Tamworth doesn’t have a homelessness problem. We’ve covered this before. One Councillor it seems didn’t get the memo, and strangely enough it’s the same one featured in that article. Yep, Councillor Natalie Statham, lackey to our MP is banging the drum yet again for a problem that simply doesn’t exist in Tamworth in reality, by hosting a homelessness summit at the Sacred Heart Church on the 14th November.
Thank you to the person who sent this in to us in what has been a dry spell for us on the article front, leading a certain individual in the Mailbag to believe we’d given up. Au contraire dear reader, we just aren’t in the slightest bit interested in scraping the barrel to make a post just for the sake of it, if it bores us then it would bore you. We have though reminded the research wench that her shares in this site will dive in value if she doesn’t come up with the goods. As it happens the email urchin hauled in this catch from an anonymous reader, so he’s having an extra helping of gruel this evening.
So what’s this homelessness summit all about then, in an email to Councillors inviting them all along, Statham had this to say:
The aim of the summit is for all organisations and stakeholders to share their recent experiences with homelessness in and around
Tamworth. The summit will install cooperative working between all partners across the town, and help us identify what homelessness in Tamworth currently looks like.Organisations will each have 10-15-minute slots to discuss with the group their experiences and feelings around
homelessness in Tamworth,This will be a space for us to hear from each other on how we are tackling homelessness, and the concerns we may have.
All sounds very heartwarming, fuzzy and practical doesn’t it. Until you realise the answers to solving homelessness are already out there and fairly simple in concept, not so easy in practice, hence homelessness still happens in many forms. We are sure Councillor Statham would argue the toss that it’s not just rough sleepers that are a problem, but people couch surfing with friends or relatives.
Either way, the solution boils down to there being a lack of housing, rented (private and social) or to buy, and overall, a distinct lack of, (surprise!) money. That’s only going to get worse with the tax increases the good old Labour party are going to introduce in their first budshit bludgeon budget. It’s very funny by the way, to watch the BBC News comments section and see people who were rabidly against the Tories now eating their words as if they weren’t warned.
So there it is Councillor Statham, no summit needed, just get your pals in the Government to stop taking money away from everyone, especially the pensioners, and your local colleagues from spaffing a fortune on reopening decrepit old Council buildings. Maybe buy some more houses for social rent like the local Tories actually did to actually try and ease the problem. They even tried to build some new houses themselves on defunct garage sites.
Unfortunately this ‘summit’ is just going to waste everyone’s time, especially that of those organisations and people who are already well versed and dealing with social issues in Tamworth on the daily. They don’t need Statham to get them all in a church and have a Kumbaya moment (have we mentioned the Labour party are heavy on the religion). Doubtless they will turn up anyway because the Council pays a lot of them to do work for them on subjects such as this. With the Labour party now in charge of the budget, in Tamworth and nationally, they’ll probably be worried there won’t be any money left for them to actually do something rather than just talk about it.
There’s plenty of problems in Tamworth, other than problems that aren’t actually problems, that members of the controlling Labour group could be getting their teeth in to. This ‘summit’ is just another chance to generate yet more hot air to make Social Justice warrior Statham look as if she’s doing something useful. Shame some of that hot air can’t be captured to keep the pensioners warm eh.
