Audio Stories

Not ‘me, me me’ but ‘us, us, us’ by Paul Atheron FRSA


Reported by Paul

Published on Friday, December 17th, 2021

Human Rights Service Delivery Welfare Benefits
Audio Stories

Not ‘me, me me’ but ‘us, us, us’ by Paul Atheron FRSA


Written by Paul

Published on Friday, December 17th, 2021

Human Rights

Service Delivery

Welfare Benefits

 

Transcript

The attitudes in Britain are ‘me, me, me’. And what we need, what we need desperately is ‘us, us, us’.

We have to unite as a community, as a society again, if anyone is being genuine now about change. There cannot be silo thinking anymore, there can’t be a, ‘Oh, well we’re the housing department, that’s the DWP’ and, ‘oh, that’s the housing department but we’re the DWP’ or ‘oh, well that’s health so that’s got nothing to do with anything’.

‘Cause it’s all inter-linked, it always has been inter-linked. And it’s strange to think that in the 21st century we’re still talking about these things as if we haven’t figured this all out 20 or 30 years ago, because we did.

These are not new ideas, these are just ideas that haven’t been implemented. So you’re kind of going, why have we got a charity for homeless health, homeless LGBTQ – why are these all divisions, why are they not all parts of a single, one-stop shop where you go if you’re homeless and then whatever other aspects of your life are figured out afterwards.

I’ve had all my benefits stopped again. I’m about to get my results for suspected cancer on Friday. And I know what’s going to come up, my doctor’s going to say, ‘Paul, you’ve got to change your diet, you’ve got to eat healthily’, and I’m like, how? My benefits aren’t being paid, I don’t have a kitchen in the accommodation that I’m sitting in, so how? How do you expect this to happen?

So unless you, as my doctor, has the authority to get the DWP to pay the benefits that are rightfully mine but that I’m having to – here comes the lawyers again – having to take back to court for the fourteenth time to get them to pay the money. We just go through this cycle. Someone, somewhere has to be able to go, no, no more, we’re not doing this anymore.

Written by Paul


Paul Atherton FRSA is a social campaigning film-maker, playwrightauthor & artist. His work has been screened on the Coca-Cola Billboard on Piccadilly Circus, premiered at the Leicester Square Odeon Cinema, his video-diary has been collected into the permanent collection of the Museum of London, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was selected as one of the London Library's 2021/22 emerging writers during covid lockdown, where he is currently writing his memoir.

He achieved most of this whilst homeless, an ongoing experience that has been his life for over a decade in London. In the last two years he’s made Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 his bedroom and became part of what he coined the #HeathrowHomeless before being moved into emergency hotel accommodation for the duration of Covid-Lockdown in Marylebone on 3rd April 2020.

In the past ten years he’s experienced every homeless initiative that Charities, Local Authorities and the City has had to offer. All of which clearly failed.

With the end of “Everyone In”, Paul has no idea where his next move is going to be, but he expects he’ll be returning to Heathrow.

Read all of Paul's articles

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Human Rights Service Delivery Welfare Benefits