Dichotomy

I spent last week in London, on one of those combined business and pleasure jaunts. I’m a fairly regular visitor, and have been for over a decade now. I’m lucky to be a member of an Services club, and enjoy the familiarity of staying at the same place on every visit. Compared to my quiet, island home, London is a mad, whirling, assault on the senses and can be quite a challenge to someone harbouring anxiety traits.

I’m pretty comfortable there these days. Staying in the same neighbourhood helps, and getting out on foot, rather than using cabs and the Tube shrinks the place considerably. Most places are walk-able, and when you do so you get a proper sense of the place. It’s actually bloody scary.

The first thing that strikes you is the scale of the homeless problem. In fact, it isn’t a problem, it’s a crisis. For this, one of the richest cities in the world to have so many people in visible poverty is a national embarrassment. The website www.streetsoflondon.org reports that nearly 9000 people were seen sleeping rough by outreach workers during 2018/19. That is up a staggering 350% since 2005! On any given night, there will be over 1200 stuck in doorways, or in underpasses trying to survive. I always save up my coffee vouchers and give them to people, or spare a couple of quid to those I stop to talk to. I always want to find out their story if I can, and how the hell they ended up there? But moreso, I want to understand how the hell society lets this happen? It discomforts me.

I found myself on New Bond Street one afternoon. The place is littered with luxury limousines, discharging Prada and Chanel-clad beautiful people wanting to buy luxury brands. Every store seems to be very sparsely patronised, perhaps not helped by the 240 pounds ex-Spetznatz heavy in the Hugo Boss suit on the door. (Why is it that you never see them fighting off robbery attempts? It is usually Auntie Mildred swinging her handbag at some scooter rider armed with an axe that gets the headline!) But despite the fact that I’m lucky enough to be able to afford the Rolex in the window, I wouldn’t step foot in one store down there. They discomfort me.

It’s no different with luxury car dealers on Park Lane, and as a confirmed petrol head, that is quite a toughie. Similarly, fine dining restaurants. Whereas having been in the family restaurant business at one point I can fully appreciate the value in well-sourced and exquisitely created cuisine, you won’t find many Michelin star restaurants on my tally list or my bucket list. Here, my discomfort comes in the form of the surroundings. And maybe, with the jewellers and high end boutiques, the car dealers and the pretentious eateries, it’s that awful juxtaposition with someone being on the bones of their arse, right outside their door. This isn’t an attack on wealth, or the super-rich, but the gap seems to get wider every time I am in town.

This is the dichotomy. And it genuinely makes me anxious that I can’t see a way to solve it. Is this what we all signed up to? A world where even in a place where wealth is abundant, there is such an imbalance? This isn’t Aleppo, or Mogadishu. This is London. It is easy for us all to be overwhelmed by the scale of this issue, and therefore to compartmentalise it and push it to the back of our minds. If we all keep doing that, then will things ever get any better?

That is a long preamble to the setting of the world of work, but the same dynamic exists within companies. You will see the haves, and have nots there too. The latter tend to be those who perhaps don’t have the bullshit skills, or who are a little bit different. Those who see the world through an alternative filter, or maybe unbeknown to us, are themselves just one payslip away from being homeless themselves.We all have a responsibility to try and level the playing field, whether at a parochial level, or globally. It is in our individual power, and gift, to lift those who are struggling nearer to the centreline.

So the next time you see someone, who you can tell by your own conscience needs some help, what are you going to do?

Derek Flint Cert.Ed., MCIPR