Handsworth noir
A typical local scene. I stopped to take a photo as I was cycling and strolling through Handsworth, where I live. I was with my grandson, Oliver. A friend asks of this photo of fly-tipping reported to Birmingham City Council - yet again. "Why do they do this?" "Good question, Catherine. I assume that many of these people have problems. You could say 'Don't we all?'. But I wonder if this needs to be understood as a symptom of enduring invasive embedded poverty - physical and, even more, psychological, breeding mental states so far outside my experience that I struggle, without success, to appreciate.
Some dumping is crime, an illegal business, the motive - profit; the perpetrator agreeing to dispose of rubbish for a client, possibly a landlord changing tenancies who may even have paid an agent the disposal fee at Birmingham City Council's Holford Drive tip. The agent pockets the 'fee' and dumps the waste, or else the 'owner' of the rubbish has simply given a 'white van man' the wink that says 'lose it'.
But there's dumping that's symptomatic of something else. In our area of the inner suburbs of the city, there are many young people, usually in private accommodation, too often with dodgy rental contracts or none at all, in work but on night shift, some working with zero hour contracts (surveys say this is the face of contemporary poverty) plus people on and off 'the game', trapped in routinely abusive relationships and debt, even being trafficked, working under the radar for dodgy cash and - as likely committing unpaid, sometimes illegal, quid pro quos to service their debt. Not a few of the people we come across see themselves as 'outlaws'. One friend used the word the other day - 'unadopted', 'out' of any semblance of community while unlike - say - Gypsies, or gang-members or professional criminals, not belonging to any counter-society to give identity, companionship, esteem. The availability of drugs - alcohol, heroin, crack, different forms of cannabis - is a recipe for mental illness, and the apathy and alienation that separates too many of our neighbours from community engagement and active citizenship. Litter, the appearance of the street and the inside and outside of houses, are not things that figure in this part of our population. Too many are deafened by their circumstances, used to being verbally abused, immune to their neighbours' opinions. www.facebook.com/groups/334430036631024/
Handsworth noir
A typical local scene. I stopped to take a photo as I was cycling and strolling through Handsworth, where I live. I was with my grandson, Oliver. A friend asks of this photo of fly-tipping reported to Birmingham City Council - yet again. "Why do they do this?" "Good question, Catherine. I assume that many of these people have problems. You could say 'Don't we all?'. But I wonder if this needs to be understood as a symptom of enduring invasive embedded poverty - physical and, even more, psychological, breeding mental states so far outside my experience that I struggle, without success, to appreciate.
Some dumping is crime, an illegal business, the motive - profit; the perpetrator agreeing to dispose of rubbish for a client, possibly a landlord changing tenancies who may even have paid an agent the disposal fee at Birmingham City Council's Holford Drive tip. The agent pockets the 'fee' and dumps the waste, or else the 'owner' of the rubbish has simply given a 'white van man' the wink that says 'lose it'.
But there's dumping that's symptomatic of something else. In our area of the inner suburbs of the city, there are many young people, usually in private accommodation, too often with dodgy rental contracts or none at all, in work but on night shift, some working with zero hour contracts (surveys say this is the face of contemporary poverty) plus people on and off 'the game', trapped in routinely abusive relationships and debt, even being trafficked, working under the radar for dodgy cash and - as likely committing unpaid, sometimes illegal, quid pro quos to service their debt. Not a few of the people we come across see themselves as 'outlaws'. One friend used the word the other day - 'unadopted', 'out' of any semblance of community while unlike - say - Gypsies, or gang-members or professional criminals, not belonging to any counter-society to give identity, companionship, esteem. The availability of drugs - alcohol, heroin, crack, different forms of cannabis - is a recipe for mental illness, and the apathy and alienation that separates too many of our neighbours from community engagement and active citizenship. Litter, the appearance of the street and the inside and outside of houses, are not things that figure in this part of our population. Too many are deafened by their circumstances, used to being verbally abused, immune to their neighbours' opinions. www.facebook.com/groups/334430036631024/