Damp interlude before heatwave returns
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BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Man on housing wait list in Worcestershire sleeping in car
A man says he has had to sleep in a car for five months after being repeatedly turned down for a council Piggott, 58, said he contacted Wychavon District Council, Worcestershire, in December to inform them that he was expecting to be made homeless on 12 January this he said the local authority failed to offer him immediate support and had turned down his weekly bids for an affordable one-bedroom council said it had entered into negotiations with Mr Piggott for private rented housing, including an offer of support with rent and deposit. "I feel lower than ever and it feels like no-one is helping," Mr Piggott said. "I feel like I've done everything yet get no help back."My three kids used to stay with me when I had a caravan, now they can't and I miss them deeply." The 58-year-old said he had to leave his last private rental due to falling into arrears when he lost his marriage had also broken down, he said, and he had been unable to secure work due to stress and other mental health resulted in him spending days and nights in his car, parked in laybys across the county."I'm on Universal Credit now which is about £300 a month," he said."I can't afford regular take-out food. I did get a food voucher but I have no means to cook… so I'm eating things like crisps. I've lost two stone since January." According to Government Housing statistics, Wychavon District Council had 2,992 households on its property waiting list in number has increased by about 140 % since council said the latest figure was 2, to data, Mr Piggott is one of 1,375 people waiting for a one-bedroom said three social housing properties had been offered but in each case, they had been unaffordable considering his lack of income."The system is horrible. How should a 58-year-old have to live like this?" he asked."Recently, with the heat, living in a car has been tough.. I am not intentionally homeless, I do want somewhere to live." Rough sleepers have been supported locally by the Caring for Communities and People (CCP) has been focusing support on helping people apply for social housing, ensuring they are on the correct band and presenting officials with up-to-date personal Green, project manager for homelessness prevention, said there were few one-bedroom properties available."It can be that something has been missed in the housing application or overlooked and that the banding is not correct and also circumstances can change significantly," she explained."One-bed properties are quite few and far between and shared occupation is the way councils prefer single homeless people to go."Wychavon District Council would not comment further on Mr Piggott's case, but stressed it was supporting him to apply for private Taylor, director of communities and housing, said: "Rising rents and the cost of living are driving exceptional demand for housing support, but our new early intervention approach is reducing rough sleeping. There's more to do, and we're committed to helping every customer."After speaking to the BBC, Mr Piggott, who is also a former caretaker with Worcestershire County Council, has also been signposted to a number of homelessness organisations around Evesham for advice and support. Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
I spoke for my brother when he was too afraid to answer — now, he speaks in melodies, and I have learned to listen
When my brother was small, he barely spoke, and certainly never around strangers. He could speak, there was no developmental delay, he just mostly chose not to. We were close in age, under two years apart, and – out in the world – I spoke for him. This is, perhaps, a common dynamic: chatty big sister, quiet little brother. I was sometimes reprimanded by well-meaning strangers. 'Stop talking over your brother,' they'd chide. 'I asked him a question.' And I would quieten down, shamed. My brother would say nothing, but entreat me with frightened eyes to step in. As a small child, I felt my brother spoke without language. I heard his voice in my head, and I believed I was his translator. To me, this felt natural. It's easy to scoff – the delusions of childhood – but as toddlers we read everything around us. Through immersion in family, we acquire language. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Maybe, my brother's non verbal cues felt like language to me. So much of what is communicated between people involves attunement, a subtle reading of one another's emotional states, micro-expressions and non verbal cues. Perhaps I just hadn't learned to distinguish. Attuned, I read him as if he was speaking. We'd always been close, but in adolescence our world was engulfed by grief. We lost my sister and father to suicide, six years apart, while we staggered towards adulthood. I became quieter, but my brother was almost mute. During this time, he was learning guitar, and his music rose to fill the space. The language of loss, the language of yearning. So plaintive, so expressive. There are other ways to speak. Unlike me, my brother doesn't remember much of our childhood. Trauma has erased it, the way it sometimes seems to. He has no memory of our sister, who we lost when he was 10. In this, we are opposites. For years now I have been writing about what happened in my family – in memoir, in fiction, in essays. Each memory glistens like a pearl on a string. Sometimes, I mourn that he has lost the memory of how adored he was. Baby brother, slant-eyed-smiler, boy of few words. Always the easiest of humans to love. When he read my memoir, Staying, he said, 'You've given me back my childhood'. I'm not so deluded that I don't see that I'd only given him mine. Nowadays, my brother is a man who leaves space for silence. If you want to hear him speak you must learn to be quiet. I have taught myself how to bite my tongue. And, there is always the music. Joy, wonder, melancholy, sadness, drama, so much drama. Tension, release, surprise, awe. My brother's music moves through many moods. In song, his vocabulary is vast, his story unique. All instrumental, it speaks of many influences. The sounds of our childhood. Dylan, Tom Waits, Randy Newman, Neil Young, CSNY, Joe Cocker, Tim Buckley, Roy Harper, Bruce Springsteen, Billie Holiday, early pre-disco Bee Gees, The Beatles, Bob Marley, early Paul Kelly, Paul Simon, Judy Garland, John Lennon, Prince, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, Sade, and Sting. Listening, you can catch hints of all this, plus the intensity of an inner world rarely expressed verbally. It's alive, it's pulsing. All the history, all the feeling. In books, I gave him my childhood. In music, he gives me his. Here I am, still talking for him! I hear those well-meaning adults from our childhood: 'I asked him a question.' Go! Go listen to his songs! Jessie Cole is the author of four books, including the memoirs Staying and Desire, A Reckoning. Jacob Cole is a guitarist. His latest album Slow Gold is out now.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Welfare is the monster destroying our once-great institutions
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