The sounds of tweetering in the dovecotes for once drowned out the maniacal screeches of the seagulls to-day, as Britonians and Hove Actuallys waited for the local council - The Brighton and Hove City Council - to hand down its budget.
Oh, it'll be debated and argued about for weeks to come so I shan't bother with what's in the budget. What both delights and dismays are what isn't in the budget - for which everyone living on Benefits Street, Brighton, also gives 'umble thanks.
What DIDN'T go in was the inhumane idea of adding to the current paucity of public facilities by cutting out even more. Obviously made by people who are never more than a few minutes away from their cars - and home. But rousingly cheered by anyone who has ever got caught short walking home through Brighton and Hove to get to the other side...before you even get to the road home. It can be agonizing; and accounts for the pungent smells that assail one from various walls, gardens, gateways or from behind sheltered skips.
And the other one for which we are 'umbly grateful is that wiser heads prevailed at the idea of leaving even higher numbers of people with untreated mental illnesses to wander the streets. Makes one wonder if the people who seriously proposed this get out much? All they needed to do if they hadn't read the reports, recommendations, analyses about the desperate failure of the NHS to provide adequate measures in this area was simple. The could have spent an evening sitting outdoors at the White Rabbit or any pub which abuts a footpath and interacted with the passing parade of disturbed people who are very obviously off their meds.
Or, of course, they could have asked me. Having been bi-polar since I was 12, and after having broken down completely last year, I could indeed a tale unfold, had anyone thought to ask. It is, in fact still unfolding - so it's not too late, people.
But one thing which makes us all very thankful; living, as we do, by the grace and favour of the Council, is for partially reversing "the proposed cuts to support for homeless households and to the community grants programme."
Phew! So the Dickensian trope of 'to the workhouse wiv' 'em all' I talked of in a previous blog, has at least been partly excised. OK, so not many homeless families will be looked after - or will they all be looked after but very inadequately? Whichever, it's better than going with the Beadle option and getting shot of the lot of them, isn't it?
I've been homeless. And everything-less - after my place burnt down two years ago. Not a pair of knickers or a piece of technology to my name. And I thanked the gods and all the little fishes that I got through all that thanks to the Council. But I am one person. The proposal on the table, remember, wanted to CUT the amount given to families. So yeah, it's absolutely wonderful that they are going to make smaller cuts than whoever the cape-swirling, curly-moustachioed person was who first proposed marginalising even more children.
And finally, we give fervent thanks that old people won't have to walk themselves to the hospital after all. They've been allowed a means of conveyance. That's a bit of a relief - because quite a few of us were wondering how to balance the old party on the crossbar of a bicycle AND hold the oxygen mask to their wrinkled old face at the same time as we peddled them up that gut-hardening hill to either of the hospitals.
Exercised our drug addled brains exceedingly, that one did.
But no - Saint John's will still be able to cart off the lucky ones, it seems, though whether this will be on a kind of lottery basis, or dependant on the number of crosses one can score on an official chart which determines eligibility, is not yet disclosed.
So we'll leave it to everyone else to argue the toss about all that appeared in the final budget. We are just happy for what didn't appear. We're always grateful when someone sticks up for us.
We'd be even more grateful if we were ever allowed to stick up for ourselves, though.
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