If the St John Ambulance sponsor-advertising-removal-caper had your personal Rugby World Cup/disgust meter showing hot, then here's an outrage to send it to Red Alert.
Palmerston North Council's plan to remove beggars from their streets during the RWC is yet another measure straight out of the arsenal of the Vancouver Winter Games. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5363553/Homeless-sweep-up-planned-before-cup
Winter-time in North America sees a migration of homeless people from frozen mid-western, central, and eastern cities to milder Pacific seaboard cities such as Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, and Santa Monica.
The Vancouver plan was to bus the city's thousands of homeless to specially constructed shelters (that is, warehouses) beyond city limits. Great was the public outcry at this callous strategem and, indeed, it was quickly judged to be a violation of human rights. A compromise was reached whereby Police were to pick up the vagrants and escort them to inspect the new premises, to taste the healthy food, and sample the warm lodgings provided. But if their customers so chose, they were to be allowed back into the city where, as even Blind Freddie could see, the poor buggers would incur a great deal of constabulary harassment.
I never learned how successful this not-quite-final solution turned out to be.
What is clear is that the likes of the IOC, FIFA, and RWC committees will have been encouraged to continue to keep up such draconian pressure on host-city officials. Yes, some token shopkeepers have been persuaded to `front` the demands for beggars removal, but the underlying pressure comes from the gestapo.
How will London handle these issues? Perfidious and class ridden they may be, but the Brits have a tradition of even-handedness when it comes to the rights and happiness of their less privileged citizens. - we'll see.
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