Tears

[MiniChris]

I like the way he uses the motion blur to emphasis that the world is rushing past her in ignorance.You see this in any City/Town centre. Well thought out. It did not bring me to tears but I think we are becoming more hardened to sort of scene in the UK. If the government continues with its current policies our next generation, unless they earn more than £100k per annum, could well face this in retirement (unless they accept poverty line standards of living just to allow them to retire)

Chris, I always force myself to think of it as walking past myself. You miss the point, when you have nothing a pack of ciggies or a nicked mobile are he luxuries you provide as best you can. Poor populations go a bundle on the everyday luxuries. They do not use them as a status symbol as we would they use them to remind themselves the are living.

I only missed your perception, but the reality from which I speak comes from two friends in my Mini club, both of whom are on differing police department forces and from my own committments. In one case, this last Christmas, they each picked up a number of homeless or street beggars to get them to shelters because of the cold. In more than one instance, several of them pulled out large wads of cash explaining to the officers not only were they not indigent, but what they were doing was a legitimate form of work...

In San Francisco, last year, I was panhandled to on three or four different occasions, and rather rudely, I might add by people whom later that day I saw eating in restaurants I couldn't afford. I am certainly not saying there aren't legitimate poor people out among us, nor that they should be ignored because of a few bad apples in the lot, I am just saying this kind of behavior builds the kind of distrust which leads to the social conditions which produce photographs like this.

I work with two "soup kitchens" in town for those who won't go to the shelters. I photograph them so there is at least a record of their existance. On way too many occasions, these photogrpahs have been used to identify remains found in the local wooded areas. I don't do this service to help the local police force, but to give these people a sense of self-identity.

The point, Steve, I think we all miss is we are all slowly succumbing to or at the very least, are numbing ourselves to the reality that such a state of "poorness" is not all that far from our own realities. I don't know of anyone in my lot of friends who hasn't been slammed far up the wall of financial reality in the last three years.

I have no answers, and problably fewer questions than I did last week. That scares me almost as the thought of having to hold a tin cup to beg for alms.

[Wirefox]

Yes I get your point Chris. It is difficult to come to terms with how this can happen in the societies we live in. It may be more so in the UK because we are used to a social security as a right. In the next few years the voters will allow this to disappear because it only affects what the newspapers would believe are the spongers of society. Little do they know that the papers are in the pockets of the government and a great many of us will inevitably be having our job descriptions adjusted to spongers....only there will be no relief

[MiniChris]

I don't want you or anyone else to think me heartless....and I hate that this is seemingly happening rather universally...I am not overly sure that we're not all just a step away from the dole line.
Be well and keep up the spirit of living.