reform. No one, even HMRC, really understands it. I do think that if we reformed it, so that at the very least the rich & the poor were treated equally & fairly it would be a start.

  

Politically that is a nettle no government has been prepared to grasp, fearing it would make them unpopular & unelectable. But there are countries in Europe that have far simpler & better tax systems than we do. The Netherlands, Austria, and Sweden are often cited for providing a good balance of extensive welfare states, solid infrastructure, and reasonable tax rates. The simplest and most competitive tax systems are Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania. Surely we can learn from them all.    

Pointlessness - Kuzozu Art

Kuzozu is Buddhist art showing 9 images of the decay of a corpse, (usually female for reasons I don't want to think about), left outdoors until it rots & turns into a skeleton. Death is one of the most cmmonly depicted subjects in art throughout history. Buddhist beliefs urged followers to meditate on the temporary nature of life and the physical world. It is arguable that our life span is so short & we are individually so inconsequential that our lives are fairly pointless. Earth to earth & ashes to ashes.

When you reach my age you do think about life and death & what the point of us is. Especially, as has just happened, when a good friend dies unexpectedly. 

We human beings want to believe that there is a point to our existance. We want to believe that we are, individually, important - Our lives are meaningful. I wonder how true that is. How much difference have I personally made to the lives of others? How much difference have I personally made to the universe? Has there been any real point to my life, other than to a very small number of close friends & family?

I think the point of us individually is as part of a whole. Part of the family we belong to, part of the community & country we live in & part of the the world everyone inhabits. We need to divest ourselves of self importance & see ourselves as a small part of a whole something. We have agency to achieve as a community. Power to the people is not just an empty phrase. It is a slogan for collective influence. It represents the idea that a group of individuals working together can achieve significant influence or effect change. It is often used in political and social contexts, from protests and elections to local community initiatives.  

Taken in isolation I think my life has had a little meaning. It hasn't been completely pointless. There have been achievements. I have tried to behave well & work for good. But in order to really effect change for the good I have realised two things;-

• If you have more money than you need you should use it to benefit others. You shouldn't waste it on pointless unnecessary posessions & grandiose schemes. The mega wealthy today do not give enough money away to those in need. 
• If you don't have more money than you need, you need to use your voice to lobby for change. We each have the capability to demonstrate & act in concert with others, who care about injustice & unfairness, to force wrongs to be righted.

No one's life should be pointless. Life is a gift that should not be squandered. We should not be a silent majority.

 

    

Disfunctional

My hearing aids were disfunctional, so too, as it turns out were my ears. That can all be sorted. The hoses to my water softener leaked onto my kitchen floor, disfunctional after 3 years. Obviously cheap plastic tat with built in obsolescence. That isn't what I am talking about. Life is full of things that go wrong & don't function properly. 

I just had a replacement Amazon Echo Show & discovered, having seen the excellent John Lewis tech advisor, because I'd already complained about the first one, it had the same software fault. The setup was not intuitive or even logical & there was a choice early on which disabled everything if you clicked on it. That was very time consuming & irritating & Amazon with all it's tech expertise should have sorted it by now. But even that isn't what I'm talking about. 

Individuals, countries, companies, all make mistakes. No one is perfect, we are all human & while humans run the world there will be mistakes. 

When I talk about disfuntion I basically mean systems. 80 years of life have shown me that there are ups & downs. There are errors & mistakes, inadvertant, careless or deliberate & self serving. I doubt we can change that. Utopia, Nirvana & Heaven actually don't exist. 

But what is happening now is caused by us. Our world is being devastated & decimated by man made climate change. We are creating mountains of rubbish & polluting our landscape, rivers & seas. Plant and animal life is going extinct at a rate never seen before because of us & the way we decimate habitats & landscape. We pollute even the air we breathe.

Our blind & heedless pursuit of profit proves the old adage "money is the root of all evil". 

Our vital societal systems, justice, education, health, food, water, housing....are all failing abysmally. We are overwhelmed with population imbalance & polpulation movements around the world caused by war, persecution & disaster. We are reaching a point where we may not be able to put all of this right. We may already be at the tipping point.

It's no good just blaming politicians, useless & corrupt though some are. We live in a world where there is evidence based information accessible to all. Where we can fact check the accuracy of information to help us make good choices. 

The only way we will be able to solve the fundamental disfunctionality of the world we have created through greed & wilfully ignoring reality is for everyone to work together to find real solutions.

 

It won't be easy, but there really is no choice. 

Owning Up

When I was at primary school I collected stamps - life was much simpler in the 1950's. It wasn't anything to do with the value of the stamps, it was because I wanted a complete set, or because I loved the design. Children then compared eachother's collections, whatever it was, from cigarette cards to stamps. I have to own up to taking a stamp from a friend because it completed a set. It wasn't particularly beautiful or worth anything. But I took it & I never owned up. I don't think my friend even realised. The memory & the shame has stayed with me for 75 years.

"Losing Face" is a concept is deeply rooted in East Asian cultures, where "face" is a crucial part of social order and reputation. It means to be publicly humiliated, lose respect, or have one's reputation damaged, a loss of social standing, prestige, or honor. 

If we do something wrong, or if we fail to do something we should have, there are consequences. Owning up to mistakes or failures can be very difficult, but it is the right course of action. However individuals ability to own up is determined by their moral compass & their self interest. A big factor is also how serious the misdemeanor is. It is harder to admit to something with serious consequences for others and / or ourselves. 

We seem to be living in a less morally responsible era. People with a lot to loose seem to be less able to take responsibility for errors & failures. Particularly people with power & wealth. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it does seem to me that there are sometimes collusions in keeping major failings hidden. Particularly politically & in commercial companies. I have blogged about that before, so I won't repeat. There is a worrying pattern though. 

 

I doubt I'm likely to commit a major sin & given that I have short term memory problems associated with age, owning up to failures, omissions & mistakes isn't hard. But I really do wish that those who do fail in consequential ways had the balls to accept that failure openly. 

The only way we become the best humans & the best societies is if we learn from our mistakes. We can't do that if we don't own up to them.  

 

Forgiveness

Blues music is full of "you done me wrong" songs.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzlHw5lNTt0&list=RDVzlHw5lNTt0&start_radio=1

The human condition is prone to blame rather than accepting that the balance of probability is that it takes two to make a quarrel. Misunderstandings & arguments are normal in relationships. The important thing is how we deal with them. Do we react emotionally or rationally? Do we feel hurt in some way & let that determine what we say & do, or do we look for reasons and solutions? I know what I think.

I can't do the god thing, there are so many things you need to believe that I can't accept. But I do think that there are things beyond our current understanding & we should all try to live according to the basic tenets of all religions. So we should try to be forgiving & accept that we ourselves are not perfect, we all make bad choices & behave unacceptably.

There are two diametrically opposite ways of thinking & behaving, blame & forgiveness. We seem to have become a blaming society. When individuals are able to forgive, even huge wrongdoing, we are quite surprised. But holding on to anger & hatred does so much harm to the person doing it. Anger has physical, emotional, and mental effects on us. It increases the heart rate & muscle tension & contributes to negative emotional states & relationship problems. 

Our expectations of what others can & should do have become unrealistic. This is particularly evident in politics. Watching parliament in action & political commentary is now completely unedifying. Our parliament is a bear garden of an almost complete lack of realistic & honest discourse. It is point scoring, yah booing & is unlikely to solve any of the deep problems we are facing as a country & as individuals. 

There is an almost complete lack of honesty & willingness to take responsibility for errors of judgement or failure to act appropriately. Goodness knows why anyone would want to become a politician. Possibly we have reached the point when the people we would want to be in charge look at the way we run this country & think why on earth should I do that? There is an almost complete lack of trust in politicans or belief in what they say & do.

Someone needs to get a grip & I can't see any evidence that we have many people in any of the UK political parties capable of doing that. So it's up to the public to force their views to be listened to. Where are the real changemakers, the moral leaders who put what is right above pure self interest? Mandela lived this & really understood about forgiveness. 

 

He isn't a lone voice, but infortunately there are not many charismatic & selfless people whose voices are heard. So maybe we the populus have to shout louder & together to force real change & more understanding.