I am not sure if you have seen for yourself the symptoms or the tell-tale signs of a town/city in decline in a social and infrastructure capacity? I for one hope you have not been fortunate enough to experience it. There are however from growing indications in media and experience that this is becoming an increasingly worrying issue, myself from a personal perspective (living in a town in the South East London, UK area) to other prominent cities of across the western world. There appears, in some instances to have been grave negligence involved in relation to the funding and maintenance of citizen’s environments and their ability to sustain prosperity for themselves?
From my viewpoint and seeing this with my own eyes, I come from a place that 20 years ago was bustling for small business owners with opportunity aplenty to trade their wares to the local community. Areas and activities for residents were commonplace and the local authorities were openly engaged to overseeing this continue. There were less visible signs of physical and social decay, in London particularly there is a huge issue in relation to knife crime (which is inextricably linked to drug money and gangs). Also now there is clear signals of poverty among local residents, it is not uncommon to see empty alcohol on the streets and lighter fuel cans. This adds to people’s behaviour becoming more erratic as a consequence.
London as a whole has an increasing problem with homelessness and the destitute, from research on the London Poverty Profile website 7,580 people were recorded sleeping rough in 2014/2015. There are no recent figures which I was able to draw upon but the sceptic in me thinks the 14/15 figures may be manipulated. What the 2017 figure is at present? Well I think I could make a rational estimation and say it was fairly higher. Our homelessness problem is also compounded by a synthetic drug epidemic, one particular drug called ‘spice’ is leaving people incapacitated and putting their lives in serious danger. It is described as ‘having the same physical additive qualities of heroin and the psychological addictive values of crack’ plus being cheaper than either to purchase.
London has a dilemma, the town where I live in London has a dilemma, more than the UK government is willing to acknowledge to its electorate and it is my contention this is affecting far further afield than just the island I reside. Any research in relation to this subject brings up areas such as Detroit, Ferguson and Baltimore in the USA which have experienced social unrest and financial issues in their states. Major European cities such as Athens, the country of Greece as a whole from the Austerity measures imposed on them from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund; wreaking havoc on the population leaving youth unemployment at around 50%. The same can be said for Caracas and the country of Venezuela, as Socialist governments and programs have caused the nation’s currency (the Bolivar) to hyper inflate to astronomic proportions inciting regular and mass riots.
It is a worrying trend and more and more a recurring theme, the nucleus of the problem stems from money and lack thereof, however I believe countries and their governments have dealt with its finances and citizenry irresponsibly. Money was taken away from the taxpayer and the taxpayers local towns upkeep by the money we have been responsible to pay back to prop up the financial system since the financial crash of 2008. I see it interlinked that the more distress I see from the human being I pass in the street to the cracked paving slab can be tied to money being shaved off budgets to pay a debt the public was not responsible for. The less a nation has the less it can invest in all areas, from the perspective of business and innovation, the UK like other countries also have a headache with their welfare system. Now, figures suggest UK unemployment is around 4/5% and again like the aforementioned homelessness figures I believe them to be skewed. Any average Joe walking around the cities of the UK will tell you that is not the case (plus I see from looking into employment posting websites 300/400 people are applying for 1 Barista job in the capital, that just does not compute to a jobless 5%?). The longer the hurdle of a large percentage of unemployment remains the more you create a culture of people giving up hope to further better themselves. This is a horrific problem as it is affecting the future potential and prosperity for the young and middle aged who should be the cogs for a country moving forward.
There is a seismic debt problem for Western countries, the quantitative easing and 0% interest rates that have become part and parcel of trying to tackle the problem (so they say) has left some people either completely dependent on the state or so out of pocket they are turning to temporary fixes that lead to spiralling personal states and a broken environment.
The Candor Quill.
Credit to http://plancksconstant.org for image