Call to clear Windsor of homeless stirs anger
windsor (United Kingdom) — In picturesque Windsor, in the shadow of the castle where Queen Elizabeth II spends her weekends, a dozen homeless people shelter from the cold in a jumble of blankets and cardboard boxes.
But with less than five months to go until the May 19 wedding of her grandson Prince Harry and US actress Meghan Markle in the mediaeval castle’s chapel, the local authority’s bid to sweep the homeless off the streets has triggered indignation.
Simon Dudley, the Conservative leader of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead council, has urged the local Thames Valley Police force to take action against their “aggressive begging and intimidation”. “A large number of adults that are begging in Windsor are not in fact homeless,” he wrote in a letter, while those that were genuinely homeless had rejected secure accommodation in order to keep begging.
The level of interest in Windsor, some 35 kilometres west of London, is “set to multiply” ahead of the royal wedding, he added.
According to the business valuation consultancy Brand Finance, the event should draw hundreds of thousands of extra tourists to the town, normally home to just 30,000 people, in 2018.
Sheltering from the wintry wind, Stephanie, insisted: “I don’t choose to sit here.”
“Whatever people give me, they give me. I don’t choose to ask for money to get given something to eat, like sandwiches,” she told. The council’s plans have been condemned by, among others, the Conservative MP for Maidenhead — Prime Minister Theresa May.
Derek Prime, who runs a souvenir shop already selling mugs and trinkets with Harry and his fiancee’s faces on, doubted the council’s claims to have proper accommodation in place. Dudley “really wants to come out here and spend a night on the street just to see what it’s like,” he said.
Thames Valley Police commissioner Anthony Stansfeld, an elected official, is preparing a response to Dudley’s letter.
Last month, Dudley complained on Twitter of the “epidemic of rough sleeping and vagrancy” in the royal town. —