2y ago

Suella Braverman says rough sleeping is ‘lifestyle choice’

The home secretary, Suella Braverman, has described rough sleeping as a “lifestyle choice” while defending her decision to restrict the use of tents by homeless people on the streets of Britain.

According to Whitehall insiders, Braverman plans to crack down on tents that cause a nuisance in urban areas such as high streets – amid growing numbers of rough sleepers and what the government considers a rise in antisocial behaviour.

The home secretary has also proposed the introduction of a civil offence, which could lead to charities being fined if they provide homeless people with tents, the Financial Times reported.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Braverman defended her proposals, saying: “The British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.

“Unless we step in now to stop this, British cities will go the way of places in the US like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where weak policies have led to an explosion of crime, drug-taking, and squalor.

96 comments

The UK has one of the most vile governments in the industrialized world.
- Yeah. The fact that so many people are ok with this mask off cruelty is astonishing. No one sees the connection between the cost of living and sky high rents leading to an increase in homelessness. No one sees until they are on the streets themselves.
  
  It's a worldwide phenomenon unfortunately.
  A bunch of populist shite riling up the masses against people that have it even worse than them, to take away any and all focus from the people that are actually causing all these issues.
  
  Most people are NOT ok with this. The problem is we have no way to remove the vile cow until a GE.
  Sunak is so weak he has to keep her in place to shore up support anyone else would have got rid of her already.
  
  People are just too stupid for democracy I´m afraid.
  
  We're not.... Don't expect this woman to be in charge at the next election ..
- I dunno, don't forget Netanyahu and his judicial reforms. Not even to speak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
  I think UK is, for better or for worse, fairly middle of the pack, and it's the world that is seeing a rising tide of authoritarianism and reactionary positions. Heavily enabled by instantaneous digital communication, which essentially turned each individual authoritarian faction in each individual society into something of a broader, more cooperative front.
  Thus giving them the numbers to start getting shit done in certain places where they have an advantage, and pressing to create advantage in places where they don't have it yet.
  Most of the folks swept up in it are just along for the ride. A little mistaken idea over here, a little willful ignorance over there, and normal, good people can get convinced they need to take radical actions against, basically, themselves.
Right, and it just so happens that more and more people are "choosing" to be homeless since the cost of living has deepened (never mind over a decade of Tory enforced austerity that came before it), and despite the fact that hundreds of rough sleepers die every year, mostly due to freezing temperatures and/or related illness..
It's also a classic Tory projection move how in California the problem is due to policy, but where she makes the policy, it's anything but.. 🙄
- San Diego passed a camping ban a few months ago. We are challenging it in court, but they're doing the same hateful shit out here too.
many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice
Not so much a dog whistle, as a dog fog horn.
Hateful woman. Each time I think her policies can’t get any more evil she outdoes herself.
“Genuinely homeless” lol
- Par for the course with this woman and her party. She wants to send refugees off to Rwanda and believes many asylum seekers who claim asylum under grounds of persecution (IE being gay where you could be executed) are bullshitting and so should be sent back to be killed.
  
  Versus people who are recreationally homeless i guess?
  Keep in mind that it´s simply a lifestyle choice, nothing more.
- "If you see a homeless person with a funny sign, they probably haven't been homeless very long." - Chris Rock
Cunt.
Just in case anyone is concerned, Bretherman is insane and has absolutely no idea or indeed any interest in what the "British people" want. And her and her useless excuse for a government are just biding their time until they get unceremoniously kicked out of office.
She has repeatedly claimed that "the people" are interested in immigration despite the fact that polling data shows that most people couldn't give a flying rats backside about immigration.
The only people who care about immigration are the sort of people who get upset if somebody with slightly different coloured skin walks past them in the street. Or they hear previously unknown language that they suspect might be foreign or possibly Welsh. I.e morons
- Unfortunately for everyone large swaths of the British public support her and her insane racist bullshit and will no doubt support this because they are lead poisoned narcissistic scum
Let me guess, she's a Tory.
- She’s as Tory as you can get
- You misspelled cunt. It's ok, i won't hold it against you.
  
  "They're the same picture."
  
  Cunts are my favourite animals! Your derogatory language is an insult to them.
- They call it the Nasty Party for a reason.
  Its a line that worked well for blair, i don't know why Starmer doesn't make use of it, it's apt.
Wow, this heifer really has zero concern for possible repercussions to her actions or her words.
Shall the Brits return to the days of the houses that lent you a rope to drape over for the night before you go back to your wandering homelessness? At least a rope to drape over at night wouldn’t be as much of an eyesore as a tent, right?!?
People should just start camping out on her property by the thousands just on principle.
- Sleeping on clotheslines was the source of the term "hungover".
  Lifestyle choice, see?
  
  Well in that case being hungover is practically a British institution.
  The whole point of drinking is to do it to excess. If you can remember your name at the end of a night out it's a failure.
The British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people,
Great! So we will build tons of public housing, right?
many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.
Oh- Oh... Oh....................
Cunt. To go after people that have already lost everything. She probably wants to freeze them to death this winter. Instead of being human and helping them.
This fucking pariah of an mp needs to be taken out of office now.
Guillotines, what we need are Guillotines.
Blatant cruelty and using xenophobia to mask it. Thats some vile shit.
I'm not up to date with the online discussion of British politics. Is Cruella Braverman a thing already or do we need to make it happen?
- That and "Suella de Ville". And she's fully deserving of either title. I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but where other politicians I dislike feel like they're either doing the wrong things for the right reasons, or they're selfish, corrupt or incompetent, Braverman feels like she gets off on the cruelty and is a genuinely evil person.
- Definitely already a thing, she is a real piece of work..
  If you want to ruin your weekend, hers is a rabbit hole to go down..
So fine already poor people to make them less poor? And how do you decide "lifestyle" poor? This is exactly the stuff the GOP is spreading and the want "camps" that would be fenced in areas for tent cities way outside the cities that the poors could live in
The world is literally being run by a bunch of psychopaths.
- Run by and voted for by.
  
  Psychopaths have a way to coerce or convince people to take their side. They must have control over others. It's all about power and doing whatever it takes to get it. Lie, cheat, gaslight, play the victim, whatever.
- One ones ruthless enough to win I guess. And only the worst yearn for power enough to go to the trouble.
- Yes. Literally the only truly evil senior British politician I have come across in my lifetime.
  There are plenty of politicians in my lifetime who I have disagreed with quite severely on certain things - Thatcher, Blair, Corbyn, May, for example. But in each of their cases I honestly believe they were pursuing a course that they believed would improve the lot of the British people and bring about a better, fairer and more prosperous society - I might have disagreed with them (in some cases a lot!) about how to get there, but I never doubted their hearts were ultimately in the right place. Boris Johnson was the first who left me thinking he had no redeeming qualities - selfish and egotistical, heart very much in the wrong place. Boris was only in it for Boris.
  But Suella is something else. Suella isn't in it for the public good, but Suella isn't in it for Suella either. Suella is in it to hurt people. That's her overwhelming motivating goal in life and politics. She gets off on undisguised cruelty. She is genuinely evil.
  
  My idea is that this kind of people are deliberately chosen by their superiors to act as "lightning rods" for all kinds of unpopular measures.
  Then they often fade away into relative obscurity and reappear in a next election cycle, as needed.
  After they leave politics, they inevitably end up running a board of directors or a committee or a think tank somewhere...
Tories are conservative monarchists, what do you expect? They hate "peasants", especially those on the lowest social ladder.
“The British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice."
"Oh you're homeless? Name the top three ways to cook beans over a hobo campfire so I know you're not a poser." - Suella Braverman
- "No true homeless..."
Love how there's only one 'Lifestyle Choice' available for billions of people on God's Green Earth: Work or Die.
The US cities have those issues largely because they priced out ordinary people and have a climate survivable outside all year.
Where is the compassion.
Wow. She sounds like a real shit human being.
- If she pulls herself up and really tries hard at itself improvement she might elevate herself to being a really shit human being.
Fascists will be Fascist...
Did y'all really need the Second Coming of Maggie?
- I think calling her the "second coming of Maggie" really undersells Braverman's cruelty and capacity for evil. I think Thatcher really fucked up this country, and we're still feeling the effects of some of her policies to this day. But Thatcher did genuinely think she was doing things for the right reasons - that she was making tough but necessary decisions.
  Braverman seems to get off on the cruelty. A lot of her policies and ideas seem cruel for the sake of cruelty. There are plenty of politicians I've disagreed with and disliked, but they've all tended to feel like it's either because they were doing what I'd consider to be the wrong things for the right reasons (ie, they thought it would help, different approaches to what I'd want but with positive outcomes in mind, etc) or they've just been selfish, corrupt or idiotic. Braverman is a whole different thing entirely. The purpose of her policies is often the cruelty, with no tangible benefits that even she can list. She's a genuinely evil person.
  
  Thatcher did not care about your country, just the ultra rich.
Is "rough sleeping" a UK term, or is that as tone-deaf as it sounds to my American sensibilities?
- Stand UK term. Used by charities and the voluntary sector as well as government. Not particularly tone deaf. What is your preferred term?
  
  I dunno, but I feel like even "homeless" is a more-encompassing term, since it affects more than just your sleep situation. I feel like "rough sleeping" is really downplaying what homelessness entails.
  
  Americans call it homelessness, sleeping on the street, and homeless camping. To us it would sound like a euphemism. Just a confusion in language though.
- Sounds insensitive alright and I’m not American.
- I'm Canadian and the phrase "sleeping rough" is definitely in use here. Many homeless people sleep in shelters or cars or someone else's place, if they have the option. "Sleeping rough" is useful for differentiating those who are sleeping in bus shelters, tents, etc. I most frequently hear it used by people advocating for the homeless.
c/noahgettheboat
Do you think maybe the problem isn't regional? Do you think maybe comparing it to the cities in the United States only highlights the fact that this is a societal issue not a regional issue? What the fuck is actually wrong with people.
"Let them eat cake."
I feel like she has her head so far up her ass that she can taste her hair.
- Interesting that you can spot this here but double down supporting the exact same type of behavior from Israel.
  
  Exactly what I thought when I saw the username. Methinks the fascist doth protest too much.
  For anyone unaware - that is the guy who's spamming every comment section with a comment explaining how he considers all 2.3 million Gazans (including the 40% of whom are children under 14) to be equally responsible for Hamas's 7 October attacks, and therefore deserving of what they get.
which could lead to charities being fined if they provide homeless people with tents
Oooweee, can't wait to see that get shot down for first amendment violations.
Oh wait...
I live in San Francisco. Here, we have a large homeless population that comprises a number of subcategories. One of the major subgroups could be reasonably described as recreationally or perhaps volitionally homeless; they prefer life on the streets and the possibility of moments of fleeting drugged joy, to a grinding, dull, depersonalized life in state-provided shelter. All of them, however, the result of neoliberal and reactionary political, economic, educational, and carceral policies that allowed people to become disconnected and disaffected to the point where they rocked up on SF’s streets for its mild environs, lax legal system, and plentiful meth and fenty.
- What you describe as "voluntary" homelessness sounds to me like the devastating physiological effects of drug addiction.
  
  Sure, and lack of opportunity, support systems, affordable housing, mental and physical health services, etc.
  Most hard drug addiction has its roots in systemic failure(s).
- It sounds like the feds are starting to step things up on the drug enforcement side. I'm curious to see what happens with that.
  Also in the bay area and have walked past a number of situating that aren't normalized elsewhere (e.g. People bent over at the waist passed out, people passed out/blissed on the side of a major sidewalk (into embarcadero), etc.)
  I like a balance approach to enforcement and ensuring shelter for everyone. A few things, here, aren't working.
  All of that said, I'll go into SF any ol' day and have a good, safe time. I'll drive or I'll take Bart. There's a lot of undeserved SF hate. It isn't perfect, but it sure is good to be in.
  
  There is a feral quality to SF that is starting to remind me of NYC in the late-‘70s and ‘80s.
  You can see the establishment of other ways of being that assume zero input or oversight from organized systems. For example, the red-light running is legion and increasing. I regularly pop out for a single errand on my bike and witness three different drivers blowing through solid red lights.

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