Member-only story
In Britain, We Criminalize and Demonize The Homeless..
Yet another sorry chapter in dystopian Blighty….
It was a McDonald’s security guard in central London, who triggered our collective consciousness to an issue which has been unfolding before our very eyes for a long minute.
To this outsourced, minimum wage and certainly overzealous employee, he thought that he was doing his employer’s bidding by pouring a cup of cold water on the man who was sleeping rough outside his work place.
But not even he or his paymasters could have envisaged the degree to which the wider public would be outraged by his callousness. Our man was sacked and the fast food chain was forced to apologize for the humiliation of the homeless individual.
It is, however, imperative not to view this act of extreme cruelty in isolation as it is wholly systemic.
Suella Braverman, shortly before she was sacked from her job as the Home Secretary, said that homelessness would be criminalized and those sleeping rough on the streets on London would be arrested.