A row has erupted this week after images of floor spikes outside Southwark housing development spread across social media sites. Housing developers and corporations started the deployment of anti-human spikes in an effort to deter homeless people from sleeping in their doorways.
Not only do homeless people (who are victims of a wide-ranging list of social ills) have to deal with inner demons and the general ill feelings towards them by the wider society, they now have to face the obvious fact that sections of our society now view them as pests, as vermin, no different to a pigeon or any other unwanted animal. The news has spread quickly through the social media, with local residents going to check for themselves whether or not these reports are accurate. Russia Today has done a good piece collating some of the many comments on this latest phenomena.
The real question is who, how and why did this come to be seen as a good idea for developing and implementing and why did builders complete the work? Time and again I have referenced the fact that ‘following orders’ has been ruled as being unjustifiable. Men and women of good concise cannot and must not blindly follow orders. Every law and policy instigated by our governments and employers are set only to deal with symptoms and do nothing to address root causes of issues. I cannot really begin to articulate the scope of my disdain for these anti-human devices, but would like to think that it is something that is shared by the majority and not the minority. The way our system is currently set up, defaults and bankruptcy are built into it as a matter of course and, with the continuous bombardment and controlled demolition of the welfare state, eviction and homeless are now a large feature too.
Anti human devices are not a new craze by any means, anyone who has missed their spot on a park bench and ended up with a handle jammed in their rectum will attest to that, but the spikes being used by billion pound corporations represent a shift in the way in which we are viewed as people. This situation is rife across corporations and political parties on both sides of the political spectrum. We should be asking ourselves why, in the 21st century as the 6th richest nation in the world, do we have people sleeping rough, when we have over 600,000 empty houses according to Homes from Empty Homes statistics from 2013? We should be asking why 3.5 million children in the UK face being in ‘absolute poverty’ by the year 2020? This is a figure that changes repeatedly in the mainstream media according to the government spin of the day, it is almost reminiscent of George Orwell’s classic 1984, whereby news is edited and re-edited to fit the argument that day.
There are no official figures of course for the number of homeless people in the UK because they are not able to be officially recorded, but it would not be too much a stretch to presume that the number is below that of the number of empty premises we have, including industrial units, throughout the country. Perhaps a solution to the ‘blight’ of homeless people on the door fronts of Tesco etc could be for them to use some of those billion pounds of profit that they earn every year from the public being put to use on building shelters for these people to go and providing them with treatment and rehabilitation, rather than invest in anti-human devices? The Customer Care department for Tesco contacted me on a social media platform to say that the anti homeless spikes were being used to deter people from sitting, smoking and drinking outside their premises and to prevent them from intimidating their customers as they entered. Surely that is what the security they employ and the local police service is for? Similarly, what is to deter theses ‘vagrants’ from doing the same whilst standing?
I’m calling bullshit on the official stories for why these anti human devices are springing up, the simple matter is that we are being labelled as vermin and treated as such. A great British Value.
Red Pill Medium 