30 June, 2008

what a day

Well, today has just been one of those days you just want to hope is a dream but alas it's not and the day just goes on and on and on and on. I thought those kind of days were over for me but it seems I was wrong. So it got me to thinking which to be honest hasn't happened a lot just lately, anyway as I was saying I was thinking about all the things that are happening during the credit crunch and how it will affect many more and I think things are going to get a lot tougher in the coming months. I'm no economist but i see house prices falling by another 6% in the next six months and this means there will be a lot more people who will own properties that do not equal their mortgages and see the government try to put a freeze on wage rises whilst hiking up taxes. The question to ask is why is all this happening and why did no one foresee this months ago? I asked someone the other day why do people pay road taxes and still have to pay to use roads in city centres and why do we pay National insurance and still get unfair post code health services and why do we pay over the top taxes on petrol and lastly why if alcohol is so bad for us why is it legal it seems strange to me that the government spend millions on informing us about the risks in drinking yet by not making it illegal the government still earn from taxing it. Just seems strange when you think about it.

27 June, 2008

Do we still care about homelessness

The amount of times I have heard, of course we care about homeless people and the less well off, it just makes me wonder and ask the question why have we still people living on the streets of our cities and why do we now have a network of hostels up and down the length of this country and why are they full up every night Its question after question with me I know but if you don't ask them then the right answers to the problems cannot be truthfully answered. The thing that does concern me is that we put people in to these places which really are today's poor houses if compare things with the Victorians. Workhouses were hard to get away from and they did leave the same kind of stigma that hostels leave today. That's why alot of people used different names. I have to admit that life isn't too bad these days but there is this feeling that by not spending the money now to train and teach the homeless and less advantaged that we are in fact building a second class of citizen. Everyone that works is this sector knows how difficult it is get people somewhere back in society and it's even much harder to get them back into work. That's why I advocated work training and life skills but even this sometimes is not enough