If you think England is a country where everyone has their rights and all go to bed well fed, then you are delusional. Look around you on your way to school, coming back or even travelling anywhere you see the homeless all around you. How can you think that people are going to bed well fed when they where they don’t even have a bed let alone eating well? This quote doesn’t represent the country well and it certainly does not describe its people. The people who are scrutinised because of their race or how they speak. The people who have no home. The people who are living in poverty.

There are many people living in the UK who are homeless. For most of them it’s not their fault they are homeless. They might’ve been late to an appointment due to traffic or something against their power. One interviewee had turned up to his job interview but when the manager saw that he was black he sent him home without even interviewing him. Another turned up under 5 minutes late to the appointment due to heavy traffic but even then he wasn’t permitted to enter. How can we say that ‘Everyone has their rights’ when racism is still taking place in peoples everyday lives when we do nothing about it. In England we have about 5000 rough sleepers which has increased by 30% since the previous year which can only suggest that poverty is increasing. This is not good enough. We as citizens of England need to work together to fix this problem.

As we know the homeless are all around us. Steve ,a local farmer, is one of them. He used to be a normal working man like me or you but now he is on the streets. “That dreadful day, the day I lost my house, the day I lost my children.” Steve had to look after one of his three children who was ill and since he doesn’t own a phone he couldn’t call in sick. “The next day when I arrived I saw someone doing my job, I questioned the manager but he treated me as a customer. I knew from that point what had happened. I had lost my will to live.” Now Steve is living of a can of food a day while his three children got put in a foster home. This was all because of one missed day. How can this be fair?

As you know, there are many people who live in poverty, this also means their children do as well. Because they are children living in poverty, it can affect them way more than it affects adults. This is because adults have already gone through school and other childhood experiences. They are now in a position to go to work but as children living in poverty it can affect their lives in many ways. For example it can affect their sleep schedule as they might not have a heater so it will be too cold in the night, or they might not have any electricity so there won’t be no light for him to do anything through the day. Living in poverty can also affect the amount children eat and as they grow children need more food or when they grow up they will become weak meaning a limitations in a bunch of jobs that they’ve could’ve done. So if this is the case, why are we letting 3.7 million children live in poverty?

Thinking about it all, I am shocked. “Hope” is not the word to use in this situation, definitely not. “Shame”, yes that’s more like it, I felt ashamed even more than the homeless. I felt ashamed that as citizens of England we are still allowing humans, our brethren, to be homeless, I felt ashamed that we are still discriminating over race and the way people speak. I felt ashamed that as we are in the warmth of our homes eating, drinking there are still people who are struggling. I felt ashamed at how we go to sleep knowing that there are people who can’t. I felt ashamed at us.