484 PEOPLE DIED HOMELESS IN THE UK SO FAR THIS YEAR,

BUT DO YOU CARE.

December 18th, 2018: By Daniel K Swan

484 is over twice as many as have died from terrorism across all of Western Europe in the last 8 years.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to wake up on the streets of the world's richest city, home to more multi-millionaires than any other city on Earth, without money in your pocket or a place to stay.

"It's s**t".

Derryn, 26 years old, has been on the streets of London for over a year now.

I've known Derryn for just over a year. We met in Trafalgar square, where I do my street art. A few months ago I asked Derryn if he would let me tell his story to whoever has ears to hear it. He agreed, so here it is.

If you're lucky, you'll wake up to sirens blaring. If you're unlucky, you'll wake up to a prod from a Police Officer, security guard, cleaner, or other person sleeping on the streets.

If you're unlucky you will find yourself fighting for your life and the few belongs that you have.most wisely chosen to sleep on top of whilst out on the streets.

If you're like one of the 484 this year, you won't wake up at all.

"One of the cleaners would turn up early, 4am, to clean the windows on the building we was under. He was a lovely bloke. Used to go get us a coffee first thing and then he'd ask us to leave as he handed the coffee. I really appreciated that".

In London, you'll most likely wake up cold and wet. In winter, very cold and very wet. You have the dirt from the city all over your skin, and the sweat of a sleeping bag to clean off. Where do you go?

The U.K Govt spent, collectively, over the past 10 years at least £1.2Bn to "help the homeless" in the U.K.

Do you know how many public showers there are in London, where over half the U.K's homeless population are believed to be?

None.

Not one.

The best one available, and a very well kept secret, is in Kings Cross train station.

The cost to use it? £5 each time. Oh, but remember to buy your own shampoo and soap. That's just the water and cost to clean your towel.

The same station however, will blare out through the microphone:

"Vagrants are operating in this area, vagrancy is not allowed"

If the banning notices, enforced by BTP, are breached then the offender will be liable for arrest.

The move comes after rail users and staff raised concerns about ‘nuisance beggars and vagrants’.

The comments come after one commuter claimed he was ‘pounced on’ by three ‘aggressive beggars’ as he tried to leave the station earlier this week.

"We know that rail users and staff are concerned about nuisance beggars and vagrants - begging is an offence and we take the concerns of rail users extremely seriously.” - A spokesman for British Transport Police.

What is British Transport Police? Why do these entities even have spokemen? Because they can't speak. They can't feel. They can't empathize. They can't forgive. They can't suffer. They can't feel pain. They can't feel hunger. They can't feel the cold. They can't feel isolated. They can't feel ashamed. They are imaginary entities. They exist entirely in our minds, on our paper, and in our laws.

As of September 2017, BTP had a workforce of 3,028 police the 11th largest police force in the United Kingdom overall.

Around 95% of BTP's funding comes from the train operating companies.

"all the power and privileges of a constable" when on tracks or patrolling the property of the railway companies.

So there is a private police force, not funded by the British people, with the legal power to arrest and detain the british public, yet totally independent of british public funding and thus unaccountable to the british public, yet the british public are accountable to them. Is this an issue?

Cost to install clean public showers across London so that the homeless don't look like "vagabonds" and offend the eyesight of some railway staff: much less than the £600m per year spent on policing.

There is an accute issue of people on the streets begging, and perceieved waste of resources, which causes distress to some. Meanwhile, the U.K govt privatised the National Rail service, costing XBn, then it failed, then they paid £YBn to get it back, then they invested £50Bn back in.

Boris Spent £xM on anti protest vehicles.

Turn your eye a different way. Wake up to the circle of theft being built all around you.

There used to be a man lived.

I have spent the past four years on and off with the homeless, the extreme poor, of the United Kingdom and the United States.

My first real experience with the homeless was in America, with a man who became on of my best friends, Alan.

The bureau for investigative journalism released the figures, after an intensive 12 month period recording every homeless death they could across the country, since there has never been an official record of the number of people dying homeless each year, they created x website to detail the story of each individual.

"They want to see how homeless people, like beg for money, basically, and I said 'I don't beg for money'".

"I only do it if I have to do it, not because I want to. It's embarrassing".

"Until you've been on the streets yourself, you will never know what it's like".

Can I get this biometric card, and does it give me citizenship?

Whitfield added that he can't afford to pay for a biometric residence permit or for legal assistance.

Adam says: "If you arrived before 1973, and can show you have not lost your status (through two or more years' absence or criminality), you will be able to obtain a Biometric Residence Permit confirming there is no time limit on your stay.

"However, settlement/indefinite leave to remain is not the same as citizenship.

"If you have held indefinite leave to remain for over 12 months, and have lived legally in the UK for over five years, or three if you are married to a British citizen, and can meet the life and language requirements, amongst other requirements, you should be able to apply to become British.

"This will cost you £1,330 for the application, and the fee is retained if the application is refused."

"People won't understand until they do a day in my shoes."

"There is enough for all we need, but not for all our greed" - Some Guy

The fact that we have allowed society to get to this juncture is a manifestation of our individual denial of responsibility toward ourselves and each other. The truth is, we don't seek truth. We don't live by truth. We don't believe in truth.

Here is truth.

Every human life is eternal, both in the temporal sense and the infinite sense.

What do I mean?

I mean that everyone experiences the fullness of life they are able to experience, no more, no less. This experience, is all that we have. It is, therefore, the eternity of out experience as a being. There are as many eternities as there are individual lives. We are eternal. Life is eternal. Your life is eternal, no matter how long it lasts, it is eternity.

What, therefore, will your eternity be filled with. What will you take with you. What knowledge of self, what experience of beauty, of love, of peace, of joy, of service, of gratitude. Will you come to know yourself as the spiritual children of life itself?

Every major religion teaches fundamentally the same things: don't do bad things, don't think bad things, seek what is good, do what is good, be honest, grow in love, learn to forgive, always be humble. If you don't do these things, you'll end up in a bad place. Welcome to that place.

The other side of those things, is the pathway to a place that has recently come to be known as hell, but formerly known as the underworld or to various different societies as x,y,z.

This is a place of lovelessness, a place of deciet, a place where one feels greater than the other, where hatred reigns over forgiveness, where understanding is in very short supply, and greed is strangling the whole world. The further we persist in these things, the deeper into their manifestation we go. Eventually, as all the dystopian films have been trying to warn us, we would inevitably fall into a bottomless pit. This is not conjecture. This is real, hard, physical truth. This is the spiritual law of the universe, under which we are all bound, until we each become freed by love and truth. When you serve love and truth, truth and love serve you. You go willingly to your death, so that you may bring others to life, and by so doing hopefully change the course of a lost future. Such beings don't just give us what they have, they give us what they are, and they are the way to life. Freedom from all the chains of selfishness, and the gateway to a place of the infinitely selfless self. A spiritual being who picks up his life and lays it down at will. One who can take any form, me or you, Earth or star, ocean or wave, and awaits our awakening or actively invites us toward it. This being is The One, the first and last, the eternal spirit, whom we call our God.

Compare that to the £500M spent on aid for the people of Yemen/Syria.

How can people help someone on the streets?

"Get him in accommodation or a hostel that's as simple as it gets".

What is the worst thing you've experienced recently on the streets?

"Being glassed and having to have surgery on my little finger. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger".

There are a lot of us out here now really struggling with this world, and we're tired of all the ways it's doing us wrong. That strain is only going to get greater, if we don't work together and try to do something about it.

This is my idea, the first part anyway. If you're not going to support it, I hope you have a better one.

Derryn, 26 years old, has been on the streets of London for over a year now.

I've known Derryn for just over a year. We met in Trafalgar square, where I do my street art. A few months ago I asked Derryn if he would let me tell his story to whoever has ears to hear it. He agreed, so here it is.

"Every major religion teaches fundamentally the same things: don't do bad things, don't think bad things, seek what is good, do what is good, be honest, grow in love, learn to forgive, always be humble. If you don't do these things, you'll end up in a bad place. Welcome to that place".

"It's not easy. Nobody wants to be on these streets".

You get judged a lot when you're sleeping down on the ground".

"The hardest thing about being homeless is being homeless. It's a hard world out there."

"The thing people don't realize about homeless people is that they need to speak to the homeless person on a level and not pre judge them for being in a sleeping bag."

"Society is so brainwashed that they get consumed by nonsense. People haven't got compassion".

People keep saying "homelessness is a complex issue", but no, it isn't.

You give a person a home, they're not homeless anymore.

You take all the land in a country and say somebody owns it, then charge people for a place to live, then take all the arable land and say someone owns that, then charge people money for food, then say you can't work because you aren't from this country, and give them a stipend that's less than what the average person makes in a day, you've got a problem. A real, life threatening and entirely unnecessary problem, because of some created complexity.

It's not a real problem, like death or being out on the streets without food and shelter and no one willing to give you either unless you have money. That's a real problem. This, is a problem, of perception.

We percieve the value of our economy, of our invented token of value, which itself is worthless, to be greater than that of humanity. We have sold our very heart in exchange for money. Something that cannot hold us, cannot care for us, cannot love us, cannot forgive us, cannot give anything to us beyond what another human being is willing to exchange for it. In fact, all the value of life, which lies in the planet and one another, is hidden by money. Thus, again, this is a problem of perception.

The workers of truth, are here to solve problems of perception.

The percieved value added to society of £40Bn worth of arms spending is greater than the percieved value of protecting every endangered species on the planet despite the never ending choir of experts pointing to imminent worldwide ecological collapse if we continue to do relatively nothing.

Governments and agencies will bost figures higher than the average person can imagine, but as someone who working in the banking industry and sees the truth behind these figures, I can tell you they are nothing compared to what man spends upon defence (X annually, Y in the U.K, Z in Europe) and upon food production (x, Y, Z), Pharma (X,Y,Z), anti terrorism (X,Y,Z) marketting (X,Y,Z) and so on.

The question really is, do you care. Do you really, truly, care.

If you do, you have to stand up, and you have to change the world. One human being at a time, we have to change the broken system in which we have become entangled, by learning to love our neighbour and not our money. If we do this, every single human problem disappears. Every single one. There is not one exception.

Malnutrituon goes away.

Conflicts go away.

Dictatorships go away.

Disparity of wealth goes away.

Ecological damage goes away.

The exercsion of power by the few upon the many goes away.

The end of all human suffering and the beginning of endless human being begins when we begin to truly, actually, fully, love one another. When we respect each other, when we care for each other, when we work with rather than against each other, this world will completely and rapidly change for the good of all. When this happens, we will build a world without the need for corruptible government structures and "supreme" leaders, without corporate entities owning more than half the nations resources, without the concept of human resources but the celebration of human beings, without the need to exchange money for food.

The way we do things today is not just dumb, it is monumentally stupid, and it will take a different kind of attitude and thinking to the one which created to change it. It will take patience, it will take discipline, it will take work, it will take understanding, it will take a lot of people to stand up for what they truly believe in, to live a life of purpose. It will take us all respecting each other's beliefs with the right not to become subject to them. It will take true love, but it only takes a few. A few of us to stand up and say this is not the way it should be, I am not a part of a world which leaves its people on the streets. That's not the world in me, and I will join with those who believe in something better, to take us to (it will take us to) a better place.

You want the world to change, you've got to go out and change it, but where will you go? Here, is the answer.

We're building a place, we as in us and you, the ones who get it, to get away from this world and help build a better one. A fair one. A free one. A beautiful one. A place where there is no profit, but lots of change. A place where everyone is treated with respect, and leaders are the ones we follow, not the ones we fear.

It can't be about me. It has to be about us, about you. It has to be a collective social shift, from the value of money and physical experiences, to the inner experience of being human. The concern for your fellow man, before the judgement. The companion, before the detraction. The giving, before the taking. We have to wake up. We are the key to our collective survival or suffering. It is up to us to make the difference, at every level.

All the powerful people are powerful because we give them that power. The guns they point at us are paid for with our taxes, and built by our labour. We must choose not to waste ourselves building or sustaining war machines. We must choose not to support unethical and unsustainable farming. We must choose not to ignore the suffering of our neighbours, and we must choose to support those who poison our food and steal from far away lands (links). We must choose a better way, we must choose to change.

Without our choices, what have we left.

The U.K spends £9.7Bn per year on coffee.

The U.K spends £16.1Bn on Alcohol.

The U.K spends £4.2Bn on soft drinks.

The U.K spends over £32Bn per year on clothing.

I am writing a book called "Street lights" which details my journey from the corporate world, across the planet, onto the streets of London, where I know make a living as a street artist trying to help wake up our world.

484 PEOPLE DIED HOMELESS IN THE UK SO FAR THIS YEAR,

BUT DO YOU CARE.

December 18th, 2018: By Daniel K Swan

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to wake up on the streets of the world's richest city, home to more multi-millionaires than any other city on Earth, without money in your pocket or a place to stay.

Derryn, 26 years old, has been on the streets of London for over a year now.

​

I've known Derryn for just over a year. We met in Trafalgar square, where I do my street art. A few months ago I asked Derryn if he would let me tell his story to whoever has ears to hear it. He agreed, so here it is.

If you're lucky, you'll wake up to sirens blaring. If you're unlucky, you'll wake up to a prod from a Police Officer, security guard, cleaner, or other person sleeping on the streets.

​

If you're unlucky you will find yourself fighting for your life and the few belongs that you have.most wisely chosen to sleep on top of whilst out on the streets.

​

If you're like one of the 484 this year, you won't wake up at all.

​

"One of the cleaners would turn up early, 4am, to clean the windows on the building we was under. He was a lovely bloke. Used to go get us a coffee first thing and then he'd ask us to leave as he handed the coffee. I really appreciated that".

​

In London, you'll most likely wake up cold and wet. In winter, very cold and very wet. You have the dirt from the city all over your skin, and the sweat of a sleeping bag to clean off. Where do you go?

​

The U.K Govt spent, collectively, over the past 10 years at least £1.2Bn to "help the homeless" in the U.K.

​

Do you know how many public showers there are in London, where over half the U.K's homeless population are believed to be?

​

None.

​

Not one.

​

The best one available, and a very well kept secret, is in Kings Cross train station.

​

The cost to use it? £5 each time. Oh, but remember to buy your own shampoo and soap. That's just the water and cost to clean your towel.

​

The same station however, will blare out through the microphone:

​

"Vagrants are operating in this area, vagrancy is not allowed"

​

​

​

​

There used to be a man lived.

I have spent the past four years on and off with the homeless, the extreme poor, of the United Kingdom and the United States.

​

My first real experience with the homeless was in America, with a man who became on of my best friends, Alan.

​

​

"They want to see how homeless people, like beg for money, basically, and I said 'I don't beg for money'".

"I only do it if I have to do it, not because I want to. It's embarrassing".

"Until you've been on the streets yourself, you will never know what it's like".

Can I get this biometric card, and does it give me citizenship?

"People won't understand until they do a day in my shoes."

"There is enough for all we need, but not for all our greed" - Some Guy

How can people help someone on the streets?

​

"Get him in accommodation or a hostel that's as simple as it gets".

What is the worst thing you've experienced recently on the streets?

​

"Being glassed and having to have surgery on my little finger. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger".

There are a lot of us out here now really struggling with this world, and we're tired of all the ways it's doing us wrong. That strain is only going to get greater, if we don't work together and try to do something about it.

​

This is my idea, the first part anyway. If you're not going to support it, I hope you have a better one.

Derryn, 26 years old, has been on the streets of London for over a year now.

​

I've known Derryn for just over a year. We met in Trafalgar square, where I do my street art. A few months ago I asked Derryn if he would let me tell his story to whoever has ears to hear it. He agreed, so here it is.

"It's not easy. Nobody wants to be on these streets".

You get judged a lot when you're sleeping down on the ground".

"The hardest thing about being homeless is being homeless. It's a hard world out there."

"The hardest thing about being homeless is being homeless. It's a hard world out there."

"The thing people don't realize about homeless people is that they need to speak to the homeless person on a level and not pre judge them for being in a sleeping bag."

"Society is so brainwashed that they get consumed by nonsense. People haven't got compassion".

The U.K spends £9.7Bn per year on coffee.

The U.K spends £16.1Bn on Alcohol.

The U.K spends £4.2Bn on soft drinks.

The U.K spends over £32Bn per year on clothing.

I am writing a book called "Street lights" which details my journey from the corporate world, across the planet, onto the streets of London, where I know make a living as a street artist trying to help wake up our world.

If you would like to pre-order a copy of the book and support the first print, and my work, then please click here.