Opinion: By the measure of homelessness in the UK, we are a poor nation

Our streets of people in need

Daily, I find myself wondering what kind of society I am in, what has broken in our society and communities to see such poverty, destitution and hopelessness amongst us?

There is nothing first world on our streets, despite being one of the largest economies in the world, with all sorts of prospects for the United Kingdom, we cannot judge our progress on the prosperity of the rich getting richer, companies declaring vast profits, the stock exchange hitting new records and anyone else with the opportunity and good fortune laughing all the way to the bank.

As a consultant, I work around the UK, literally living in hotels and walking the streets therein. Living in Manchester, then working or temporarily staying in Edinburgh, Norwich, Great Yarmouth and now Reading, I cannot ignore the obvious.

I see hungry people

I see hungry people, I see homeless people, I see people approaching strangers begging for some spare change for a meal or to get a place to lay their heads for the night. Then some billboards tell me not to give money to street beggars because the said charities are there to help them back to a different life.

I am pained by my own helplessness, I cannot think of what I can really do to help anyone who has been caught in this situation apart from offer a handout. If I stopped to listen to their stories, it is very likely their story will be no different from mine.

Why? I was self-employed and independent, then I fell ill with a sickness and disease that could easily have killed me off, but thankfully I am still here. As I took on my treatment, I had no money coming in, I used up all my savings, I could not pay the mortgage and because of my seemingly independent life, I did not know I was entitled to any welfare.

A precipitous decline

I soon found out about my entitlements six months after I fell ill, my creditors were very understanding, in fact, they probably had more faith in my recovery than I did, they had a good idea of what I earned before and my possible earning potential if I did recover. Yet, there were days I went hungry, my eyes almost popping out in the agonising pain of cancer, but for the succour and friendship of neighbours and friends, I could have despaired and expired.

I still had a roof over my head for another 30 months after my cancer diagnosis, but I could not sustain my situation, things were not looking as rosy as I had hope that I decided to sell up. The day before I moved out of my apartment of 126 months, I did not know where I would spend the next night, and then a free offer to occupy a vacated house come up which I occupied for two months.

After that, a young family put me up in their apartment caring for me for another 6 weeks before I decided to return to the UK after 12 and a half years in the Netherlands, with nothing but the hope that things will turn around, my cousin putting me up in a room as I returned.

As things looked up

Within 6 days of arrival, I had a job to travel around Europe for the next six months, however, some internal issues in the company meant the opportunity only lasted 5 weeks, it was another few months before I got a job in Wales where I was living out of hotels for the next 6 months.

Being in and out of work with no permanent residence could have taken its toll, I had many brushes on the brink of homelessness only to have people give me a place to recoup, reassess, rejig and reapply myself to getting back into useful employment and independence.

None of this would have been possible without a helping hand and there were many for which I am full of gratitude and appreciation that the best of humanity is still out there overflowing with the milk of kindness to help and to redeem.

Where is the help for all?

However, not everyone has that resource, not everyone has an angel, the angels to me were people like you and me. Many are homeless because of so many reasons too many to enumerate, from illness to unemployment, broken homes, divorce, a death in the family and even maybe substance abuse.

It is here that we must ask ourselves, what encourages substance abuse and is that not a symptom of some other underlying issue? I cannot sanctimoniously pontificate on these issues as if in my supposed saintliness I am beyond reproach, neither am I ready to accept as default that all beggars are beggars by choice, any money given them goes on drink and drugs or that they know where to get help and never use it.

I knew where to get help, as articulate and well-dressed as I was, I was both humiliated and turned away with the undertone of how dare I visit the homeless charity seeking help. I submit that if the charities were really doing their charitable duties, there would probably be fewer homeless people on our streets. I am doubtful they are doing anything that would encourage me to donate to the charities when I can open my hand to a person begging in front of me.

They are human beings first

It is a cancer within our midst that we have that many homeless people around us and from my experience, the very likelihood why the homeless would not visit homeless charities is because first, they are not treated as human beings, they are not treated with respect, they are looked down on as the dregs of society that there is nothing in place as the kind of helping hands I had to give me the opportunity and space to come out of the quagmire I was in.

Nobody wants to return to a workhouse environment redolent of the Victorian times and these places that portend to tackle homelessness must be more welcoming than they appear to be.

I see instances when someone begging needs £16 to stay in a hostel, it is unlikely if they make the £16, they would immediately spend it on one night’s shelter when there is food to think about.

The pall of homelessness

It is not without consideration that I think of a man I loved, Chris was ejected from his home by his mother at the age of 15 because he was gay and though he made something of his life to the extent that his parents relied on him to bury them well, Chris died 21 years after that ejection and it cannot be unrelated to the homelessness he suffered as a teenager before someone helped him.

I could see signs of that experience in everything that Chris did because these things are markedly significant, yet, he was amazingly loving and wonderful company to be with. Whilst he rests, I still miss him, 36 was too young an age to die and he’s been gone over 8 years.

I walk to the gym in my shorts on typical winter days seeing people in the dead of the night still hungry, homeless, cold and anything uncomfortable, I do not see anything happening to help them, I have not amazing solutions and sadly, we seem to be at the peak of government indolence and societal heartlessness.

This cannot continue, our society is the poorer for the hungry and homeless that roam around us in the vaunted prosperity of this great land. No, we are not prosperous, we are poor.

Caught skipping with the girls again

Between Jim and the gym

Just after my birthday, I thought about it again, the need to keep fit and trim, knowing that the passing of time leaves changes one must have in control before it is too difficult to rein it in.

Having been away from home for weeks, I first had to update my swipe card access to the village gym which has everything including a swimming pool, a sauna and games room. The swimming I have to get to eventually, I have been too much of a log or a stone in water, there is no fun in that.

Knowing me, knowing shoes

Then, I needed to get the best shoes to cushion the effect of running because of lifelong shin splints. My research online yielded lots of information which boiled down to the best shoes that had fitting, quality or durability issues, not one stood out as the best and I was in information overload already.

A visit to the shopping mall with sports shops belonging to chains did not seem to offer much encouragement, I did not see anyone who appeared to have any useful knowledge about running shoes or trainers apart from their projecting the necessity to make a sale to the most gullible customer who dared to believe anything they said.

A size for a length

I took a walk down the main street and happened upon a small family shop that had one customer inside who had tried nothing less than seven pairs of shoes, the attendant, patient, understanding, explaining and serving. He seemed to know what he was talking about as I pulled up my references to guide me in decision making.

It became clear that my shoe size for normal shoes was probably two sizes smaller when trying on trainers, but when I slid my feet into Size 19 shoes, I could only presume something was wrong with quality control or the sweatshop makers of the shoes were making skis rather than shoes.

Eventually, I settled for a pair of the most comfortable and well-cushioned shoes, the fitting was so good, knowing how my feet have suffered through spurts of growth that shoes did not expand to, this is like shoe heaven.

Altogether, with Christmas approaching, I got discount on everything and probably paid 30% less along with free merchandise to boot. I was ready for the gym.

Skipping with the girls again

I then revived my gym membership with The Gym Group with the bundle that allows me the countrywide use of any gym in the group and we were on to an exercise program for the first four weeks and then the next four.

Down in Reading, I registered for an induction that went well before opting for a boot camp class. No gym equipment, just running, jumping and stretching over the course of 30 minutes. The setting reviving a childhood experience as I was the only male apart from the trainer in a group of 10.

My childhood fragility meant I was left skipping with the girls rather than playing football with the boys, it appeared I was back doing things with the girls again. Such is life at the gym.

Essential Snobbery 101: Devoid of Perception

He walked away from danger

This is a blog I started almost two months ago, but never got to finish because, like some blogs that I have posted before, the ideas might be pertinent, though the time and occasion are not ripe for publication.

A tweet I read this morning allows me the opportunity to finish this blog and hopefully get to post it. The tweet concerns a man who suggests he nearly got killed by a cop. He was returning from the gym, and he entered a shop to buy some things before he was accosted by the police with guns drawn, shouting at him to respond to some commands.

Here’s a story about how I nearly just got killed by this cop. pic.twitter.com/3IYZFM9Ggh

— Ziggy (@TheHipsterRebbe) January 3, 2018

He did not hear the commotion surrounding and directed at him because he had noise-cancelling headphones on; it was a matter of luck and fortitude, if not some restraint from the cops, that meant that he walked away from that encounter unharmed.

Shutting out the world

It transpired that the shop assistant had called the police about some criminal activity going on in the shop, and somehow that was read to be an armed robbery, with this man the supposed perpetrator. There is much to comment on about this, but that is of no particular concern to me.

My issue is with the headphones and noise-cancelling ones at that. The man says in a tweet, “Sometimes I like to shut the world out and listen to music.” That is the problem, you are in a public place, and you shut the world out, just imagine if he had walked into the shop and without that isolation bubble of his headphones blocking out the world, he might have seen and acknowledged the shopkeeper, who then, with that interaction, would not have suspected him of being up to no good.

I can comment on a lot of things in this thread, the one I am most concerned about is how headphones covering both ears limit your spatial awareness and sensory perception, not just in this instance but in many other situations. https://t.co/7U1bGeuaoX

— Akin Akíntáyọ̀ (@forakin) January 4, 2018

For all the commentary that followed his narrative, no one picked on the fact that the situation is as much his own fault in the first place, and it could then be that of others. When you shut off any of your working senses to external stimuli in the world around you, you place the responsibility on others either to look out for you or the anxiety on others to consider you a threat.

Devoid of perception of others

The same goes for people who ride their bicycles in the streets with headphones on so that they are unaware of the sounds and movements necessary for them to anticipate and avoid danger. It is just irresponsible at best and without doubt selfish and reckless.

The other day, I got on the train, but could not get to a free seat because a lady was standing in the way. Thrice, I said 'Excuse me, please', and she neither heard me nor budged; she was too engrossed in her mobile phone to be bothered or aware of her surroundings. It took me poking her with a finger for her to respond and reluctantly step out of the way for me to pass.

This is becoming the norm, a lack of awareness and the absence of perception that reduces our humanity from that of being social beings to the exemplar of being wild animals, uncivilised, inconsiderate, unconcerned and apathetic.

Just selfish and inconsiderate

Then, on a Sunday night, in a hotel full of business guests, the fire alarm went off at 4:20 AM, because some restless and noisy young men decided to smoke in non-smoking rooms. To cover the evidence, they broke the window and lied to the night concierge about the deed. I doubt they suffered any other consequence for waking everyone up in the hotel.

For them, nothing and no one else mattered in their selfish quest for self-satisfaction at the expense of everyone else. Sitting in a railway station waiting room, a passenger thinks it is socially responsible to play their music loud to the hearing of others, unafraid of being asked to behave.

In many cases, you cannot ask them to be considerate because that infuriates them, and it could lead to violent acts committed against you, as such a challenge to their antisocial behaviour is taken as an act of disrespect.

Why does it happen?

Meanwhile, another brings a can of alcoholic beverage onto the tram platform as we await the next one. He finishes the drink, drops the can to the floor and walks away as if it had nothing to do with him. This is despite the fact that there is a wastebasket 10 yards away. Then you imagine if everyone dropped their litter without any consideration, whether we would have anywhere to walk without running the gauntlet of refuse heaps.

Too many episodes and events I observe of carefree and careless people lacking in consideration or social skill, devoid of spatial awareness and the useful utility of their senses to do the right thing.

Unschooled, uncouth, untamed, uncultured to the point of stupid existence, upsetting everyone without any sense of offence caused or bad behaviour, you do wonder if it is a deliberate act of self-expression or just the absence of social graces, breeding, tutelage and much else.

In 2018, begin to write a better story of your life

Bidding 2017 a farewell

As we countdown the final hours of the year 2017, I have wondered about writing the obligatory year in review blog, but I seem to have covered most of that in my blog 10 days ago which marked my birthday.

It would appear I have not been as prolific in blogging this year and it has not been for the want of people, events, attitudes, ideas and subjects to write about, I guess I have been preoccupied with other issues and by that left this medium untended for long periods of time.

Whilst recognising that, I am making no resolutions or promises about blogging, though I hope to maintain the blog better in the fifteenth year of my writing and to celebrate that day, I hope to invite people to write for my blog in commemoration.

For all the turbulence 2017 presented me, I am grateful for all the opportunities that came my way and for the difficulties whilst tough simply pass on with the passage of time, toughening me up and giving me new stories to write about.

2018 may present new challenges and well as amazing opportunities, I am hopeful and expectant of wonderful and beautiful things to come in my personal and professional life.

To all my friends, acquaintances, readers and detractors, I wish you a wonderful and prosperous New Year, full of your wildest dreams coming true beyond anything you could have ever imagined or expected and in that, I hope you will come to tell your hair-raising stories to the world.

We are all story people, in 2018, begin to write a better story of your life.

Happy New Year!

Making merry this Christmas in church

The questions remain

I am not as religious as I used to be, many questions and challenges from my somewhat rational mind continue to come up against things that were once taken for granted but now need to be explained.

That, we can discuss at another time, I realise I have been to many churches governed by all sorts of interpretations that become the doctrines and tenets of association and fellowship. Some assemblies have been welcoming and others quite hostile. I have concluded that the modern-day leaders of the synagogues are the people who set the tone for how great the reception is for newcomers and those who decide to stay.

The many shapes of God

In one setting, God was an Old Testament deity, fierce and unearthly, ready to exact a terrible revenge for human infractions, in others it was the eschatology of the end-times filling with fear and foreboding about falling short on every account. Then the rituals that were no different from what would obtain at a shamanist, waters and baths, Psalms read until they had no more meaning than incantations to a deaf-blind and mute god.

There was love and well as carping shown from the same congregation consumed with the quest for dominion and leadership above all else, none of which suited my temperament.

All is safe here

I find my comfort within the Church of England, traditional Anglicanism with all its inclusiveness, though that cannot be said of the African side of this movement of people. The simple message of Christly love and the acceptance of others is still a tough message to accommodate by some who make up the clergy, they rail with abominable vitriol, you shudder.

In Manchester, I find the time to attend the Sung Eucharist, I am a confirmed Anglican of over 36 years, the solemnity and quiet is endearing, the individuality of purpose of worship in a congregation of like-minded people from all nations is beautiful to participate in.

To many, church still matters

For the Christmas Midnight Mass on the night into Christmas Day from Christmas Eve, the church was literally full, the choir in full song and there were times they sang in Latin and I did not even pretend to keep up. I guess I still take communion differently especially in the Winter, I would not drink from the cup but dip the bread in the wine.

This morning for the Christmas Day Sung Eucharist, we had the Bishop of Manchester as the president and it was quite humbling to see him shod with sandals. I was in a moment transported to a Christmas morning in Bethlehem. The incense of the night before, the spirituality of the morning after made for a rewarding time of worship.

May the joy of Christmas be with you and your kin. Merry Christmas.

Loving 52 and the stories that tell themselves

My miraculous existence

It is almost stranger than fiction that today marks my 52^nd birthday and this is for many reasons. It is my ninth birthday after cancer and I am still scarily within the timeframe of studies that suggest a precarious survival rate after the condition in which I was diagnosed.

Yet, I feel blessed that each year that I celebrate a birthday is one in which I can only be full of thankfulness and gratitude. Each birthday is for me very important, I mark each of them since 2009 as it would be my last, well aware of my vulnerabilities and still amazed by the grace, the favour and the resilience of the human body to recover where medicine seems to have reached the limits of its favourable interventions.

Emotional upheavals of thrills

It has been a long exhausting year which started with the lovingly sympathetic sharing of my story by my good friend Funmi Iyanda in forAkin on Bravery, Honesty and Thriving, a few days after, the love I thought I had was not ready for my love, it hurt.

Just imagine meeting your sister after 27 years, at The Terminal in Frankfurt, it has been a roller-coaster of emotional upheavals from the marriage of one sister, to the death of our baby sister to the rendezvous with my second sister.

In March, I made a radical career decision, one morning, I walked out of a job I had been doing for three years because I had endured enough of a new manager who over the 6 months of my reporting to him reduced me to nothing through disrespect, discourtesy and worse. He apparently did not last another 6 months after me, I neither applaud nor deride him.

Away but not astray

Since then, I have spent weeks away from home for work flung out to corners all around the United Kingdom, getting involved in challenging projects and meeting interesting people. I could not have planned how the year turned around for me that the greatest recommendation and support for the role I started in November came from one of the colleagues most affected by my departure in March.

I pinch myself at times wondering if any of it is real, considering August was a month where I literally had nothing and there was the sure and the steady rock of a friend like no other who kept me believing in tomorrow and myself. Kola Akinola, this is for you.

I am happy and thankful

In August too, my father found my story, his initial reaction was negative, then after an exchange of some long memories, there was reconciliation and acceptance, he remains one of the most reasonable people I have known in all my life. I have a mother too, that is all I can say for now.

To a point, I am very happy, I could be happier with someone to love and to share moments and experiences with, I need a man.

As I celebrate the number of years as there are full weeks in a year, even in my relapsed religious faith, I am thankful to God, grateful for friends, appreciative of moments, awed by experiences and looking forward to the opportunity to write again of another year of stories worth telling.

Thank you all for being here, being there and being near.

Opinion: Caught between the hijab and the Bar

Where religion should belong

Readers of my blog would be well aware of my many writings about religious expression and even more stridently of the need to send religion back to where it belongs from its intrusive and overbearing cacophonous disturbance in the public spaces to the private contemplation of the individual, to the heart and the conscience of the adherent and to the sequestration of the temples where people of similar beliefs can fellowship without encumbrance.

I feel strongly about the need for the separation of the state and religion, that it is our humanity in the expression of kindness, understanding, empathy and compassion that should reflect the consequence of having adopted any belief system as a religion.

Understanding constitutional protections

In many countries, the constitution protects religious expression and rarely dictates how adherents should choose to practice their religion, it, however, does not give untrammelled licence to any adherent to foist their belief system on another, even if the religion so adjures its adherents to proselytise and win converts.

My concern about religious expression in the public space is deep, the reason being when tenet is taken out of the ambit of society and given to a figure representing a deity, that construct makes the tenet unquestionable, unchallengeable and unaccountable. To the extent that the adherent might believe that their interpretation of their perspective of their deity figure is subject to no temporal scrutiny with the danger that zealotry leads to extremism and worse.

Why civil law must reign supreme

As I have said before, even between adherents of the same belief system, they cannot believe to the same intensity, be persuaded to the same duty of devotion and be equally compelled to act on unction without the prism of reason. It is important that this difference in religious perspectives is accounted for in civil society and also as long as we do not live in a theocracy, civil law must reign supreme in the public space.

It is with these foregoing arguments made that I categorically state that I have no sympathy for the principal whose call to the Nigerian Bar was deferred because she chose a form of religious dress over the formal and formally prescribed dress code for the ceremony of being called to the bar.

The Samaritan’s example was hardly religious

I do not believe that the choice of apparel is necessarily the deepest expression of religion or that it overrides our core humanity which when laid bare is nothing about beliefs but that we are just human. This is the standard set by the Samaritan who saw a fellow human being in distress having been robbed, beaten and wounded by the wayside.

The Samaritan made no enquiry of the victim’s beliefs before he tended to the victim and took the victim to an inn to be cared for, paying in advance for the treatment of the stranger. It was after the story was told that the Samaritan became the Good Samaritan until then he was just an ordinary, if not bloody Samaritan.

Fighting a cause rightly

Now, the principal on the matter of being called to the Nigerian Bar had opportunity and privilege that could have been better deployed, managed towards a reasonable goal, but we must look at the landscape in question.

The Body of Benches is the association legally constituted to call qualified people to the Bar, it is their sole responsibility and it is in no way delegated. They make the rules and have both the power to honour, to sanction and to discipline those to whom they have granted to become Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

There are a set of requirements in terms of qualifications and presentation that need to be met to be called to the Bar and in the ensuing ceremony, there are standards required of those so called to meet and respect. In those standards are explicitly listed dress codes that are formal, austere and broadly secular in nature. Being called to the Bar is no opportunity for conspicuous self-expression when formality and uniformity is the code.

Obviously, if any part of the code needs to be challenged, there are means by which the people concerned can bring their considerations to the organisation to which they are affiliated and through persuasion and discourse come to some agreement as to whether a change is necessary, or things should remain as they are.

Use your brains, not your brawn

In my view, the principal is schooled in the art of legal advocacy and persuasion, that skill could have been brought to bear on the matter of altering the dress code to accommodate different inclination from the norm, what an organisation like the Body of Benchers must not entertain is the precedence of people having licence without consequence to bend or break the rules because they feel so persuaded.

It would be uncharitable to opine that the principal is suddenly the most devoted of her belief system who has now received such compellingly new revelation that serves as a compulsory requirement for the Body of Benchers to supinely bow to, but that is the elephant in the room, the situation where someone has decided to challenge order with their interpretation of an unrelated belief system.

A perspective of equality before the law

If the Body of Benchers were to submit to this kind of expression without legal argument properly presented in a learned rather than in an activist zealot manner, it would create a recipe for chaos with no inclinations of what new demands might be chanced by others to put before the Body of Benchers.

Equality before the law has to mean something, just as the respect of the rules promotes that same equality. Once religious apparel is excused, what is to say the principal would not subject clients to extraneous hurdles of zealotry before representation?

There are many arguments to be made for and against this subject, a lawyer by training should make the right argument with case law, the principal was called to the Bar, but called to incite religious animus and be found at the front of a mob.

No one is stopping the principal from choosing what to wear, but when there is a dress code, that is the dress code.