Goodwill

Two stories have stayed with me this week.

A woman on benefits saved up £2,000 to give her 6 kids a good Christmas. I can't tell you much more than that, because I don't read arsehole tabloids. But I do know arsehole tabloids are published in London and written by people who earn a helluva lot more than £2,000. The newspaper in question disapproved of the woman's actions and splashed her photo all over their front page. I don't know and I don't want to know what her circumstances are but I'll bet there's more to the story than the tabloid revealed.

I wish she hadn't appeared on the front page of a newspaper, but I hope she got paid well for allowing the great British public to sneer at her and her kids. If only someone had said to her: Letting this newspaper put your photo on its front page is not meant to help you. It's meant to encourage the great British public to come to the conclusion that people on benefits are scroungers and can salt away their benefits, whereas you and I know people on benefits often get into debt, sometimes to illegal money lenders, at this time of year and struggle to pay the cash back for most of the next year.

The second story was about a homeless guy called James. It's a complicated story but James found a car left with a window rolled down and a bag inside with a lot of cash in it. He guarded it for several hours in the rain and the cold. To thank James for his honesty - and common decency - it was decided to put up an appeal for funding to help him on social media.

I followed the appeal on Facebook:

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Jean Nisbet 735 quid raised for him in an hour!

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 · Reply · 14 December at 21:22

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Jean Nisbet 1,950 quid raised in 9 hours! Fantastic!

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 · Reply · Yesterday at 04:58

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Jean Nisbet 5,230 quid (more than the target set) raised in 17 hours.

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 · Reply · 

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 · 16 hrs

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Jean Nisbet The total raised is now well over 11,000 quid. The first 5,000 goes to James and the rest to homelessness charities. I just hope James gets the help he needs to get his life back on track.

Why would so many people be moved by James's actions and be willing to donate to his cause? It's not like the people donating are sending vast sums of money (a lot are sending a fiver or 10 quid, and only a few have sent sums like 100 quid). I'll bet the people donating are not rich. 

But it's topical: homelessness is right there in front of us, much more so than in previous years. It's a  disgrace to the UK. We keep being told how rich the UK is and yet homelessness has risen by 65% in the last 3 years. 

The homelessness issue involves much that is going wrong in the UK right now. First of all, there are no homes for people to go to because houses are not being built to meet our needs. Housing has become part of the Tory dream: a way to make money, rather than a way to let people live a decent life. So land is bought up and either permission to build is refused or builders just let it lie while they wait for land prices to go up. Benefits are now so low that people can't afford to rent. That means young people suffer, but older people are also suffering because a lot of people are trapped in houses where they've lived all their lives because they can't find a smaller place to live. 

To be fair, the Scottish Government is rowing against this tide, but it is hampered by the number of tax areas where it can't intervene to improve its cash flow. And it is also hampered by the 'main' political parties' (main in England and Wales, not in Scotland) obsession with independence. The only political parties that talk about independence here in Scotland are the Tories, Labour and the LibDems. 

There's a lot of negotiation going on between the SNP and the Greens right now, to do with getting the Scottish budget through Holyrood. You won't hear about that on UK TV or read about it in the UK press. And you won't hear about the issue of homelessness, not unless it serves the agenda of the Westminster government.