Drugs abuse requiring Needles

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Richard
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Drugs abuse requiring Needles

Postby Richard » Thu Nov 02, 2017 9:06 pm

It appears that there are only a few Police patrolling in Hastings these days (some naturally blame the Tory Cuts) and whether this is the reason for the clear evidence of widespread hard drug abuse, i.e. drugs requiring needles, or not, it is worrying that the general consensus of opinion is that the Police are not much concerned anyway, they turn a blind eye, whereas in the past they would have been keen to act.
Along St Helens Road I now hear of neighbours reporting needles and spoons being found in their garden, inside front porches.
Needles have been found in some quantity in Alexandra Park recently, near areas where children play.
Other areas are reporting much worse scenario's.
Drugs mean money and neighbours are reporting petty theft, on an opportunistic level, with houses being entered and money taken.
It is quite clear that the Police tolerate begging on the streets, near retail outlets and all of the shopkeepers I have spoken with are very much against begging as they suggest that good money can be made for very little effort.
Whilst it may be claimed that begging is better than stealing, it is still uncertain what the money obtained (by stealing or begging) is being used to fund a drug habit or is a matter of basic survival.
To be sure, people who are homeless need support from the council, yet if such people are not from this area they will be told they can't be helped and they should go back to where they are registered in order to obtain benefits.
I am told that some street beggars here have a safe home to go back to.
And so the vicious cycle continues, with neither Police nor the council services willing to offer a solution.
I am not totally against people using drugs, if they are addicted they need supplies but if they have to steal or do drugs on the street we surely need to provide facilities where they can be supplied in a safe environment which reduces the need to steal to fund their habit?

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seahermit
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Re: Drugs abuse requiring Needles

Postby seahermit » Fri Nov 03, 2017 12:08 pm

There are virtually no police walking the streets in Hastings, talking to people, judging the mood, assessing potential problems. All of that is seen as old-fashioned, went out along with PC Plod. Also, a culture has grown up of nobody, council, police, politicians, accepting responsibility but instead blaming others or lack of money. As a result, there seems to be an attitude of turning a blind eye/giving up. The real crime figures were always higher than the official statistics (people don't report a lot of things because they know nothing will result) but this year even the official petty crime figures have shot up - burglaries, knife crime etc.

As fas as beggars are concerned, I know of several beggars/buskers who have perfectly good flats, there used to be one who always carried a bedroll under his arm - he had a flat in Hastings! There are some regular pitches in Hastings where at times beggars leave piles of sleeping bags, holdalls etc. - if you look carefully, you might sometimes spot one of the beggars parting with his winnings in the pub!

I did once or twice take pity on a girl who was asking for money - she looked terrible and was obviously desperate to find the cash for a "fix". But I think only a few beggars are genuine and of course a bit of cash even then doesn't solve the problem, just helps them get by.

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Richard
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Re: Drugs abuse requiring Needles

Postby Richard » Sat Nov 04, 2017 6:45 pm

Thanks for your reply seahermit, I really agree, officialdom just passes the buck at every opportunity, aided by the gov't ever-tightening the rules
The attitude to begging (there are junkies who beg in the old town) and 'soft' drugs, like cannabis, is changing and a more tolerant attitude is prevalent, although posession of hard drugs is still a criminal offence and dealing in all classes of drugs carries a heavier penalty. Still the Police seem to hate getting involved, they are not even much good more generally, often looking for an excuse in order not to get involved, for example just saying "it's a civil matter' because they think they are the gate-keepers taking a view that some criminal activity is hard to prove and therefore not worth persuing.
The Police allegedly don't have the resources to catch druggies anyway and a lot of evidence is needed and the council can't always help the homeless on the streets and they have huge waiting lists for the general public, with priority being given i.e. where young children are involved.
For those who are, for instance, being made homeless, they will only help at all once the client has, for example, been evicted with a court letter in evidence, (certainly not helpful for vagrants without an address), then they may be put into 'bed & breakfast style accomodation unless a place in an HMO becomes available.

It seems that 'clients' have to meet certain rules or be excluded and fall through the gaps in the system.
The same for being unemployed, which is bad enough, our job-centres now operating the equivalent of 'open-prisons' using uniformed 'guards' to relay 'walkie-talkie' style messages ahead for admission to interrogation cubicles.
You can't easily sign on without an address and bank account and will soon be punished for not applying for a ridiculous number of jobs each week and or refusing to do the equivalent of 'community service' in the form of voluntary work.

We live in hope!

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seahermit
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Re: Drugs abuse requiring Needles

Postby seahermit » Mon Nov 06, 2017 1:38 am

There may well be a case to be made out for more tolerance towards soft-drug users - the trouble is that this attitude has been adopted for the wrong reasons. Not because it necessarily helps the situation but because of lack of resources, the need to save time in order to concentrate on the more serious hard-drug industry etc. But in my view it is completely short-sighted (like a lot of things that politicians initiate) - apart from the fact that soft-drug use often leads on to hard drugs, more tolerance has encouraged society's general attitude that some drug-taking and other substance abuse (as well as other irresponsible behaviour like smoking, living on junk food?) is ok really (as long as it doesn't harm others). Individuals are no longer encouraged to take responsibility for their own actions and to try to live in in a self-disciplined way.

Sounds like an OAP's rant - but look at the massive health issues like obesity which are threatening to overwhelm the NHS in the next few years, quite apart from the great surge in use of both soft and hard drugs fuelled by the huge drug imports which the authorities are almost certainly not getting on top of.

There are complex reasons why the police are reluctant to get involved with begging, soft drugs or a range of minor offences (e.g. offences by children and whatever happened to the much-proclaimed clampdown on street drinking?), but one major influence is the bureaucracy - the police have to fill in reports even for stopping and questioning someone in the street and I was told that, if they arrest a minor, they have to fill in 40 forms which are passed on to a range of different police/social services/child protection destinations. The whole system has become completely unwieldy and of course the available resources cannot match the demands being made upon them.

The unemployment benefit system is another bureaucratic disaster area! Causes a great deal of extra hardship to people who are already struggling - it has become very repressive and insensitive to individual needs and problems, I know personally of a friend who has serious mental and physical issues but he gets no help or support whatsoever. His problems are ignored and instead he is pressured to keep hunting for endless low-paid (and for him over-stressful) jobs which he is not well enough to cope with and consequently he rarely keeps a job for more than a few weeks.

Politicians do nothing to improve the situation because they have no personal experience of the way in which many of their constituents actually have to live their lives. Nothing in the world changes! You will gather that I am not optimistic ...

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Richard
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Re: Drugs abuse requiring Needles

Postby Richard » Mon Nov 06, 2017 9:43 pm

I suspect general 'recreational' drug use is almost impossible to manage and the attitude by 'the police' is 'if they want to kill themselves, let them'.
Also, it takes quite clear undisputable evidence to get a jury to agree on a sufficient majority to obtain a conviction for dealing in hard drugs; however, possession alone does carry a fixed penalty.
Whether or not soft-drug use leads to hard drug use is debatable but it is often the case that it is the hard drug dealing that is involved with serious crime, gangs, violence, racketeering etcetera, so this should be taken seriously. To add to problems police evidence is commonly ridiculed by the legal team representing the accused and even the judge can cast doubt on what evidence the police bring to court.
There are not any police patrolling the streets on foot these days, probably because the Police Federation dislike the Tory gov't and likely want to make their point about alleged cuts in numbers by denying community policing in order to discredit the gov't.

If obesity through over-eating on cheap 'junk food' could be cut out the NHS would be laughing, it is maddening to see so many fat people waddling about, without a care in the world, and then you hear some say that we should vote Labour, because people are starving!
On the back of my bus ticket recently there were adverts for £1 burger and chips at a well-known chain in town. Supermarkets reduce the price of food near its sell-by date and pound shops are all over the place. Are people really starving when they have numerous kids, dogs, i-phones and more?
Obesity is a very serious problem, encouraged by supermarkets too, they place trays of doughnuts and pastries by the entrance at Morrisson. Iceland don't help with their basement-price ranges.
Well, we all like fish & chips but they are more of an expensive luxury to eat out, once in a while.
I agree we are becoming less caring, and more greedy, in many ways.
The EU was seen as a godsend by industry, able to get hold of cheap labour 'on-tap' but now that is stalled and Brexit is being blamed for a general tanking of the economy.
We can't even provide decent council housing so the private sector buys up all the cheap stock of homes and rents them out, fuelling the markets, and with short-term contracts people can be made homeless when the landlord sees a better opportunity by making improvements, denied for the tenure and selling on the rental proceeds.

Would a labour government be able to raise sufficient money to keep all of its promises?
Certainly idealistic youth (what do they know?) will believe them with relish but the problem is that labour can't balance the books and are desperate to take all of the perceived 'short-fall' off the rich in order to service the poor, and the public sector and fund the NHS which they erroneously say is being privatised.
They seem to forget what Tony Blair did with his NHS public-private partnerships, amazing hypocricy, we are still paying massively, yet people just ignore it.
Our youth are being hypnotised by Corbyn's promise of plenty for all, and his promise to 'save' the NHS.
Wasn't it Blair who introduced the public private partnerships which led to massive debt and he also increased the GP's pay and stopped their weekend working, overloading A&E as a consequence.
GP's can now retire early on fat pension bloated by their final pay-scale.
Labour's ideas to increase the pay of public sector workers, is another promise which may lead to higher inflation. Gordon Brown increased their numbers by many thousands, another vote-rigger!
The Tories currently have a very weak government and are hardly ideal but they do know how to handle money better than Corbyn's smooth-talking patter about how everything will great under labour.
And as for Dianne Abbot, when that jellyfish tries to encompass us with her slippery tentacles and flannel I just give up altogether.

I too am feeling like an OAP too, after you've seen a lot you get very cynical.

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seahermit
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Re: Drugs abuse requiring Needles

Postby seahermit » Tue Nov 07, 2017 3:12 pm

I think I agree with more or less everything you have said! I'm not only the only one - everyone I talk to is very cynical about the current state of politics and frustrated that most ordinary people feel powerless to initiate any changes to things.

It is not fashionable for politicians to stick their necks out, be controversial maybe and take a hard line based on strong principles, there is a lot of short-sightedness and individual pursuit of power or influence. But a strong line and some straight honest talking are needed in order to change society's love-affair with crap food, unhealthy living habits and ubiquitous drugs. And to combat organised crime. Politicians seem afraid to confront the real issues (or maybe they have just lost the plot) and I feel it is pretty sad the way the country has gone down in some ways. Young people have grown up of course not knowing any other environment but my memories are very much of people being much more sociable and helpful to one another, co-operating with the police and other authorities - and crimes like mugging, violent assaults and killing policemen were absolutely unheard of. (I'm getting older!).

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seahermit
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Re: Drugs abuse requiring Needles

Postby seahermit » Tue Nov 07, 2017 3:14 pm

P.S. The image of Dianne Abbot as a tentacled jellyfish gave me the biggest laugh of the week!

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Richard
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Re: Drugs abuse requiring Needles

Postby Richard » Tue Nov 07, 2017 8:27 pm

MJ, I think you have it summed up:

"Politicians seem afraid to confront the real issues (or maybe they have just lost the plot)"

So true! We have few if any 'top-drawer' politicians nowadays, they are all seen to be self-seeking and shallow. looking to castigate others, especially those on the opposition.
In fact they do not appear to know what the real issues are, locked as they are into trying to get other politicians into trouble.
Many have little knowledge of British history and will produce answers and arguments that suit their own agenda. They are mostly unfit for purpose and are seen to engage in expense fiddles and sexual impropriety pecadillo's, to name but a few.
We seem to have a shake-out along similar lines every few years, one wonders why they want to get into the public arena in the first place, it's not as if power gives them a right to misbehave behind a cloak of of invisibility, they are in the lime-light and must know this, so why on earth do they 'chance it'?
We hear them debate on programmes like 'Question Time' and there are those adept at making intellectual arguments but really it's all word-play and without substance.
In the News headlines we see much posturing and telling tales in order to discredit the opposition, I think they behave like so many children at times.
Can they actually keep their 'manifesto' promises, I believe not, they think it a game of brinkmanship, which leaves us all so much the poorer.
Politicians seem to reflect the 'soaps' with their base-level behaviour and nasty way of letting it all hang out in public.
I also blame, wholeheartedly, the Media who fan the flames massively, trying to encourage 'political football' over issues in the News and what does half the country do? They turn onto soaps and watch 'Corrie' and East Enders for more of the same.
I do wonder what happened to intelligent life on earth, never mind intelligent life somewhere in the Galaxy, if it all boils down to mucky behaviour, or is it that the politicians just reflect the weak behavior of people who are inadequate in the first place.
They all seem to be aiming at public displays of poor moral fibre, befitting the lowest common denominator and yet lamentably, many avidly relish the spectacle!
It is a great shame on us all.

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seahermit
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Re: Drugs abuse requiring Needles

Postby seahermit » Thu Nov 09, 2017 1:31 am

I can't disagree with any of that. Politics both nationally and locally has become very self-seeking, hypocritical and cynical - the trouble is that that deters anybody worthwhile who has some principles from even considering a political career, so the spiral goes on down.

Moving slightly off-topic, you may be interested in a very good article in the Hastings Online Times, interview with a former Labour councillor. Her remarks are short but bitingly to the point. I am not sure how to post a link, but this will help you to find the piece.



Hastings Harbour: Penny Beale’s views

Hastings Harbour: Penny Beale’s views on the marina proposal – and other matters. HOT’s Chandra Masoliver talks with former Labour Councillor Penny Beale about her background in the fishing community, her experience in local government and the Hastings Harbour Proposal. Penny has taken a keen interest in all aspects of local affairs for many years and founded the Penny Beale Memorial Fund in honour of her daughter, also named Penny, who was brutally murdered by her partner in November 2001.

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Richard
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Re: Drugs abuse requiring Needles

Postby Richard » Thu Nov 09, 2017 3:56 pm

Thanks MJ,

I found this link and will have a read asap:

http://hastingsonlinetimes.co.uk/hot-to ... ales-views


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