Before I get on my high horse… Had a lovely courtyard evening on Wednesday, thank you to everyone for coming; just a glass of wine before dinner but great fun. Always a bit ad hoc in our courtyard though. We get the table out and the kitchen chairs as we now only have one functioning directors’ chair out of the four we have bought in the last 12 months… and we sit about and chat about all kinds of things. It’s going swimmingly and then the cat comes and digs about enthusiastically in his litter tray, ejects his breakfast with gusto and you have to explain it’s not actually me that’s just done that, it is the cat under the table over there, honestly, and then you change the subject fast.
One of the subjects of the evening was the reaction of some British people to the refugees and don’t get me started on it in detail but something did occur to me on Thursday morning as I was slogging up the hill at dawn trying to clear my mind of some rather odd dreams. (Being in a medieval battle with arrows being fired and having to dodge, them, and then cracking jokes with the current Queen were both in there. All very odd and I’d only had my customary two glasses of red.) Anyway, there I was being flashed by Sotiris (his truck headlights) on his way to see to his farm, waving at Papas Stephanos on his way to, well, I assume a very early service in the hills somewhere, when my mind switched from Her Maj to some of the comments I’ve been seeing on Facebook and elsewhere recently. Quick pause for a photo:
The comment is, or comments are as there have been far too many of them: ‘We should look after our own first.’ That is, ‘look after our homeless people before offering housing to Johnny Foreigner who will probably be a terrorist because, after all, all those from that part of the world are.’ I’m sorry, I’ll start that again – people are saying, in their thousands, that ‘we’ (the British public) should look after our own homeless people before we help and house those fleeing war. Okay, fine. Go ahead. Homelessness could be solved in a fortnight. Here (after another pause for a photo) is how:
If every whinnying, worried, paranoid loudmouth who rants, ‘We should help our own first,’ did one of the following there would be no homeless people on the streets within two weeks.
1 Give up your spare room to a homeless person, rent free until they find an income
2 Not got a spare room? Okay, you’ve got a sofa? Let them use that, your address and your bathroom, for a few weeks while they get cleaned up and out to work.
3 Instead of saving up that money for a second holiday next year, let a homeless person use it for one month’s ret and a deposit on a flat.
4 Do you really need two cars? Sell one and see 3, above
5 Thinking longer term? Stop smoking 20 a day, save it up, and see 3 above. (Apparently 20 a day can now cost as much as £3,650, you could probably see 3, above a couple of times for that.)
6 Have a garden? Chip in, buy a tent, house a family, letting them use your address so they can get on the social care ladder. You could also offer use of your downstairs bathroom too, do their washing, maybe give them a meal once in a while.
7 Got a holiday home you only use twice a year? See 6, above
8 Got a boat you only use at weekends? See 6, above
And so on. How many thousands of rooms, facilities and housing possibilities would be released if the country said, ‘Here use mine until you’re sorted,’ rather than ‘We should look after our own’ and then do absolutely nothing to look after their own.
Here on Symi (ah ha! A link to Symi!) families do look after their own and then go further and look after other people’s own who have nowhere to call their own. And yes, people will scream, ‘there’s not enough housing in the UK.’ Well actually, unless things have altered considerably in the last 15 years (and they may have but I doubt it) there is actually plenty of housing in the UK. When I worked in that field there were whole estates built and ready and no one wanting to movie into them. I’m talking state of the art estates, not run down tower blocks. There were plenty of empty homes initiatives, all housing associations had a plethora of ‘voids’ we were always trying to get back into use. It’s out there, so why don’t people use it? I mean if you feel that strongly about ‘Helping your own’ why not take up an empty private let yourself and let a homeless family use your house? Of course, you will have to deal with all the social issues that go with it, i.e. people who are not as lucky as you, but at least you would be putting your money where your mouth is. And if that is too extreme, see 1 to 8, above.
