Rough sleeping decriminalised as Vagrancy Act finally axed

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• idiomaddict@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  The government has repealed the archaic act, which was first introduced in 1824 to deal with soldiers on the streets following the Napoleonic Wars, after years of campaigning from Big Issue and other homelessness organisations.

  I grew up at a time when homeless people were frequently determined to be Vietnam veterans, and I thought it was because of the draft. Then as a young adult, I saw an episode of The West Wing with a homeless and presumably traumatized Korean War veteran and realized that this had been going on longer than I knew.

  I really wasn’t expecting to see evidence of it from the napoleonic wars, but to be fair, I bet there were Punic War veterans who struggled to readjust to life in peacetime.

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