Open letter to Westminster Council
After spending a few weeks in the West End photographing buskers and beggars against a background of extreme wealth I decided to write an email to Westminster Council suggesting that they should do something to help these individuals – after all it doesn’t look or feel right to have people living with extreme difficulties in the world’s most expensive office market. Verity Sinclair, Executive Assistant to Leader of the Opposition replied “(...)passed on your comments to the West End Commission for their consideration. I will let you know if and when I receive a response.”
The Tories leader never replied.
After six months without any developments whatsoever, I feel obligated to address Westminster Council publicly on this matter:
1 – Buskers and beggars live with an extremely meagre income and rarely get any help from society or from the state.
2 – Are you aware that the West End is the perfect picture of the screaming inequalities one can find in the UK and across the developed world ?
3 – Aren’t you ashamed of having these extraordinary artists entertaining the public in the most expensive part of the world without receiving any help or comfort from the city council?
4 – Were you so unfocused when you read my email – if you’ve done so – that you didn’t realize that some of the suggestions that I gave you didn’t have any cost for the city council whatsoever? Just little motivation is needed to tackle this issue and help these individuals; a real sponsorship program would certainly lend a hand.
5 – I believe you’re proud of your achievements in the office market; in 2015 and for the third consecutive year London’s West End is the world’s most expensive office market according to Cushman Wakefield. Would you consider, for a second, to redistribute some of that wealth helping buskers and beggars? They are part of that community, one way or the other they contribute to the final outcome.
6 – It is cynical to consider that the coins these citizens receive from passers-by is enough to keep them afloat and capable of having a life without fighting scarcity on a daily basis.
7 – Wouldn’t you be proud and have some sense of achievement if you could lead by example and show the world what you can do for the most unprivileged citizens of the most expensive borough in the world?
8 – If you consider yourselves up to the task just avoid any schemes where the best busker in a contest is awarded a busking licence to play wherever. Moreover, the line of thought in which a busker gets the opportunity to play in a privileged spot to get more money from the public is flawed by the concomitant thought of selling that spot to a sponsor because of its increased visibility; it is obscene capitalism if none of the money collected by the council from the sponsor is given back to the busker. Win-win strategies are only great amongst equals. Finally, if you setup a commission to take these matters into hand, make sure the buskers are represented by at least one of their own.
For the richer and wealthier it is easier to get through the day seeing poor people beneath them as less able, less special or not as people at all. That was the finding of a study from Princeton University in which researchers saw that photographs of homeless people and drug addicts failed to stimulate areas of the brain that usually activate whenever people think about other people, or about themselves. Instead, the most affluent students reacted to the images as if they “had stumbled on a pile of trash”.
I hope that you have a different vision when stepping outside your office in West London.
John Gallo
