Camp Liberty is the camp with the most misleading name and the least publicity for its residents who have been imprisoned without access to water, electricity or food supplies. It has been described as a concentration camp by those now calling for United Nations help to free the refugees from their beleagured state.
How did they get to the camp, formerly a US army base? Before the war on Iraq, they had fled from Iran to take refuge in Iraq, having been armed insurgents against the government. Now they were refugees saying they had given up violence. They built a community with houses and schools, called Camp Ashraf, which was safe for 25 years. During the Iraq war they had the protection of the United States forces.
When the war ended, they lost that protection. The Iraqis attacked them, supported by the Iranians and many were killed. They were no longer safe. The solution? To move them to Camp Liberty, with promises of a better life.
This has turned out to be a hollow promise. Struan Stevenson, the Scottish MEP who is President of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Iraq, in an impassioned speech to the Parliament, said that more than 2000 refugees had voluntarily left Camp Ashraf and moved to Liberty. But instead of the safety and facilities they had been promised they found themselves in a slum, with dilapidated containers for living accommodation, broken sewage pipes, intermittent electricity and no running water. Around half of them women, they were now completely at the mercy of the Iraq military. Requests to have main water supplies and vital medicines and disabled equipment had been blocked, along with food supplies.
The list of torments goes on and on, with protests coming from Church leaders in Britain, American politicians and the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran freedom. The latter are protesting about the appointment of the same colonel who ordered the raids on Ashraf which killed 49 unarmed residents to head talks to decide the fate of those at Camp Liberty. The dissidents' organisation, the anti-mullah People's Mujahedin of Iran, is still waiting for Hilary Clinton to remove the"terrorist" label, already removed by the UK and the EU.
A protest rally in Paris last month drew a crowd of an estimated 100,000 supporters, with Western leaders as well as Iranians from around the world. Even so, there was comparatively little international press coverage.
The besieged Camp Liberty residents, held captive by Iraq troops and those still left in Camp Ashraf, are asking for the United Nations to recognise them as political refugees and to give them asylum. How safe are they until then? ends
Tuesday, 11 September 2012
Saturday, 25 August 2012
US Embassy vigil for Manning and Assange
I went to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square on Bank Holiday Saturday preparing for a possible roughhouse which would need my journalist's pass handy to keep me out of the clutches of the police. The last time I was at a demonstration against American nuclear weapons in this country I got arrested for taking a picture of a protester being beaten up.
This was a "vigil" for Bradley Manning, the young American serviceman held for over 800 days in confinement without trial, and Julian Assange, hiding out in the Ecuador embassy to escape being extradited to the US for releasing documents through Wikileaks fed to him by Manning.
But this time the scene could not have been more different. Members of Occupy London were chatting to police officers they had come to know during their night and day protests outside the Ecuador embassy. The scene was peaceful - no guns apparently pointing at us through the US Embassy windows these days, and a determinedly non-violent attitude among the protesters They were only a small group of around 50 whose commitment compensated for their small number.
Daniel Ellsberg, the American whistleblower who published the Pentagon Papers, had sent a message from his Bradley Manning Support Network which called Manning" heroic" for revealing what the government had done "at war and in secret."
Veterans for Peace UK, the newly-formed branch of the US organisation of ex-servicemen, had organised the protest, supported by the London Catholic Workers, the internet group Anonymous, and groups supporting other UK political prisoners, including Talha Ahsan imprisoned here because of an alleged website offence in the US, Shaker Aamer, still in Guantanamo, and Omar Khadr captured and imprisoned by the Americans in Afghanistan at the age of 15.
Free all political prisoners, said the posters,put against the railings outside the Embassy. A poem written by Adrian Mitchell was read out and the message called out: "Free Bradley Manning. Protect Julian Assange."
Tristan, from Occupy London, which maintains a vigil of a score of people day and night outside the Ecuador Embassy, was explaining to attentive senior police officers who had followed them to Grosvenor Square the disclosures of government malpractice in Afghanistan and Pakistan revealed by the Assange Wikileaks document. Had the police been given instructions to get a better public image of themselves? They were certainly happy to have friendly photos taken with the protesters. Perhaps times really have changed in Grosvenor Square.
There was even a long message from Women Against Rape handed out, defending Assange and calling for him not to be extradited. "Does anyone really believe that extraditing Julian Assange will strengthen women against rape? And do those supporting his extradition to Sweden care if he is then extradited to the US and tortured for telling the public what we need to know about those who govern us?"
Assange may have upset many in the media by not always doing what they want. But he has certainly gained plenty of other friends.
ends
Friday, 11 May 2012
All over London, as well as towns and villages in Britain, are housing estates built by local councils with Government funding. They are not being built now.
Since the dark days of Thatcherism, housing has come bottom of the priorities of succeeding governments. They preferred to give the money to nuclear weapons capable of destroying a country many times over (only four needed for this country, but at the last count we had 160 deployed strategic warheads. As Gordon Brown said when he was Prime Minister, "And of course we support our independent deterrent.")
It was in the 'sixties that the revelations came of slumdwellers harrassed by landlords for high rents, then evicted on to the streets when they could not pay them. The Labour government of Harold Wilson changed that. He appointed as housing minister Bob Mellish, a tough London guy who was ruthless with any council which did not reach the new housing targets he set. The tower blocks went up, stripped in the end of the special effects which would have made them pleasant to live in - playgrounds on every floor, accessible shops - but still homes for those who had nothing, like those living in back garden sheds now (in the 'sixties I interviewed a couple with children begging to be allowed to go on renting a garage as their home.) And there were smaller well-designed estates throughout the country, designed by planners who cared about the amenities of people who would live there.
Look around and you can see the estates in the most expensive parts of London - Hampstead, Notting Hill, and acres of well-designed flats lining the roads into the centre. It is the same in other cities.
And we can see the huge estates built by our ancestors, the Victorians, who, it seems, had far more conscience about the poorly housed than this generation. No realistic housing targets now, no priority for housing as an urgent national necessity ranking with the NHS. At least there is now a minister in charge of housing and there are targets. The Guardian has reported a survey into present housing conditions which in come cases rank with the lowest in the world. But what will be the result of the survey? A new revolution in housing, a stoppage of council house sales, punishment for landlords making profits out of homelessness, control over rents and, at last, an adequate programme of new housing? Will we see unused, empty buildings taken over, new council flats going up, as they did in the past, a few minutes from Buckingham Palace and Knightsbridge? It's 90% unlikely. The time has come to demand change. ends
Since the dark days of Thatcherism, housing has come bottom of the priorities of succeeding governments. They preferred to give the money to nuclear weapons capable of destroying a country many times over (only four needed for this country, but at the last count we had 160 deployed strategic warheads. As Gordon Brown said when he was Prime Minister, "And of course we support our independent deterrent.")
It was in the 'sixties that the revelations came of slumdwellers harrassed by landlords for high rents, then evicted on to the streets when they could not pay them. The Labour government of Harold Wilson changed that. He appointed as housing minister Bob Mellish, a tough London guy who was ruthless with any council which did not reach the new housing targets he set. The tower blocks went up, stripped in the end of the special effects which would have made them pleasant to live in - playgrounds on every floor, accessible shops - but still homes for those who had nothing, like those living in back garden sheds now (in the 'sixties I interviewed a couple with children begging to be allowed to go on renting a garage as their home.) And there were smaller well-designed estates throughout the country, designed by planners who cared about the amenities of people who would live there.
Look around and you can see the estates in the most expensive parts of London - Hampstead, Notting Hill, and acres of well-designed flats lining the roads into the centre. It is the same in other cities.
And we can see the huge estates built by our ancestors, the Victorians, who, it seems, had far more conscience about the poorly housed than this generation. No realistic housing targets now, no priority for housing as an urgent national necessity ranking with the NHS. At least there is now a minister in charge of housing and there are targets. The Guardian has reported a survey into present housing conditions which in come cases rank with the lowest in the world. But what will be the result of the survey? A new revolution in housing, a stoppage of council house sales, punishment for landlords making profits out of homelessness, control over rents and, at last, an adequate programme of new housing? Will we see unused, empty buildings taken over, new council flats going up, as they did in the past, a few minutes from Buckingham Palace and Knightsbridge? It's 90% unlikely. The time has come to demand change. ends
Monday, 16 April 2012
Against Christianity?
I can't remember a time when there was so much anger around in this country against the Christian church. It has become a fashionable view.
The churches are lucky if they are half-full. There are non-religious reasons why this could be so, of course. People don't want to get up on Sunday in time to go to church, though the Catholics solve this by giving a choice of times for Mass. Sermons might better be offered as question and answer sessions instead of often incomprehensible or boring eulogies. There is also the feeling of misgiving about the elaborate vestments worn by the clergy, contrasting with the simple clothes of those in the pews. Would Christ have approved of those robes? Apart from that, it's difficult to see why in these days of increasing distrust of capitalism and a search after classlessness why so many are quarrelling with Christian doctrine.
Let's take a few quotations from the New Testament.
"We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, powers, against rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in high places.." That's from St. Paul to the Ephesians, as they were then known. And it seems to include most of the bankers and market-driven governments people feel they are struggling against.
So does Paul's epistle to Timothy: "Having food and raiment, let us be content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition...For the love of money is the root of all evil..."
Well, that's one against the bankers and their bonuses. But the envious are told to withdraw themselves from all this love of money - only those of "corrupt minds" think that material gain is godliness.
Then, we are told, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another..." That sounds like a reference to the House of Commons. Perhaps it should be posted there.
But faith is no use,apparently, without caring about others. "If I have faith that could move mountains and have not charity, I am nothing," said St. Paul in his epistle to the Corinthians.
And, finally, from the Acts of Christ's Apostles, a thought about the big housing investments of the rich and the homelessness of the poor. "The multitude who believed never thought anything they possessed as their own, but had everything in common. Nobody lacked anything. As many as possessed lands or houses sold them and distributed the profits to everyone according to their need."
Jesus Christ, in the world today, would most definitely be marked as one of the rebels against the present order and, so some leading Churchmen said at the time, would have been outside St. Paul's with Occupy London.
So why so much opposition to the Christian idea?
ends
The churches are lucky if they are half-full. There are non-religious reasons why this could be so, of course. People don't want to get up on Sunday in time to go to church, though the Catholics solve this by giving a choice of times for Mass. Sermons might better be offered as question and answer sessions instead of often incomprehensible or boring eulogies. There is also the feeling of misgiving about the elaborate vestments worn by the clergy, contrasting with the simple clothes of those in the pews. Would Christ have approved of those robes? Apart from that, it's difficult to see why in these days of increasing distrust of capitalism and a search after classlessness why so many are quarrelling with Christian doctrine.
Let's take a few quotations from the New Testament.
"We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, powers, against rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in high places.." That's from St. Paul to the Ephesians, as they were then known. And it seems to include most of the bankers and market-driven governments people feel they are struggling against.
So does Paul's epistle to Timothy: "Having food and raiment, let us be content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition...For the love of money is the root of all evil..."
Well, that's one against the bankers and their bonuses. But the envious are told to withdraw themselves from all this love of money - only those of "corrupt minds" think that material gain is godliness.
Then, we are told, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another..." That sounds like a reference to the House of Commons. Perhaps it should be posted there.
But faith is no use,apparently, without caring about others. "If I have faith that could move mountains and have not charity, I am nothing," said St. Paul in his epistle to the Corinthians.
And, finally, from the Acts of Christ's Apostles, a thought about the big housing investments of the rich and the homelessness of the poor. "The multitude who believed never thought anything they possessed as their own, but had everything in common. Nobody lacked anything. As many as possessed lands or houses sold them and distributed the profits to everyone according to their need."
Jesus Christ, in the world today, would most definitely be marked as one of the rebels against the present order and, so some leading Churchmen said at the time, would have been outside St. Paul's with Occupy London.
So why so much opposition to the Christian idea?
ends
Monday, 19 March 2012
London's lost 4000
Nearly 4000 men and women were sleeping rough on the streets of London by the last count, most of them men and 6% of them veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The figures come from Crisis, the national charity for the single homeless who are not entitled to housing help. Their figure is 10 times higher than the one given hy the government, which has supported the undertaking of the Mayor, Boris Johnson, to end rough sleeping by this year.
The rough sleeping and dying during the sub-zero nights last month turned a new spotlight on London's shame. The suicide rate is high. Outside London, the largest numbers of rough sleepers are in Cornwall (65),Herefordshire (42), Bradford (23), Maidstone (27) and Peterborough and Exeter (both 21).
On the pavement near the Cafe Rouge in Hampstead this week was one of the veterans, begging, with his Border collie Tim. This is his story.
"I served my country for six years in Iraq and Helmand, and my knees were broken in a land minesweeping operation. My best mate was killed next to me," (his eyes fill with tears.)
"I've asked for help from the Salvation Army, the British Legion, St. Mungo's, but they didn't want to know. Doors were slammed in my face."
Tim the dog, full of affection for him, is one reason - no room for him at the hostels, though St. Mungo's say they have a few hostels which do take dogs.
But London is a big place. Advice often entails going to another part, miles away, without any means of transport or money.
John's tale has a special tragedy. In 2007 he was returning from Iraq with others from his regiment (he gives details of his Army record and postings). "At Brize Norton, we were sitting waiting for our families to meet us, but mine never came. In the end, I was the only one left waiting. I tried to contact them, I knew something was wrong. My wife Deb, phoned to say she was on her way with our three children and Tim the puppy. That was the last time I spoke to them."
They had all been killed in a car crash involving an overturned fire engine, he said. Tim was the only survivor. From now on, they were to cling to each other.
But John then had a breakdown. He said he was voluntarily sectioned and taken to St. Ann's hospital in north London, where he stayed for three months, while Timds was put into kennels.
So who helped him when he came out? "No one. I couldn't face going back to our council house in Wood Green with them not there, so I didn't have ID and without that, I could get nothing. I went to the Salvation Army and asked them to help me get it, but they wouldn't. The hospital just sent me out with nothing. I needed a shoulder to cry on, at least some psychiatric help. There was nothing and the Army didn't help even after all those years service." He got Tim back, somehow got a sleeping bag and for over four years has been sleeping on the Heath. "I had a tent but it was taken away because I had no fishing licence and only fishermen were allowed them."
His only relative, a stepsister, is married in California to an American she met in London. His mother is dead, the stepfather who beat him long gone. He had known his wife since their schooldays in Muswell Hill. She was 38 when she was killed, her children 19, 17, and 12 - their names are all tattooed on his right arm. He is now just 46. "I loved her so much, think of her all the time still."
Why did he join the Army? "Because I loved my country. I was a chef in the West End (which explains his surprising distaste for food scraps offered to him by passers-by.) But he is no longer proud of his country. He is full of exploding anger. "I served all this time for my country, now it will not help me. I've been turned away by everyone. No one helps, you're shoved from pillar to post. The homeless on crutches, in wheelchairs,it's the same for them too."
And he is angry at the parlous state of non-English speaking immigrants, without food or shelter, huddled together behind Camden Lock every night. "It's terrible, they're terrified and all they can do is hide."
His wounded kneecaps and lack of food and money make it difficult for him to walk, but he and Tim soldier on, going to Camden Town as well as Hampstead.
Yet the saddest part of his story comes next. Because this is Hampstead, the home as everyone says of liberal do-gooders, help has come as he sat begging with an empty Starbucks coffe cup. on the pavement. Two people whisked him off to Islington Town Hall, waited and paid for quick delivery of his birth certificate and gave him and Tim some breakfast. Then one of their contacts organised a single room in Tottenham, which would be his first roof shelter for nearly five years. His birth certificate would entitle him to the relevant benefits and help, but not for another two months. The deposit was paid on the room for him but then rent required. An appeal was made to St. Mungo's, two street collectors having spotted him.
Dangling the key, he was overjoyed. But not for long. Four mile tramps with Tim, taking his sleeping gear and other belongings over to Tottenham, followed. The electric meter was registering a debt in the room, and he had no money for it. Someone had died there and their clothes were still there, flea-ridden. Three days of tramping backwards and forwards with Tim followed.
The epilepsy had started when he got back from Iraq. Now he had his first fit for a long time. The local hospital wanted to keep him in but that would mean losing Tim, so he opted out. Six prescriptions were given to him, but all had to be paid for and he had no money. Helpful people told him that at the Charing Cross homeless centre he could get a form to apply for free prescriptions, but walking there was too far in the present condition of his feet and health.
"I csn't stand the loneliness," he said after the first few nights. "There's no one to talk to like there was on the Heath. I feel I'm losing my mind."
Then he was told he was being moved to a room in Enfield. His Tottenham room was to be fumigated. The clothes he had tried to throw away but had been refused by the collectors were at last removed, floorboards taken up to deal with the flea infestation. The new room was even further away from his old nesting place on the Heath, but he tramped there with Tim, and found he could at last have the hot bath he had been looking foward to, and electricity and - unexpectedly - a breakfast delivery. It turned out to be a bed and breakfast but nobody had told him that it was, and that it would cost £33 a week. No benefits or job centre for another month, so back to begging to raise the money, still ill from the epilepsy and other ailments the hospital had found. Again, they wanted him to be an in-patient. He had been there for two nights while it was arranged for Tim to be in kennels. "It was good, being looked after and having a bed." They wanted him to be there for longer, but he had to think of Tim who gets disturbed without him.
The loneliness has continued. John has gone back to sleeping on the Heath sometimes to avoid it.
It seems that his plight has worsened since the various efforts to help him have caused him more difficulties because they do not link up, leaving him with new problems without any resources to solve them. He and the dog looked better when they were sleeping on the Heath and begging, even when it was cold.
"I feel like topping myself," he said last week. "I would do if it wasn't for Tim." Tim is still in good condition and looks at him adoringly. But the dog is not as lively as he was when they were sleeping out and the depression is getting to him too. It is well known that the first move into a solitary room can at first be a worse experience than rough sleeping.
But a surprise was in store, in the form of a heavily official document announcing that he had qualified for a pin bid for a flat from the housing authority. This worried him, though one of his Hampstead unofficial helpers told him that all he had to do was nothing, and wait and see. And now, at last, he has been given somewhere with a bathroom and a bedroom and plenty of space for Tim. But he cannot move in until the end of April, so there will have to be more begging and probably more hospital visits. Also, he will have to find rent and a bed to sleep on and a chair to sit on and, his biggest hope, a TV set so he can watch East Enders.
His anger against his country still hasn't abated - that so many are still homeless as well as sleeping rough, that there seems no will to link up the various sources that could help those suffering from personal disaster. Policemen would move him on roughly and threaten arrest even though he was causing no trouble and people were stopping to pat Tim.
"No one really helps the homeless. They need to stop the promises and show some truths."
St. Mungo has provided him with a weatherproof jacket and said that they seek more linking-up of services between various organisations, including local authorities. Their challenge, they said, was to provide everyone with a decent space to live, something meaningful to do, satisfying relationships and good health. That challenge, so far, is proving impossible to meet unless Britain, and especially London, starts to have a conscience at last about the thousands with no roof at night. Will the Mayor of London's promise be carried out or will there simply be new efforts to hide them out of sight?
The rough sleeping and dying during the sub-zero nights last month turned a new spotlight on London's shame. The suicide rate is high. Outside London, the largest numbers of rough sleepers are in Cornwall (65),Herefordshire (42), Bradford (23), Maidstone (27) and Peterborough and Exeter (both 21).
On the pavement near the Cafe Rouge in Hampstead this week was one of the veterans, begging, with his Border collie Tim. This is his story.
"I served my country for six years in Iraq and Helmand, and my knees were broken in a land minesweeping operation. My best mate was killed next to me," (his eyes fill with tears.)
"I've asked for help from the Salvation Army, the British Legion, St. Mungo's, but they didn't want to know. Doors were slammed in my face."
Tim the dog, full of affection for him, is one reason - no room for him at the hostels, though St. Mungo's say they have a few hostels which do take dogs.
But London is a big place. Advice often entails going to another part, miles away, without any means of transport or money.
John's tale has a special tragedy. In 2007 he was returning from Iraq with others from his regiment (he gives details of his Army record and postings). "At Brize Norton, we were sitting waiting for our families to meet us, but mine never came. In the end, I was the only one left waiting. I tried to contact them, I knew something was wrong. My wife Deb, phoned to say she was on her way with our three children and Tim the puppy. That was the last time I spoke to them."
They had all been killed in a car crash involving an overturned fire engine, he said. Tim was the only survivor. From now on, they were to cling to each other.
But John then had a breakdown. He said he was voluntarily sectioned and taken to St. Ann's hospital in north London, where he stayed for three months, while Timds was put into kennels.
So who helped him when he came out? "No one. I couldn't face going back to our council house in Wood Green with them not there, so I didn't have ID and without that, I could get nothing. I went to the Salvation Army and asked them to help me get it, but they wouldn't. The hospital just sent me out with nothing. I needed a shoulder to cry on, at least some psychiatric help. There was nothing and the Army didn't help even after all those years service." He got Tim back, somehow got a sleeping bag and for over four years has been sleeping on the Heath. "I had a tent but it was taken away because I had no fishing licence and only fishermen were allowed them."
His only relative, a stepsister, is married in California to an American she met in London. His mother is dead, the stepfather who beat him long gone. He had known his wife since their schooldays in Muswell Hill. She was 38 when she was killed, her children 19, 17, and 12 - their names are all tattooed on his right arm. He is now just 46. "I loved her so much, think of her all the time still."
Why did he join the Army? "Because I loved my country. I was a chef in the West End (which explains his surprising distaste for food scraps offered to him by passers-by.) But he is no longer proud of his country. He is full of exploding anger. "I served all this time for my country, now it will not help me. I've been turned away by everyone. No one helps, you're shoved from pillar to post. The homeless on crutches, in wheelchairs,it's the same for them too."
And he is angry at the parlous state of non-English speaking immigrants, without food or shelter, huddled together behind Camden Lock every night. "It's terrible, they're terrified and all they can do is hide."
His wounded kneecaps and lack of food and money make it difficult for him to walk, but he and Tim soldier on, going to Camden Town as well as Hampstead.
Yet the saddest part of his story comes next. Because this is Hampstead, the home as everyone says of liberal do-gooders, help has come as he sat begging with an empty Starbucks coffe cup. on the pavement. Two people whisked him off to Islington Town Hall, waited and paid for quick delivery of his birth certificate and gave him and Tim some breakfast. Then one of their contacts organised a single room in Tottenham, which would be his first roof shelter for nearly five years. His birth certificate would entitle him to the relevant benefits and help, but not for another two months. The deposit was paid on the room for him but then rent required. An appeal was made to St. Mungo's, two street collectors having spotted him.
Dangling the key, he was overjoyed. But not for long. Four mile tramps with Tim, taking his sleeping gear and other belongings over to Tottenham, followed. The electric meter was registering a debt in the room, and he had no money for it. Someone had died there and their clothes were still there, flea-ridden. Three days of tramping backwards and forwards with Tim followed.
The epilepsy had started when he got back from Iraq. Now he had his first fit for a long time. The local hospital wanted to keep him in but that would mean losing Tim, so he opted out. Six prescriptions were given to him, but all had to be paid for and he had no money. Helpful people told him that at the Charing Cross homeless centre he could get a form to apply for free prescriptions, but walking there was too far in the present condition of his feet and health.
"I csn't stand the loneliness," he said after the first few nights. "There's no one to talk to like there was on the Heath. I feel I'm losing my mind."
Then he was told he was being moved to a room in Enfield. His Tottenham room was to be fumigated. The clothes he had tried to throw away but had been refused by the collectors were at last removed, floorboards taken up to deal with the flea infestation. The new room was even further away from his old nesting place on the Heath, but he tramped there with Tim, and found he could at last have the hot bath he had been looking foward to, and electricity and - unexpectedly - a breakfast delivery. It turned out to be a bed and breakfast but nobody had told him that it was, and that it would cost £33 a week. No benefits or job centre for another month, so back to begging to raise the money, still ill from the epilepsy and other ailments the hospital had found. Again, they wanted him to be an in-patient. He had been there for two nights while it was arranged for Tim to be in kennels. "It was good, being looked after and having a bed." They wanted him to be there for longer, but he had to think of Tim who gets disturbed without him.
The loneliness has continued. John has gone back to sleeping on the Heath sometimes to avoid it.
It seems that his plight has worsened since the various efforts to help him have caused him more difficulties because they do not link up, leaving him with new problems without any resources to solve them. He and the dog looked better when they were sleeping on the Heath and begging, even when it was cold.
"I feel like topping myself," he said last week. "I would do if it wasn't for Tim." Tim is still in good condition and looks at him adoringly. But the dog is not as lively as he was when they were sleeping out and the depression is getting to him too. It is well known that the first move into a solitary room can at first be a worse experience than rough sleeping.
But a surprise was in store, in the form of a heavily official document announcing that he had qualified for a pin bid for a flat from the housing authority. This worried him, though one of his Hampstead unofficial helpers told him that all he had to do was nothing, and wait and see. And now, at last, he has been given somewhere with a bathroom and a bedroom and plenty of space for Tim. But he cannot move in until the end of April, so there will have to be more begging and probably more hospital visits. Also, he will have to find rent and a bed to sleep on and a chair to sit on and, his biggest hope, a TV set so he can watch East Enders.
His anger against his country still hasn't abated - that so many are still homeless as well as sleeping rough, that there seems no will to link up the various sources that could help those suffering from personal disaster. Policemen would move him on roughly and threaten arrest even though he was causing no trouble and people were stopping to pat Tim.
"No one really helps the homeless. They need to stop the promises and show some truths."
St. Mungo has provided him with a weatherproof jacket and said that they seek more linking-up of services between various organisations, including local authorities. Their challenge, they said, was to provide everyone with a decent space to live, something meaningful to do, satisfying relationships and good health. That challenge, so far, is proving impossible to meet unless Britain, and especially London, starts to have a conscience at last about the thousands with no roof at night. Will the Mayor of London's promise be carried out or will there simply be new efforts to hide them out of sight?
Saturday, 11 February 2012
dementia
It used to be TB. Then it was cancer. Now it's dementia - the disease that dare not speak its name. Hearing it, an erstwhile friend will make an excuse and cross the street. Your mobile will be silent, the number of texts will fall off. Yes, that's right, you've become an outcast. You have,or are caring for, dementia - just slightly, perhaps, forgetting where the car was parked, someone's name, what day it is.
Odd you should have become such an outsider, along with your nearest and dearest. Because in every three people around you in the population, one is going to develop dementia, a big proportion of them with Alzheimer's.
Just before Christmas last year, a TV ad told people to check when they were visiting their families and to suggest a visit to the G.P. if they found any of them had memory loss. It brought a rather disconcerting vision. "Oh, I forgot to switch on the oven for the turkey," - "Then you'd better see the doctor."
A visit to the G.P.? Last time I spoke to my former G.P. now retired, about dementia, she shrugged and said "Well, nothing can be done about that." That's probably the attitude of most G.P.'s, though they would be unlikely to admit it. Patients are sent on to one of the many "memory clinics" which have been founded recently. But once out of the clinic, there is nowhere for most sufferers to go. There are often effective drugs for Alzheimer's, but that needs expert knowledge for correct prescription, not easy to find. Otherwise, there is little or no help except for the very poor or the rich - the poor will get a few hours help at home each week, the rich will be able to hire it. The rest? The limit on help is over £22,5oo in assets, not income. That is why most have to sell the homes they don't want to leave and go into a care home - if they can find one to take them. The scientists want early diagnosis so that the appropriate tests can be carried out but that doesn't mean to say that those diagnoses will get early treatment.
Yet the disease is at the bottom of the pile for research money, even though the prospect for finding cures is now bright. Dementia is the poor relation, even though it costs the UK twice as much as cancer, three times as much as heart disease and four times as much as stroke. For every £ spent on dementia research, £26 are spent on cancer research and £15 on heart disease research. These figures are given by Paul Burstow, LibDem M.P, the political leader in putting the case for better funding for dementia research.
The good news is that he has now become a member of the coalition Government, as Minister of State for Care Services, so now there is more hope of government support for the already strong case for increased research funding.
Young scientists have to be attracted into dementia research and that can only be done by raising the profile of the disease, as well as the money. We have to start talking about it. Once cancer, before the cures started, was unmentionable and people would hide the fact that they had it. Long ago, having TB could turn you into a social outcast, apparently coming from a poor and unhygienic home - until they found out that it was simply an infection, picked up from human contact or infected cow's milk.
J. Adrian Watney, chairman of Alzheimer's Research UK, says they are doubling their efforts to defeat dementia by investing in the most promising research. And the good news, needed for so long, is that they have seen a record-breaking year with the highest ever income of £8.2m.
They are one of the world's top three charity funders of dementia reseach. "Dementia can be beaten. We WILL find a cure," he saya. But, for that, they need funding for scientific breakthroughs, from the public as well as the government.
There is now cross-Europe sharing of information and research results and a Ministerial Advisory Group for Dementia Research, which will next meet in summer this year, as well as a funders' forum with leading charities and Government funders (the Medical Research Council and Department of Health)working together for the many pioneering research projects on what they call "our greatest medical challenge." And it certainly is that.
ends
Odd you should have become such an outsider, along with your nearest and dearest. Because in every three people around you in the population, one is going to develop dementia, a big proportion of them with Alzheimer's.
Just before Christmas last year, a TV ad told people to check when they were visiting their families and to suggest a visit to the G.P. if they found any of them had memory loss. It brought a rather disconcerting vision. "Oh, I forgot to switch on the oven for the turkey," - "Then you'd better see the doctor."
A visit to the G.P.? Last time I spoke to my former G.P. now retired, about dementia, she shrugged and said "Well, nothing can be done about that." That's probably the attitude of most G.P.'s, though they would be unlikely to admit it. Patients are sent on to one of the many "memory clinics" which have been founded recently. But once out of the clinic, there is nowhere for most sufferers to go. There are often effective drugs for Alzheimer's, but that needs expert knowledge for correct prescription, not easy to find. Otherwise, there is little or no help except for the very poor or the rich - the poor will get a few hours help at home each week, the rich will be able to hire it. The rest? The limit on help is over £22,5oo in assets, not income. That is why most have to sell the homes they don't want to leave and go into a care home - if they can find one to take them. The scientists want early diagnosis so that the appropriate tests can be carried out but that doesn't mean to say that those diagnoses will get early treatment.
Yet the disease is at the bottom of the pile for research money, even though the prospect for finding cures is now bright. Dementia is the poor relation, even though it costs the UK twice as much as cancer, three times as much as heart disease and four times as much as stroke. For every £ spent on dementia research, £26 are spent on cancer research and £15 on heart disease research. These figures are given by Paul Burstow, LibDem M.P, the political leader in putting the case for better funding for dementia research.
The good news is that he has now become a member of the coalition Government, as Minister of State for Care Services, so now there is more hope of government support for the already strong case for increased research funding.
Young scientists have to be attracted into dementia research and that can only be done by raising the profile of the disease, as well as the money. We have to start talking about it. Once cancer, before the cures started, was unmentionable and people would hide the fact that they had it. Long ago, having TB could turn you into a social outcast, apparently coming from a poor and unhygienic home - until they found out that it was simply an infection, picked up from human contact or infected cow's milk.
J. Adrian Watney, chairman of Alzheimer's Research UK, says they are doubling their efforts to defeat dementia by investing in the most promising research. And the good news, needed for so long, is that they have seen a record-breaking year with the highest ever income of £8.2m.
They are one of the world's top three charity funders of dementia reseach. "Dementia can be beaten. We WILL find a cure," he saya. But, for that, they need funding for scientific breakthroughs, from the public as well as the government.
There is now cross-Europe sharing of information and research results and a Ministerial Advisory Group for Dementia Research, which will next meet in summer this year, as well as a funders' forum with leading charities and Government funders (the Medical Research Council and Department of Health)working together for the many pioneering research projects on what they call "our greatest medical challenge." And it certainly is that.
ends
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