Why we as New Zealanders must be forced to see our beggars on our streets
As the Poverty explosion spreads beyond Auckland to the regional centres, locals demand that ‘something must be done’ about the beggars…
Napier retailers demand action as city’s beggars ‘getting worse’
Shop workers were also feeling intimidated and unsafe early in the morning and late at night.
“We had hoped this would come to its natural conclusion at the end of the [summer] tourist season when the weather got cold but unfortunately it appears pretty much the exact opposite has happened and it’s getting worse,” Barnes said.
St John area manager Brendan Hutchinson told the meeting the ambulance service was increasingly called on to treat drugged-up members of the group who were often high on synthetic cannabis to the point of being comatose.
The calls were stretching St John’s resources with the service often having to send two ambulances to the group’s main congregating point – Clive Square – because the beggars were aggressive or unconscious.
An Auckland Councillor is “frothing at the mouth” about sprinkler systems designed to deter people from congregating near CBD buildings at night.
The homeless and their advocates say they are designed to keep rough sleepers away by spraying them with water.
Newshub understands the drenching systems have been installed by at least three businesses and a school in the CBD, where about 177 people sleep rough, according to the 2016 Auckland City Street Count.
One of those businesses is private school ACG Senior College. A sign on its porch reads: “This area is now fitted with an automatic washing system 8pm to 6am. Please keep clear.”
…I say that as New Zealander’s, we must be forced to see the poverty on our streets. The failure of National underfunding health by $2.3Billion so the rich can get more tax cuts must be seen by those wanting to sweep the inequality away with their sight.
Those beggars you see on the street in larger and larger numbers? They are the failures of the system you are profiting from. You must be forced to see them.
We must be forced to see the squalor, we must be forced to see our free market failures, those who are wilfully blind to the injustice of the system must have that injustice thrust into their polite clean faces every day they go about their business.
The “automatic washing system” is a little too close to” ethnic cleansing” to my mind
+100 …good post!…where is the msm on this?
Good article, Martyn. Keep it up.
Great Jonathon Pie video as well…. I just feel sorry for the long suffering ‘ Tim’… but seriously , however…
Marrying what the Jonathon Pie vid with what you have underlined completes the circle however. This poverty ,…. this ongoing poverty ,… is a DIRECT RESULT of 33 years of theft. Theft in the form of neo liberalism. Social theft. The kind of social theft that sees homeless in the streets akin to any large inner city area of the USA.
This NOT the prosperous NZ it was pre 1984 . And the longer it goes on, the worse it will get. Increment by increment , little by little ,..the cancer will spread.
Sadly, many of the 90 000 youth not in work or training are in grave danger of this outcome in their future (providing they dodge our dreadful suicide stats!!)
We all need to do more. Take food/ gifts to those providing relief.
Protest to the Minister of Housing by sending letters and emails, go to your local politician. Demand to know what he/she is doing to help these people.
Ask what steps are in place at your local council meetings. Make noises.
Make suggestions.
In some cities they now have free showers and clothes washing facilities for the homeless. What is your local group doing? Find out how you can help. I personally have poor health now, but I donate.
Yes, how long before the showers are used to spray a deterrent gas.. you know, just a touch pungent to give the layabouts a message!
I was in the CBD the other week, I hardly go there these days, I dislike the whole ‘atmosphere’ there.
So I walked past that Gucci shop and some of these other new luxury goods shops on Queen St, which have obviously opened there to take advantage of the increasing numbers of cruise ship tourists.
Two big gorilla type bullies stood at the door of the Gucci Shop, security that is. I could not believe what has become of Auckland now, it is getting as bad as the down side of all other big, failed cities all over the globe.
Wait until we have proper gang warfares here, not Black Power and Co, but the mafia like ones, imported from various places across the world, where they are already established.
Yet Goff and also the government Ministers in Wellington keep singing the mantra of “growth”, and more “growth”, and they all take it for normal and granted, that we will soon have two and a half or even three million people in Auckland, in a few decades.
Where all the water, power and so forth is supposed to come from, that is not being talked about.
So prepare for even more beggars, and proper slums, worse than the few slum landlord boarding houses we already have, we will have slums like in Latin America, and Africa and Asia, down the track.
The only think I can add it there where beggars in PN under the last National government and beggars in PN under this government (and not under any other government) so the solution to beggars nation-wide is get National out of government!