Charities confirm desperate migrants resort to cooking rodents
Rough sleepers are eating rats
Homelessness charities say some Eastern European rough sleepers are so desperate for food they are eating rats.
Two major charities confirmed that staff members had seen homeless people cooking the rodents.
Jeremy Swain, chief executive of Thames Reach, said the charity had seen eastern Europeans in extreme poverty eating the vermin. He said it was ‘almost opportunistic’, because ‘the rats are there’.
Howard Sinclair, chief executive of homelessness charity Broadway, agreed and confirmed his teams had seen people eating rats in Brent. ‘If people are sleeping rough and have no recourse to public funds and public sector support they are in a desperate state,’ he said.
Broadway’s annual figures state 3,673 people slept rough on London’s streets in 2009/10. The government made decisions on homeless applications for 393 European migrants between January and March this year.
A spokesperson for the Foods Standards Agency saying: ‘A particular concern about eating rats would be their unknown provenance - you can’t tell where they’ve been or what diseases or chemicals they might have been exposed to or picked up.’
The news reopened discussion about the benefits of soup runs. The issue has proved divisive, with some people arguing that they enable rough sleepers to stay on the streets.
Mr Sinclair said: ‘The answer is not more soup runs, the answer is, where we can, support people off the streets.’
But Alastair Murray from charity Housing Justice said: ‘If that’s how desperate people are to get something to eat, that means what the churches are doing [soup runs] is really important
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Readers' comments (24)
Yoric Irving-Clarke | 13/08/2010 8:48 am
Where are all these RSL's registered as so-called charities and I&Ps with charitable exemptions!? Aren't they supposed to help such people? Or are they, as I suspect, growing fat off HB and Supporting People funding and don't want the hit of proper charity work on their bottom line? What a disgrace!! No recourse to public funds shouldn't mean no recourse to charity.
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Yoric Irving-Clarke | 13/08/2010 8:48 am
Where are all these RSL's registered as so-called charities and I&Ps with charitable exemptions!? Aren't they supposed to help such people? Or are they, as I suspect, growing fat off HB and Supporting People funding and don't want the hit of proper charity work on their bottom line? What a disgrace!! No recourse to public funds shouldn't mean no recourse to charity.
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Narra | 13/08/2010 9:16 am
Rat problem. SOLVED.
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Chris | 13/08/2010 9:30 am
Again, this flies in the face of the anti immigrationists who would have us all believe that these desperate souls are the reason for the lack of housing, jobs, the economic collapse, and probably the bad weather as well.
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Anonymous | 13/08/2010 9:30 am
The article does not make it clear whether the rats were on their way to the bank or on their way home from work before being captured and eaten.
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Anonymous | 13/08/2010 9:45 am
The two large 'charities' here are well known for their opposition to 'soup runs' having stated this many times publicly.
Now they are deliberately castigating those forced to live on the streets and their charitable aims and outlook need a serious rethink.
So rough sleepers are largely East Europeans (Emotive) they are trying to say.
These are so repulsive and dirty they eat rats (Emotive)
They say they use soup runs (Emotive and pejorative term)
Soup runs encourage street dependency (!!!!!) This is an absolute disgrace and the heads of these charities should be sacked with immediate effect for putting forward this view. Has this more to do with (a) rough sleeper counts have been trebled by shapps? -and (b) the recognition that London is not the only place that has rough sleepers....hmmmmm.
These charities sold out a long time ago and conspired with the Louise Casey spin she put out as the Czar for rough sleepers and homelessness in order to get sustained and higher levels of funding.
Every other friday in IH we get the usual 'story' ever more undignified from these usual suspects who are complicit with any government for the sake of funding. Its time they went!
Perhaps with their pay-offs they could go to a swanky Chinese for some nice white rat?
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Narra | 13/08/2010 10:20 am
"Christopher Webb | 13/08/2010 9:30 am
Again, this flies in the face of the anti immigrationists who would have us all believe that these desperate souls are the reason for the lack of housing, jobs, the economic collapse, and probably the bad weather as well."
Also kind of flys in the face of those that tell you all immigrationers' (think I just made that word up) are well educated doctors or all going right into the manual jobs UK born people are unwilling to do.
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Joe Halewood | 13/08/2010 11:14 am
Bob obob - you miss a few key points. Firstly A8 'immigrants' have to work for a period of time before they are entitled to anysocial welfare benefits, including housing. Secondly, I have come across many asylum seekers (not able to work for x amount of time) who are trained surgeons and cant get a job because of these ridiculous restrictions.
However, Im surprised that the rabid right hasnt followed the opening these 'charities' have opened. Surely, if soup runs encourage rough sleeping, then a National Front / KKK acting as vigilantes on the streets would surely protect these British rats and discourage these 'foreign' rough sleepers!
I do like the way Mr Swain's team acted professionally here though in taking contemporaneous notes and completing ethnicity and diversity surveys with these rough sleepers (presumably having interpreters there too!) when faced with rat eating rough sleepers.
That is going above and beyond or is 1 over the 8 the more apt expresion?
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Mr P | 13/08/2010 11:37 am
If I decide to move to any european country as an economic migrant I would first ensure that I've got enough money and/or plans to make money so that I don't need to eat rats. Are things really that bad in eastern europe?
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Martyn Robson | 13/08/2010 11:50 am
As a Thames Reach employee, I am a bit surprised at the criticism shown towards these two organisations. Even the smallest amount of research shows that they are credible hard working organisations that have the best interests of vulnerable people at their hearts. By all means ask questions of them, even hold them to account, but let’s not jump on the band wagon and miss the central point here that without the work of these and other organisations, many more people would be dying on our streets.
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