Homeless or just bivvying?

[wandering1]

Good point in there are some bridges I wouldn't dream of sleeping under. But over the years I've found a few good spots (and yes I've come across a few that resemble a bush toilet .... Eeeewww )
Unfortunately we don't have much in the way of bushes round ere.

However some disused railway tunnels have store rooms near each end make good hidey holes

 

[rorymax]

This thread surprises and astonishes me in so many ways, I wonder that it can be so difficult to find clean safe places to shelter, and for sure it is far from perfect up here in sunny Scotland, but we do have less restrictions it seems.

I can think of a couple of places (perhaps it would be a good idea for someone to have website listing them all) where the local authorities provide toilets, with hot running water and central heating, left open all year round and 24 hours a day, for those travelers who just might need a refuge.

If It has just been an accidental co-incidence that the places I refer to have not been locked up for the night owing to operational error then I apologise.

Wanlockhead comes to mind as does one on the A76 (around Sanquar) and there was, but I have not been that way for quite some time, one located near the shore at Tighnabruaich.

There should be more, but most likely the scumbags and the some 'traveling people', do hinder the ongoing provision of facilities of this type.

rorymax

 

[petrochemicals]

By that statement you infer that you are "assuming" ex squaddies to be the same as criminals and prostitutes. You're certainly free to make that statement; but only because of the sacrifices of those very ex squaddies.

Truthful half of people have post traumatic stress disorder in the homelessness group, sereous car crashes being a major one. Then there are squaddies, who you can use your imagination on their ptsd. This leads to drugs etc and you get what you see.

 

[santaman2000]

Truthful half of people have post traumatic stress disorder in the homelessness group, sereous car crashes being a major one. Then there are squaddies, who you can use your imagination on their ptsd. This leads to drugs etc and you get what you see.

Been there. Military, not homeless. Most homeless people I encountered as a cop weren't military veterans (although many did claim to be for the sympathy factor) Some were vets, but not a hell of a lot. Same thing with most PTSD cases (few real cases, loads of false claims for disability) The draft ended over 40 years ago. Everybody in service here is a volunteer and went because they wanted to go (me included) Hard to be traumatized by something you actually look forward to.

Might be different there I suppose. Or even other areas of the country here.

 

[petrochemicals]

Been there. Military, not homeless. Most homeless people I encountered as a cop weren't military veterans (although many did claim to be for the sympathy factor) Some were vets, but not a hell of a lot. Same thing with most PTSD cases (few real cases, loads of false claims for disability) The draft ended over 40 years ago. Everybody in service here is a volunteer and went because they wanted to go (me included) Hard to be traumatized by something you actually look forward to.

Might be different there I suppose. Or even other areas of the country here.

Well over here we had ireland, christ some of the non military people I have met have ptsd, they tell me stories of the carnage. Vietnam is a long way over, but with iraq it will go back up. Divorce is another, point being there is a true story behind half of them, just look at the parents who loose a child to crime, a good portion of them go on to problems.

Edit.

I suppose there are a few who do it out of choice for some reason.

http://www.homeless.org.uk/facts/homelessness-in-numbers

 

[Bindle]

Been there. Military, not homeless. Most homeless people I encountered as a cop weren't military veterans (although many did claim to be for the sympathy factor) Some were vets, but not a hell of a lot. Same thing with most PTSD cases (few real cases, loads of false claims for disability) The draft ended over 40 years ago. Everybody in service here is a volunteer and went because they wanted to go (me included) Hard to be traumatized by something you actually look forward to.

Might be different there I suppose. Or even other areas of the country here.

You don't really think it is hard to be traumatized by something you look forward to do you? 100 years ago, thousands of mates all joyfully signed up to give the Jerries a good old drubbing on the fields in Belgium, but it wasn't a worry because they would be home by Christmas and the filthy Huns would all have bloody nose. How come, if they looked forward to it so much, thousands got shell-shock? Police and firemen all over the world get PTSD and they love and look forward to their jobs. The US military had to give troops LSD in Vietnam to get them through, even the volunteers. My own mini-experience is of going to talk to a patient, who I knew well and I enjoyed working with, while he was covered in petrol. Still confuses me why he actually flicked the lighter.

Maybe a cultural reference for you would be the fire-fighters and policemen who went to the Twin Towers, they looked forward to their day to day job, but lots of them are seriously screwed by the events. You need to understand that no matter how much you enjoy and look forward and train to do your job, sometimes pooh happens and you end up traumatised because what you expect to be a run of the mill day turns out to be the largest single terrorist attack in the history of the world.

Look what happened to Johnny Rambo, he was a volunteer but ended up all screwed up because of that Sheriff in Hicksville USA.

You cannot prepare for something you have never experienced, and the effect that unknown thing will have on you.

 

[xylaria]

These people are really good listeners, my old man had a good chat with them when they were collecting in our local town. My old man was in during the late 70s and 80s, he was also a psychiatric nurse for 20 years. There is a real desent from ptsd to drink drugs and homelessness. A country has an absolute duty to give it veterans the best care possible. Not all PTSD is combat related, but no ex solider should ever get to the stage where they are sleeping rough or end up in prison for condition that is diagnosable and treatable. There will be people reading this that maybe drink too much, rage a bit, stare off into space and get bad dreams and wish to never remember. For those that do there are people that will listen.

 

[Macaroon]

These people are really good listeners, my old man had a good chat with them when they were collecting in our local town. My old man was in during the late 70s and 80s, he was also a psychiatric nurse for 20 years. There is a real desent from ptsd to drink drugs and homelessness. A country has an absolute duty to give it veterans the best care possible. Not all PTSD is combat related, but no ex solider should ever get to the stage where they are sleeping rough or end up in prison for condition that is diagnosable and treatable. There will be people reading this that maybe drink too much, rage a bit, stare off into space and get bad dreams and wish to never remember. For those that do there are people that will listen.

Good post, and we should all be deeply ashamed that the lack of support for soldiers, sailors and airmen continues to be abysmal........and it's in our name...........................

 

[santaman2000]

You don't really think it is hard to be traumatized by something you look forward to do you? 100 years ago, thousands of mates all joyfully signed up to give the Jerries a good old drubbing on the fields in Belgium, but it wasn't a worry because they would be home by Christmas and the filthy Huns would all have bloody nose........

First, I think you misunderstand what I meant by "look forward to." I mean most of our volunteers actually look forward to bloody combat whereas the volunteers of WWI were looking forward to a quick victory that didn't happen. I certainly enjoyed my time; despite losing friends. It was what they signed up for as well.

You don't train for months and years without hoping to get a chance to use that training.

No. I'm one of the group that thinks Patton was right for slapping the coward.

 

[santaman2000]

...... The US military had to give troops LSD in Vietnam to get them through, even the volunteers.....

Where on earth did you get that info. The military did indeed experiment with LSD on a minute quantity of stateside troops but those experiments had nothing to do with the Vietnam War apart from being conducted in the same time frame.

 

[santaman2000]

.....Look what happened to Johnny Rambo, he was a volunteer but ended up all screwed up because of that Sheriff in Hicksville USA....

Another case of Hollywood exploiting the myth. If you remember the film well enough you'll also remember how easily Rambo outsmarted the police and the National Guard? Never mind the reality that by that time many police and most of the National Guardsmen were also Vietnam veterans. Pretty much the way the same proportions today become police and NG

 

[Bindle]

Where on earth did you get that info. The military did indeed experiment with LSD on a minute quantity of stateside troops but those experiments had nothing to do with the Vietnam War apart from being conducted in the same time frame.

Now where did I get that info, let me think, oh I remember the CIAs own declassified documents in 2001.

A minute quantity! Project MKUltra is what you are looking for, the work that went on between 1953 and 1973 (or thereabouts) using mind altering substances to change the effect of the horrors of war on serving soldiers. Keep them awake and efficient for longer, control troops, get a truth serum, erase memory all sorts. They even had some soldiers trained to use their minds as weapons using hallucinogenic drugs, watch The Men Who Stared at Goats.

CIA Director ordered most documents destroyed in 1973, but some survived.

Governments mate, you just can't trust them can you eh? Didn't they tell their citizens all about it?

 

[santaman2000]

Now where did I get that info, let me think, oh I remember the CIAs own declassified documents in 2001.

A minute quantity! Project MKUltra is what you are looking for, the work that went on between 1953 and 1973 (or thereabouts) using mind altering substances to change the effect of the horrors of war on serving soldiers....

Yep. Seen those. Less than a few hundred soldiers in the experiments. And the media added the bit about "the horrors of war."

 

[Bindle]

First, I think you misunderstand what I meant by "look forward to." I mean most of our volunteers actually look forward to bloody combat whereas the volunteers of WWI were looking forward to a quick victory that didn't happen. I certainly enjoyed my time; despite losing friends. It was what they signed up for as well.

You don't train for months and years without hoping to get a chance to use that training.

No. I'm one of the group that thinks Patton was right for slapping the coward.

Ah, I understand now. You are one of those Gung-Ho ****-kicking it's good to die types.

Why do you think that Special Forces are so good at what they do eh? It is precisely because they train so hard to deal out the nasty stuff, but sneak around in the dark like a bunch of jessies hoping they don't get caught and involved. They sneak in, sneak out and pray they don't have to fight, if you ran the Special Forces they would all be bayonet charges, screaming and getting shot. The reason Forces train so hard, is exactly the opposite of what you think, I trained for years hoping to never have to use the skills I was being taught.

As for slapping cowards, marvellous!

 

[santaman2000]

....Project MKUltra is what you are looking for, the work that went on between 1953 and 1973 (or thereabouts) using mind altering substances to change the effect of the horrors of war on serving soldiers. Keep them awake and efficient for longer, control troops, get a truth serum, erase memory all sorts. ....

Yep. They used the soldiers as lab rats (cheap and plentiful) But the results were intended to aid the spies in the CIA. Being able to erase a spies memory would be a very useful thing indeed.

 

[Bindle]

Another case of Hollywood exploiting the myth. If you remember the film well enough you'll also remember how easily Rambo outsmarted the police and the National Guard? Never mind the reality that by that time many police and most of the National Guardsmen were also Vietnam veterans. Pretty much the way the same proportions today become police and NG

Woooahh, wasn't it a documentary?

We should get our own thread and stop hijacking this one, I am bored with your comments, you must be bored with mine (I am) let's move on.....

As you were Gentlemen and Ladies, apologies for taking the thread so far off track.

 

[santaman2000]

Ah, I understand now. You are one of those Gung-Ho ****-kicking it's good to die types.

Why do you think that Special Forces are so good at what they do eh? It is precisely because they train so hard to deal out the nasty stuff, but sneak around in the dark like a bunch of jessies hoping they don't get caught and involved. They sneak in, sneak out and pray they don't have to fight, if you ran the Special Forces they would all be bayonet charges, screaming and getting shot. The reason Forces train so hard, is exactly the opposite of what you think, I trained for years hoping to never have to use the skills I was being taught.

As for slapping cowards, marvellous!

I did my last 8 years in Special Ops. No, I don't want to do a bayonet charge, I want to napalm the little b*******

And yes, I'm one of the gung ho types. That's my point. Pretty much 80% or more of the people I met in service came form that exact same mold.

 

[Bindle]

I did my last 8 years in Special Ops. No, I don't want to do a bayonet charge, I want to napalm the little b*******

And yes, I'm one of the gung ho types. That's my point. Pretty much 80% or more of the people I met in service came form that exact same mold.

Special Ops eh? Wooh! The bit I have put in bold, I wonder if that is why we are in the worldwide state we are in?

By the way Mould, it has a U in it. Oh and children doesn't begin with a b****** Come on big fella, let's get a room

 

[santaman2000]

Yeah, we should take this to pm.

 

[xylaria]

Wow this thread gone where only the pioneer corps fear to tread.