Friday, August 18, 2006
A political statement
One thing that happens in New York, is that when Foreign Dignitaries visit an area, all of the homeless are moved somewhere. I thought of this as I sat in Bowling Green (near Battery Park) to eat my lunch and was relieved that some of the regular folks weren’t there – a couple of them really smell. But as I was taking the lid off my salad, a whiff came my way. And the whiff rapidly grew into a full-scale stench. At first, I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, but then I looked at the grass behind me and saw a man sleeping who clearly shouldn’t be on the streets. And my mind wandered back to the early 80’s.
Back then Ronald Reagan pushed through cost cutting measures that resulted in tens of thousands of mentally ill people being turfed out of psychiatric hospitals and onto the streets. Authorities in some other towns, even in other states, dealt with this new wave of homelessness by giving them bus tickets to New York. It got really bad. In the mid 80’s, Ronnie’s friend Maggie, never one to let a little Human misery get in the way of a good cost cutting opportunity, decided that this was such a good idea, that she achieved the same thing for England – although I don’t think there were any free bus tickets over there. The new homeless weren’t ill – they were mostly young, disaffected and unemployed, at a time of record youth unemployment and disaffection. What she did was to overturn a long-standing law by which anyone who presented themselves to the correct local government agency claiming that they were homeless, had to be offered accommodation. Until then, the British homeless were mostly voluntary and drunks – not so affectionately known as winos.
Back to today. I think that a significant percentage of the people who never wash are ill. I wish there was enough Humanity in Government that caring for those who cannot care for themselves was not considered to be a waste of public funds and that people who are left to roam from one month to the next, except when they are moved in order to create a false – sorry, good impression for the VIP guests, were taken care of with the dignity that they surely deserve.
Viagra Online
Back then Ronald Reagan pushed through cost cutting measures that resulted in tens of thousands of mentally ill people being turfed out of psychiatric hospitals and onto the streets. Authorities in some other towns, even in other states, dealt with this new wave of homelessness by giving them bus tickets to New York. It got really bad. In the mid 80’s, Ronnie’s friend Maggie, never one to let a little Human misery get in the way of a good cost cutting opportunity, decided that this was such a good idea, that she achieved the same thing for England – although I don’t think there were any free bus tickets over there. The new homeless weren’t ill – they were mostly young, disaffected and unemployed, at a time of record youth unemployment and disaffection. What she did was to overturn a long-standing law by which anyone who presented themselves to the correct local government agency claiming that they were homeless, had to be offered accommodation. Until then, the British homeless were mostly voluntary and drunks – not so affectionately known as winos.
Back to today. I think that a significant percentage of the people who never wash are ill. I wish there was enough Humanity in Government that caring for those who cannot care for themselves was not considered to be a waste of public funds and that people who are left to roam from one month to the next, except when they are moved in order to create a false – sorry, good impression for the VIP guests, were taken care of with the dignity that they surely deserve.
