Ain't too Proud to Beg:60 Days on the Streets.

In the last five years, the number of rough sleepers on Britain's streets has doubled. There are estimated to be, each night, five thousand people sleeping on the streets in England alone. The average life expectancy of a UK rough sleeper is just forty-four. In Tory/austerity Britain these terrible terrible statistics just keep coming, and they keep getting worse too.

I point the finger at the Tories not down to some long held prejudice against them (though I certainly do have that) but because I've been around long enough now not to think, but to know, that Conservative policy exacerbates, sometimes intentionally, this problem. Back in the 1980s I used to visit London on a pretty regular basis. From Basingstoke I'd arrive in Waterloo and soon pass through Cardboard City (where the IMAX is now) where hundreds of homeless people would gather and sleep.

As the nineties and noughties progressed the problem wasn't solved but it was, observably, abating. Following the election of, first David Cameron, and now Theresa May, you'd have to wear blinkers not to notice we're back to Thatcher levels of vagrancy. Tory policies, are, always have been, and always will be, designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. They are Robin Hoods in reverse and their most recent trick, getting the less well off to vote against their own interest - also known as Brexit, seems likely to further the problem exponentially. What a bunch of shits they are.

Not that Ed Stafford puts it like that (he's a bit more diplomatic than me) in Channel 4's 60 Days on the Streets. Ed's a former squaddie, an explorer, and, if you must, a 'survivalist'. He's walked the entire length of the Amazon but his latest challenge presents him with a whole different set of dangers. He's going to, in winter (obvs), spend three lots of twenty nights sleeping on the streets of three of Britain's major cities:- London, Manchester, and Glasgow.

Leaving his lovely family, lovely dogs, lovely house, and lovely garden in Leicestershire, he heads first for the mean streets of Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens where he's soon confronted with heavy drinkers, zombiefied spice smokers unable to move or even talk, punch ups, and people screaming racist abuse.

It's a culture shock but Ed's both a sport and a tough guy so he gets immediately stuck in and strikes up a friendship with some of the genuine homeless people on the streets of Manchester. I'd had my reservations about the format. How authentic could the experience be with a camera crew (or, at the very least, one camera person) following Ed around?

Also, I was concerned that Ed's project could be seen as patronising, condescending even. It seems to me that it would be a remarkably different experience sleeping rough if you know you have a large house and loving family to eventually return to than it would be if you had no idea what your future holds - or if you had mental health and/or dependency issues which, despite his apparent fondness for the odd can of Stella Artois, Ed clearly does not.

As the three episodes played out, Ed Stafford effortlessly disabused me of that notion. Partly by his own self-awareness (he'd clearly had the same concerns and he's pretty open his situation and motivations when approaching the genuine homeless), but also in the way he speaks to the people he meets on the streets. He tries, and usually succeeds, in being non-judgemental and, best of all, he listens. He lets people tell their stories in their own good time. I warmed to Ed Stafford and I warmed to the people he introduced me to as well.

Mark's been on the streets of Manchester for seven years. A former painter and decorator, his life went tits up when his marriage fell apart and he lost his job (these two things quite often go together) and he now lives in a shop's fire escape doorway with a friend and he sees begging as his job, one he's good at. People call him a 'lazy fucker' and tell him he needs 'smacking' and 'putting down'.

He's none of those things though and nor is the friendly lady (many of the interviewees prefer to remain nameless) Ed meets dossing down outside Burger King. She has six kids, all living with their dad, and she rages, not incorrectly, at the injustice of all the buildings around her sitting empty as she shivers on the streets. She'd previously been an extra in TV soap operas and even appeared with Timmy Mallet in Wacaday!

She's human. She's just 'fallen through the cracks' in our society. Like the young man Ed speaks to who was thrown out of his flat following a suicide attempt and now oscillates wildly between talking about being a role model (or dad even) to his son and trying to find a vein to jack up into. Stafford seems disappointed, at first, that this supposed innocent victim has duped him and his sob story was just a cover so he could buy crack.

Ed's new friend has been doing heroin since he was thirteen years old and was introduced to the drug by a girlfriend, soon his dealer, who described its effect as "sex times a million" and offered him some after a shag. Ed Stafford had been duped, for sure, but so, it seems, has everyone on the streets. It's, obviously, a tough existence and you need to fight, lie, and cheat to survive it at times.

For Ed's first night he rifles round in a Biffa wheelie bin for food (salad with onions and chewing gum unlikely to ever to crop up on the menus at the Ivy), pisses in the canal, and then makes his bed up in a doorway that smells of urine. He observes more human shit on the streets of this part of Manchester than he's seen in even Delhi or Mumbai. The next day the police approach him and threaten to arrest him for begging. Which he isn't even doing. But the act of homelessness renders you a beggar in the eyes of the law.

Andy Burnham, Manchester's mayor, has boasted of 'cracking down' on rough sleepers. He's a politician I've had a lot of time for in the past (and once thought would make a good Labour leader) but is that really his answer? To criminalise, or further criminalise, those already desperate, those at the edges of society, those who need our help, and those who need a hand up so they can help themselves?

The public, as is so often the case, show more sympathy (and, occasionally, empathy) than the politicians who claim to speak for the public. One generous passer-by buys Ed a hot meal and a coffee and others offer booze. He starts to enjoy the camaraderie too, even starts to view the whole thing, or at least begins to see how you could view the whole thing, as a positive experience. Who needs a house? Who needs a TV`? Sitting at home staring at a screen every night when you could be out in the real world meeting real people and having your food and drink provided free of charge.

But, of course, that's the silver lining. Not the cloud. Something that is made abundantly clear on Ed Stafford's arrival in London (home to a quarter of England's rough sleepers) where he's greeted with "shall I snap the cunt's arm off?". One of the capital's homeless has twigged that Ed, now in Trafalgar Square, is voluntarily homeless. I don't blame them for taking against him. In appropriating their story he's stealing their narrative (something that, by writing this blog, I'm guilty of too) but, equally, I've had the privilege of listening to Ed's reasoning and I understand why he's doing this (not sure why I am!) so, of course, I don't want to see him hurt. I don't want to see anyone get hurt.

Arm, thankfully, still intact it takes Ed Stafford two hours to locate a vacant doorway on The Strand (an area very familiar to me) and, even then, his makeshift bed is in a puddle of piss. Things improve the next morning when he's given a £10 Pret card, a chicken sandwich, a coffee, a bar of chocolate, a burger, a quiche (for breakfast? hey, why not?), and a bag of (uncooked) mushrooms. I'm not sure if the workers and citizens of London are especially generous or just so vast in number there can't help be pockets of kindness in that great sea of humanity.

With so much largesse on offer, it's no wonder that some exploit it. Or are seen to be exploiting it. Darren comes into 'town' (see, I'm a proper Londoner now) from Brixton to beg (though, according to a beggar I met there once, Brixton is a good spot itself, if you don't use drugs or drink you can earn enough for a yearly holiday in Portugal!). He's got a flat in Brixton and though he's a nice guy he's also something of a con man.

But, of course, that's not the full story. Darren has a borderline personality disorder and he's been in and out of prison many times. He can't get a job (for the most part ex-cons with mental health problems are discriminated against in interviews) and if he stopped begging he'd most likely be genuinely homeless before long. Something to bear in mind the next time you read some holier-than-thou story about 'professional beggars'.

Elsewhere on the Strand, Ed meets Terry. Terry's an OAP from Liverpool who has Type 1 diabetes and a leaky catheter bag. There's Lee, an ex-speed freak from Gravesend, eighteen months homeless, who's partially deaf due to 'skunk weed' in his 'lughole' and has, also, been in prison a few times. And there's Derren, sat outside the Ritz on Piccadilly, who eschews carboard signs for what he calls 'the gift of the gab'. Derren's also been in prison (for assault), he's estranged from his family (in Torquay), and he's an alcoholic, downing huge amounts of Stella Artois, Strongbow, and vodka all at the same time.

An unnamed former armed robber, who we later see jacking up in a flat in Dartford, admits that he does "feel a bit of a cunt not being homeless" and while it's not often easy to sympathise with all of these people, the fact remains that recent Tory benefit cuts have been so severe that it's often better financially, and certainly less lonely, to live on the street. On the street, you're far less likely to starve to death if you can't get work and even if you can get work it'll be something like cleaning where the agency receives £20 per hour and you'll get £8. There were people in Manchester earning £40 an hour (tax-free) begging.

This is the conscious cruelty of the Tories (and particularly the odious Iain Duncan Smith) that was so effectively skewered by Ken Loach's wonderful I, Daniel Blake, this is the 'othering' that the Tory party thrives on, and this is the victim shaming that deprives each one of us of our humanity each time we walk past a homeless person without acknowledging them, each time we vote for a party with a poor track record on homelessness, and each time we think of it as someone else's problem and not ours.

Of course, things will never be perfect and, of course, there will always be people who choose (for whatever reason) to live on the street. But things can certainly be done better. A trip to Glasgow, where policies are shaped by the socially aware SNP instead of the Tories (who lack not only social awareness but even the most basic self-awareness), proves that, underlines it, and highlights it with a great big luminous Stabilo Boss marker pen.

Glasgow has approximately thirty rough sleepers each night. London has one thousand. That's more than thirty times as many. London is bigger than Glasgow. It's not thirty times as big. This improved situation is down to the progressive measures put in place by the SNP led Scottish Parliament. There's a completely free night shelter (no drugs, no alcohol, no weapons, no violence) where you don't just get a bed for the night but you get a shower and a breakfast too (though very little privacy), one evening Ed Stafford counts twenty six volunteers/outreach workers (they actually outnumber the people they're helping), and we meet with Knoxy, who spent eighteen years homeless but, after a few nights at the shelter, has accommodation found for him pretty quickly due to the joined up system of thinking that Scotland has put in place.

Whilst being undoubtedly better than the situations in London and Manchester it's not all good (and that's not just because it's bloody cold (into the minuses), wet, and even starts snowing during Ed's spell in Glasgow). There are stories of homeless people being stabbed or set on fire through their sleeping bags and Ed himself is woken by a man poking his finger into his mouth. An invasion of personal space so disgusting it prompts an out of character outburst:- "fucking tempted to bite his finger off". 

Begging isn't illegal in Scotland which means the homeless, unlike in England, aren't further punished but also means that, risk of arrest called off, there's a lot around. Not least on Sauchiehall and Buchanan Streets. Now having worn the same pants (not even inside out) for fifty days in a row, Ed tries, and fails, to find free food in Greggs and Subway (though both donate some to charity) before lucking out with a chicken tikka sandwich from a friendly cornershop.

Before bedding down for the night, he observes that most of the diurnal panhandlers have vacated their posts but he briefly catches a chat with an American, deported from his own country for beating up 'a police', who sells paintings of Popeye and Deadpool and a couple in a doorway whose choice of a canine companion renders them personas non grata at the night shelter. They'd rather have a dog than a house, they say.

He drinks a cocktail of wine mixed with Carlsberg and he meets, again, with Knoxy who talks of assaults, alcoholism, and being hospitalised after a fit of delirium tremens. The 'weegie' accents are, or have been deemed by the production team, as strong as a cocktail of wine and lager and have been subtitled which seems a bit silly. But what doesn't seem daft at all is the way that Scotland, Glasgow, and the SNP seem to have found at least a partial solution to the epidemic of rough sleeping.

As numbers rise dramatically in England, they fall remarkably in Scotland. Ed Stafford doesn't seem a political animal so he doesn't bring it up but I have no qualms in saying, and saying loudly, that this very moving and thoughtful series showed how Scotland has the right idea when it comes to homelessness and England, specifically and critically Conservative England, has the wrong idea.

As Theresa May, the Tory party, the ERG, the government, the parliament, and a Labour party that can't even stand up and say that Brexit is a terrible, insular, misguided, disastrous, and ultimately criminal venture (and one that mainly came about because of the Tory party's equally insular and misguided austerity programme) play out a seemingly endless Mexican stand-off with our futures and lives, not theirs, as the stake people continue to be forced on to the streets and people continue to die on the streets.

In any modern and civilised democracy this should be cause for eternal shame, not for endless blame. It's not a minor inconvenience but a huge stain on our society that future historians will view very dimly. They'll, hopefully, wonder how it was allowed to happen, how we got to this, and we'll have to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves the same questions. If we continue to vote for cruelty and hostile environments, we'll continue to get cruelty and hostility. Not just for those we think somehow deserve these treacherous and dangerous existences but, soon enough, for every one.

With a soundtrack that included Bobby Bland (Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City), Sleaford Mods (No One's Bothered), and Bjork (It's Oh So Quiet), Ed Stafford did a decent job of showing this without mentioning the politics behind the epidemic. That proved to be my only real complaint about the programme, the rise in homelessness is a political decision and pretty much an intentional one, but, that aside, this was a considered, well-rounded look at a vital topic that, like those on the streets, we so often choose to turn away from. Alas, with the woeful self-serving MPs we have in Westminster now, things (in England at least) can only get worse.