Tuesday, 20 December 2011
He was just hungry
With
thousands of job cuts and phrases such as ‘recession’ ‘banking crisis’ and ‘credit
crunch’ in our media every day the UK is struggling.
This
Christmas shops recorded their lowest spending yet and have bought the sales
forward. However I am still seeing people take their two holidays a year, in the
shops in my area people are shopping their bags are full. Yes the housing
market has slowed down but still with all the government benefits being cut I
just expected real visible hardship for people. There has been talk of many
loosing their homes or being made homeless but I never saw any evidence of individual
suffering until today.
Let
me start by saying that I’ve lived in London about
13 years and being honest in all my time living in London I probably have only really ever seen
a maximum 10 beggars on the tube. A couple have had music, a couple have been
women with babies and then the rest have been single homeless men, I have only
ever seen them in the afternoons or evenings and they have all requested money.
Today’s
beggar was different first of all he was on the tube at 8.45 in the morning. He stood up and explained how he was struggling
generally in his life and told us how hungry he was and asked if we had any
food.
WOW
Beggars
in London always want cash, in the past I have
heard tales of people offering them food and them turning it down. We have had
hard hitting advertisements telling us not to give them money because they
spend it on drugs so we are in effect killing them, but today this guy was just
hungry.
It
was my first wake up call, if people are starting to beg for food instead of
cash, times are really changing and things are really getting hard for people.
Saturday, 21 May 2011
Hello
I'm not dead! I just write everything on my other blog!Sorry if you have missed me and my life stories here.
But thought I should say to those of you who are still following this blog. Mr special and I got engaged in march :)
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