Should you give homeless people money? Absolutely | Tamsen Courtenay

Gloucester city council’s poster depicting a faceless homeless person in a hoodie implies they are not worth our compassion. This is a travesty of human decency

Have the Tory members of Gloucester city council been busy reading George Orwell’s 1984 in their book club recently?

It seems someone read the bit at the back where Orwell describes how the political language, Newspeak – with its restricted grammar and limited vocabulary – is designed to distort how people think and control public attitudes. Posters were put up in Gloucester showing someone wearing a hoodie, under the headline of “Are you really helping homeless people?”, suggesting that people sleeping rough are not homeless, but “in accommodation, receiving support and benefits”. This sinister use of Newspeak tells the upstanding citizenry to stop feeling bad about not helping those in need, under the pretence of educating and informing. It even offered a subtle sense of justification that – weirdly – help isn’t really help at all. That’s not Newspeak, it’s doublespeak. Orwell was writing about a totalitarian state. We should be worried.

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Continue reading... January 17, 2018 at 10:04PM