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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/14/syria-aleppo-homelessness-rough-sleeping-parliament
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| Feel powerless right now? We mustn’t forget the good that politics can do | Feel powerless right now? We mustn’t forget the good that politics can do |
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| There is no escape from the pornography of war: Aleppo writhes in its terrible anguish on Twitter, on the radio, on TV and on the front of every newspaper and news website. We are spectators, compelled to bear witness – as if by watching we are, in some ineffectual way, not passing by on the other side. | There is no escape from the pornography of war: Aleppo writhes in its terrible anguish on Twitter, on the radio, on TV and on the front of every newspaper and news website. We are spectators, compelled to bear witness – as if by watching we are, in some ineffectual way, not passing by on the other side. |
| We get up and dress while schoolchildren tweet farewells to the world. We clean our teeth while their mothers weep for help on morning radio shows. We eat breakfast listening to a young woman describing how she endures war and siege by reading the English classics and refining her embroidery. And that’s the sanitised story. | We get up and dress while schoolchildren tweet farewells to the world. We clean our teeth while their mothers weep for help on morning radio shows. We eat breakfast listening to a young woman describing how she endures war and siege by reading the English classics and refining her embroidery. And that’s the sanitised story. |
| This hyperconnectivity is slowly destroying the confidence that used to be the first privilege of living in a wealthy country. History is no longer an inexorable march to a better future and there are problems that our democracy seems unable to solve. That’s not quite what this month’s Prospect magazine means when it says the American century is over, but that is how the decline of optimism will be felt. | This hyperconnectivity is slowly destroying the confidence that used to be the first privilege of living in a wealthy country. History is no longer an inexorable march to a better future and there are problems that our democracy seems unable to solve. That’s not quite what this month’s Prospect magazine means when it says the American century is over, but that is how the decline of optimism will be felt. |
| So we tweet out sympathy and text a fiver to the Red Cross and then we grow a thicker skin. Daily life turns into an exercise in empathy suppression. British social attitudes surveys record declining sympathy for people on benefits. The eyes of someone walking by a person who is begging are blind. | So we tweet out sympathy and text a fiver to the Red Cross and then we grow a thicker skin. Daily life turns into an exercise in empathy suppression. British social attitudes surveys record declining sympathy for people on benefits. The eyes of someone walking by a person who is begging are blind. |
| All of us who work in or near a city centre probably pass rough sleepers on our way. One of the most morally diminishing experiences available in one of the world’s richest cities is cycling along a street hoping that the heap in the doorway is a bag of rubbish and not a human being. That takes a thick skin too. | All of us who work in or near a city centre probably pass rough sleepers on our way. One of the most morally diminishing experiences available in one of the world’s richest cities is cycling along a street hoping that the heap in the doorway is a bag of rubbish and not a human being. That takes a thick skin too. |
| The war in Syria and the neighbourhood misery of rough sleeping are poles apart in scale. Both of them inspire astonishing acts of courage and determination among a few (including the women who started one of the charities for child refugees that the Guardian is supporting this Christmas). | The war in Syria and the neighbourhood misery of rough sleeping are poles apart in scale. Both of them inspire astonishing acts of courage and determination among a few (including the women who started one of the charities for child refugees that the Guardian is supporting this Christmas). |
| But often the reaction, paraded so shamelessly in the Commons debate on Syria yesterday, is a kind of chest-thumping uselessness. Yesterday’s debate was billed as an attempt to compel the government to intervene somehow to ease the plight of the citizens of Aleppo. But beyond pressing for some kind of EU action, no one had a workable idea of how. The debate morphed seamlessly into a familiar contest to shovel blame onto the other side, or for some backbenchers, onto their own. It was another chip in confidence in representative democracy. | But often the reaction, paraded so shamelessly in the Commons debate on Syria yesterday, is a kind of chest-thumping uselessness. Yesterday’s debate was billed as an attempt to compel the government to intervene somehow to ease the plight of the citizens of Aleppo. But beyond pressing for some kind of EU action, no one had a workable idea of how. The debate morphed seamlessly into a familiar contest to shovel blame onto the other side, or for some backbenchers, onto their own. It was another chip in confidence in representative democracy. |
| Syria’s civil war never had an easy answer. But that must not be allowed to callous our sensitivity to problems that do, nor our faith in the possibility of political solutions. So, for example, no one should ever need to sleep rough. Less than a decade ago, it was a problem that had been ticked, solved, dealt with. Councils learned how to organise support teams able to tackle the multiple disadvantages that cause and are caused by sleeping out – the breakdown in physical and mental health, and quite likely substance abuse – and they had the resources to find temporary accommodation and to support vulnerable people back into normal life. | Syria’s civil war never had an easy answer. But that must not be allowed to callous our sensitivity to problems that do, nor our faith in the possibility of political solutions. So, for example, no one should ever need to sleep rough. Less than a decade ago, it was a problem that had been ticked, solved, dealt with. Councils learned how to organise support teams able to tackle the multiple disadvantages that cause and are caused by sleeping out – the breakdown in physical and mental health, and quite likely substance abuse – and they had the resources to find temporary accommodation and to support vulnerable people back into normal life. |
| But what wasn’t tackled was the housing shortage. So rough sleeping, which is the visible tip of the homelessness iceberg, has doubled in the past five years. In London it was a third higher last year than the year before and is clearly going to be higher again this year. It starts with not enough homes; and then overstretched health services fail to provide adequate support; and savagely under-resourced councils cannot afford to pick up the bits and put them together again. | But what wasn’t tackled was the housing shortage. So rough sleeping, which is the visible tip of the homelessness iceberg, has doubled in the past five years. In London it was a third higher last year than the year before and is clearly going to be higher again this year. It starts with not enough homes; and then overstretched health services fail to provide adequate support; and savagely under-resourced councils cannot afford to pick up the bits and put them together again. |
| No one had a good answer on Syria; but at least there is now a homelessness reduction bill going through parliament that has government backing. It requires English councils to do what Scottish ones do already by tightening up their obligations before making someone homeless: which is fine, but there still aren’t enough homes. | No one had a good answer on Syria; but at least there is now a homelessness reduction bill going through parliament that has government backing. It requires English councils to do what Scottish ones do already by tightening up their obligations before making someone homeless: which is fine, but there still aren’t enough homes. |
| Labour is launching its homelessness initiative today, too, demanding that housing associations reserve 4,000 units for people with a history of rough sleeping, reviving a scheme pioneered by the charity St Mungo’s and first introduced by the Tories 25 years ago. | |
| In the end, politics can only be the art of the possible. We can’t stop the slaughter in Aleppo, but we can make sure no one needs to sleep rough. And with small successes politics can start to rebuild its reputation. | In the end, politics can only be the art of the possible. We can’t stop the slaughter in Aleppo, but we can make sure no one needs to sleep rough. And with small successes politics can start to rebuild its reputation. |