Is there much in this or are the media merely targeting homeless people and beggars? This article for me is pretty sensationalist, but i’ve noticed a lot more of this in Manchester and London over the last 2-3 years - people absolutely off their faces, etc, which would tie in with the rise of Spice…but they could just as likely have taken other things, and who would blame them?
Think it’s a bit off plastering photos of beggars or homeless people across the press, many of who might not be high on this drug, and even if they are, so what.
Peoples concern doesn’t seem to be how we might be able to help these people, more of them littering up thr pavement between their shoebox apartments and Waitrose. Would people give a shite if this was going on…a bit out of the way?
Been working around the corner from Piccadilly Gardens for the past year. It was always pretty bad but seems to have got worse in recent times. Lots of paramedics around and people collapsed/pools of vom etc.
Yep, and it’s easy to make Spice the bogeyman when there are hundreds of reasons why rough sleeping has increased significantly in the past couple of years (many of which are towering over Piccadilly Gardens, from memory)
It’s an absolutely appalling city centre. Probably the ugliest of all major cities in the UK. At the same time, the expensive living and gentrification around it’s probably moved at a quicker rate than anywhere else. Homelessness seems to have massively gone up, but the invesment in the city seems mainly in steel and glass.
Picadilly Gardens and the run up to Picadilly Station’s awful, as much because of the hoardes of office workers and drinking crowds as anything. I’m always suprised at how much more relaxed everything is when i go to, say, Leeds, or Liverpool, or Sheffield.
I think they’re going. They basically concreted the gardens in, then thought they were being edgy with some sort of brutalist wall (but not really). They paid a fortune for some motion-sensing fountains or similar which barely work, then to recoup the massive expense plonked a huge office block up.
The’ve just dug up St Peter’s Square, which actually needed it. Took them two years and they decided they had to shift some war memorials, but that’s another story. It looks okay, to be fair. I’m hoping that will serve as the main tram hub between the three stations and Picadilly Gardens, which should be a welcoming family-friendly space might…not be a monumental shithole.
If you go a bit further afield from the Gardens it’s a fairly interesting, well contrasted city centre. Lots to look at…but the dead centre’s prerty grim.
had mates who used to put it in their joints for some reason, thought it was just some sort alame legal high thing though there was a story about how prevalent it is in prisons a while back.
yeah its interesting that the MEN has picked up on this and not the homeless village that was camped in the middle of st annes square for a few months until they got moved along by the dibble before the xmas markets