Coronavirus

Are you holding any Bitcoin? I'm tempted to get on it in a small way, but I don't like punting on something I don't really understand.

 

My friend and I (mainly him) invested a bit a few years back in Bitcoin, tbh I had no idea what he was doing with the money until recently. He moved it into several different ‘coins’ as the price of Bitcoin fluctuated but it always ended up back in Bitcoin over the course of the bull market. He’s moved almost everything out now and I think it’s mostly in other trades, and that’s again not my specialty so I’ll leave him to it.

I do read some of the white papers for these crypto technologies though, if anything it shows how out of touch with technology I’ve become as I have no ****ing idea what most of it means

There are several ways to work crypto I believe, and one of them is essentially gambling on penny stocks that can be massively profitable in the short term but also carries the most risk. Long term investment in good projects (white papers are available on their contract pages) will always be the safest bet.

 

Not often I agree with you, but the interaction means more to them than the cash. Back before I worked for myself, I worked in an office, and there was a homeless person sleeping rough nearby. Most mornings when he was there I would buy him a bacon sarnie and a cup of tea. Although he was grateful for the food he was so pleased to have our 5 minute chat about things in general.

 

Thing is it makes them feel human rather than us chuck for at them like we would any other animal we feel sorry for.

Many various types on streets for varying reason's..............shocking that it still exists in a country who makes up one of the G7 countries capable of radically changing poverty into a past tense word

 

Seems this isn't going down to well

 

In fairness, it's always going to exist in some form as the majority are there through fault of their own. Pre pandemic at least anyway.

 

Around a quarter of the homeless in London are working, let that sink in.

During the pandemic the wealth of our billionaires has increased by circa £250BN, meanwhile our Govt are subsiding poverty wages with benefits and food banks are now embedded in our communities. That’s the society we’ve ended up with and it’s fundamentally wrong. The ‘levelling up’ needs to be the gaping chasm between the super rich and working class.

 

I've regularly had long chats with homeless folk










mind you i was working for the DHSS so it often consisted of pointing out that no they couldn't have any more dosh

 

'Fault'? Have you any idea how many of the homeless have mental and physical illnesses?

 

Yeah, fault. If you've been given lots of chances at social housing / hostels and ****ed them all up cos you'd rather drink pisswater and smoke brown then it's your fault that you're homeless frankly.

And yes of course I'm aware of that, I interacted with dozens of homeless during my own spell of it. Not sure what your point is? Plenty of non homeless people suffer with physical and mental problems too.

 

I'm not saying that's everyone btw, but my experience in Soton is that the majority are in the position because of decisions they've made.

As I alluded too it may well be different since covid like. But most people here were sound with people becoming homeless as we had to lockdown iirc.

 

I agree. 'SOME' of the homeless are homeless for a reason such as drug abuse or alcohol, self abuse. Even when you get them off the street and enable them to support themselves, they may still go out and steal to get their fix. That then can end up seeing them exchanging their new roof over their head, for a more permanent one of a prison cell. Vicious cycle of life for some. Another subject, people often like to play politics with.

 

Yeah it's sad to see mate. You also get people who are so used to it that they struggle to live a normal life with housing and utility bills to pay etc. which is where the hostels come in but then you're grouping lots of addicts together (certain hostels down here will only take those addicted to light and dark) which presents it's own problems. No easy answer unfortunately.

A bit similar to those who spend decades in prison becoming institutionalised on release and struggling to live a normal life.

 

In the U.K. we should have enough funding/accommodation to ensure people don’t have to be homeless.

 

I would say that is self-evident: some would say it's playing politics to point out that is self-evident.

 

In principle I totally agree. It sadly won't stop some still getting banged up again though.

Trouble is then people get intolerant and say how many chances should we give them, because this is my taxes, then what do you do. Not me saying that, but you can be damn sure some will think like that and probably do.

If I spunked my own house up on gambling, drinking and drugs, you could rightly say, you made yourself homeless, but then I could turn round and say, but the government should have enough funding/accommodation to ensure people don’t have to be homeless.

Just to play devils advocate so to speak.

 

We probably do have enough funding, most good registered providers run at a huge profit and require no government funding, but we as a country cannot build fast enough, as there is a massive shortage of land in affordable areas and an even bigger shortage in labour and materials.

You could argue that investors have harvested a lot of housing stock in the U.K. for profit, but privately built developers can’t be held responsible for not building affordable homes for communities when they have no obligation to outside of their planning conditions.

 

I’ll rephrase that... there’s a massive shortage of affordable land in areas where we need to house people.

There’s plenty of land in affordable towns where people don’t want to live for various reasons.

 

I think there is different angles regarding the homeless, I'm hastening to say, my view was coming from the single male, who has abused himself for which there can be many reasons. I wasn't meaning families and the lack of social housing connected to that.

 

First lockdown was good for homeless people as nearly all were found accommodation and in my town certainly some must have found permanent following on as there are deffo less now than pre pandemic though a lot of the old faces are back in doorways .