Love is, indeed a mystery, 
If we turn to history then the picture becomes so misty,
That even those traditionally beloved, literary messengers of love, 
Whose self-appointed wisdom, and self-important opinions, 
Grew them the wings to soar far above the rest of us, 
Have been found guilty by the laws of their very own verse, 
For they placed a curse on those poor fools who swallowed their words, 
Believing the best, and receiving the worst. 

And our poets of the past never managed to craft, 
A lasting definition, that would have ever satisfied our fragile human condition,
But those romantics were true romancers, 
Which is to say that really they were... wankers,
Narcissistic manics, with a flare for the theatric, and a vocab that was fantastic, 
But, hardly the models for safe and stable companionship.

Now poor Keats, he was just tragic, 
Coleridge was erratic, and frantically distracted, 
By an opium addiction and an extra-marital obsession that was unrequited,
His own wife slighted, in a union doomed all too soon,
Percy Bysshe was... just a prick, 
Byron a chaotic mess, with a penchant for incest, 
And even Shakespeare, genius though he was, and definitely not as fucked up as this lot, 
Insisted that all his romantic characters either end up dead, or swapping who they were due to wed,
Following a whimsical yet predictable cross-dressing event. 

That's right, move over Will, before any other poor sods get killed,
Cos now I'm the wanker, I'm the one holding the quill,
And it's my turn to preach my words with unearned self-belief. 

And to share the musings of my mind, 
When I say that love, is not blind, 
For it relies on trust like blood shared between comrades on the battlefield,
And it isn't always kind, 
For as the bombs fly, and we duck and dive in a bid to survive, 
We may chide and deride the one that runs beside us,
To hide our fear, that at any moment they may fall,
And disappear behind us. 

Love isn't fate, and it is never too late to retreat, 
For to seek a place where we feel safe, is no admission of defeat,
Cos we're the authors of our fucking scripts, 
And we write the glory as we go, 
And the fate of the characters in this love story,
Is ours to choose, and ours alone. 

'So go on... you "true romancer" of today, 
Do tell us... what love is...' 

Well I'm glad you asked, 
And if you must know, 
Love is... 

Laughter on the way to a show, 
It's a joke shared between those in the know,
It comes and goes, and it comes to blows,
And then, it mends again,
It rounds the bend at breakneck speed, 
Then slows to a shuddering trundle indeed, 
And asks us, 
"Have we stopped? Have we lost the plot? 
"Are we off the rails? Have we lost the trail?"

No, we just need to breath, 
And remember, that it's up to us to decide what we need, 
And if that thing is love indeed, then we must love the seams, 
Even when they're frayed, 
For love is waking after the dream, in which you flew away, 
And being glad that you chose to stay. 

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

I recently attended online training through my work for a male sexual violence charity. I’ve facilitated support groups for five years, since qualifying as an independent sexual violence advisor (ISVA) in 2021. Our groups are attended by male, trans and non-binary survivors. Some are early in their recovery, others are long term survivors and veterans of the support we provide.

The training was entitled Understanding male sexual difficulties through “Shame Containment Theory (SCT)”, and was designed primarily for practitioners working with people struggling with sexual compulsive disorders. SCT was recently developed by psychosexual therapist and academic Dr Lisa Etherson.

Shame is a key theme of our groups. It runs through much of the survivor experience, and it’s why so many find it so difficult to disclose and seek support. For men who’ve experienced child sexual abuse, it takes an average of 26 years to open up and ask for help.

For attendees of two of my groups in particular - Surviving Chemsex and Reclaiming Sex and Intimacy as a Survivor - deepseated shame is not only felt but embodied; of their sexuality, their gender identity, their bodies, their drug use, their ability to perform sexually, or their self-perceived “weakness” in not having been able to stop their abuse from happening. For some it is the shame of not being able to build healthy relationships, maintain companionship, or be as attentive and loving towards their partners as they want to be. Many experience loneliness and isolation as a consequence.

As facilitators, we have to be careful with how we approach shame. We must acknowledge its presence and influence over how our clients experience the world, while attempting to diminish its power. We sometimes call it the “vampire emotion” - if we shine a light on it, it retreats.

It is a complex and difficult topic, and I hoped the training would give me the tools to tackle it with more confidence and skill. What I did not anticipate was how it would impact me personally.

Shame Containment Theory

Put simply, SCT works on the basis that early adverse experiences injure us as children and shape how we feel and behave into adulthood. These are our “attachment injuries”.

Shame, Dr Etherson explains, is not simply an ugly and defective emotion that only causes suffering, but essential to our survival. It is the psychological equivalent of our central nervous system, designed to moderate our behaviour so that we are not ostracised or expelled by our group. It is what makes us feel bad as children when our parents shout at us for putting ourselves in danger, and guilty when we have been selfish or unkind to our peers.

However, being sensitive and primitive creatures, shame can cause significant, long term psychological injuries. Seeking the approval and attention of others, particularly our primary caregivers, is imperative to our survival. It is a need that burns deeper than almost anything, so when we feel rejected, overlooked or dismissed, it leaves a mark. All children experience this at some point, but the more they do the greater the damage, particularly in cases of abuse.

Dr Etherson distinguishes between contained and uncontained shame. When shame relates to how we think and feel about ourselves and our behaviour, it is contained - we experience it internally. It is still protective because it moderates our actions, but it can easily lead to unhealthy and harmful patterns of behaviour - sexual compulsivity, social anxiety, addiction, and other behavioural pathologies. At the other end of the spectrum it can lead to self aggrandisement and narcissism - elevating oneself above shame so as never to endure its effects.

We contain our shame using shame containment strategies (SCSs) - avoiding sex and relationships, using drugs and alcohol, refusing to communicate honestly, rumination and obsessive overthinking are all common. We do this to avoid uncontained shame - what happens when we are publicly humiliated or “found out”.

Our fear of uncontained shame is what drives things like the standing at the front of the class with no pants on dream. It is being belittled and made to feel stupid in public, or chastised for being weird, disgusting or undesirable. At the extreme end it is what a husband might experience if his wife discovers his porn addiction, or how a woman born into a strict, patriarchal system may be made to feel if she violates modesty or chastity laws.

Our fear is so acute because the consequences can be devastating. Our reactions to uncontained shame are both physiological and psychological - fear and panic, nausea and illness, and in the most extreme cases, suicidal ideation and completion.

The purpose of using SCT therapeutically is to help clients reimagine their relationship with shame, not to eradicate it, as this is neither possible nor desirable. Once we understand the source of our shame and recognise our own SCSs, we can start to re-contain it in healthier and more productive ways.

Home Truths

At the start of the training, Dr Etherson cited her own experience of shame as the driver behind her interest in the subject. She described shame as a great “leveller” between practitioner and client, as a universal experience, fundamental to the human condition. Confronting her own issues with it helped her better understand herself and her clients, ultimately making her a better therapist.

What surprised me was how quickly I began to interrogate the subject through the prism of my own experience. I realised the extent to which shame had shaped my self-perception, and my behaviour as both a child and an adult.

An example of an early attachment injury was my experience of school. At seven I went from a tiny community infant school where I had friends and felt safe, to a large, prestigious London prep school where the rug was pulled out from beneath me.

I went from a mixed environment, far better suited to my personality, to the culture shock of an all-boys school where I just didn’t fit in. I struggled to communicate with my peers and was quickly rejected. I found it so difficult to make friends that I retreated into myself, finding comfort in being invisible. I was much more comfortable around adults because I didn’t feel judged by them or the need to seek their approval.

This deeply held insecurity stayed with me throughout my education, entrenched by changing schools three times in seven years. It wasn’t until my early teens that I started building stable friendships with people my own age, by which time I had developed my own SCSs.

I dumbed down my intelligence to avoid being targeted. After years of desperately trying to blend into any background, I started acting in deliberately clownish ways because I felt mocking attention was a good way to get people to like me. I adopted behaviours that in no way reflected my true nature. This did not extend to direct bullying, but there were moments when I was certainly complicit in the bullying of others.

As I moved through my teens I started to shed some of these behaviours, assisted by the introduction of girls, alcohol and drugs. But the residual effects stayed with me long into adulthood.

This also extended to relationships with women, with patterns of behaviour that continued into my twenties. My quest for love and the perfect relationship was an obsession, and I would place my girlfriend at the centre of my world. Then when my feelings changed I would take it as a signal that I no longer wanted the relationship and would end it abruptly, without discussion, or any thought for what they wanted. This would cause me so much shame that instead of being honest about how I felt, I would engage in the verbal and emotional gymnastics that allowed me to avoid taking responsibility.

It was not until my late twenties and early thirties that I started to recognise and understand these patterns of behaviour. Now SCT has given me additional language and insight to make greater sense of them, and the tools to be a better son, brother, friend, partner, and maybe one day, father.

I am not sharing these experiences because they are unique, but the opposite. While what causes us to feel shame depends on our social and cultural background, the experience itself is universal. As Dr Etherson says, it is a leveller not just between therapist and client, but between all of us. We all know what it is like to feel shame, and for it to shape our behaviour from childhood to adulthood. Making sense of it does not eradicate shame, but helps us to identify it and manage its effects. If we can do this, we might have a shot at being the people we want to be.

In case you’re interested:

• More on Shame Containtment Theory

• Dr Lisa Etherson’s blog

• Shame: Free Yourself, Find Joy and Build True Self-Esteem - Joseph Burgo

Tune Of The Day:

I’m Livin’ In Shame - Diana Ross and The Supremes

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

I have written extensively on this platform about what I believe drives rough sleeping - that it is not ultimately down to a lack of housing, collapsing public services, or even the increased prevalence of addiction and mental health issues. I don’t see these things as the causes of rough sleeping. What I believe drives all of these things is disconnection. It is being isolated from one another, and not feeling part of something. It is the slow death of community.

Every individual’s experience of falling down is unique, but what unifies them is the the breakdown of one’s social support network. If you have healthy relationships with your friends, family and neighbours, then you won’t end up on the streets. Any number of factors can cause these relationships to fracture. You could even have been unlucky enough to have never had a stable network in the first place. But in the end, when a society is driven by individual need and the accrual of personal wealth, rather than by shared interest and collective identity, rough sleeping and its associated social problems are inevitable. If we fail to understand and accept this, we will never fix them.

This is also why shoving someone into a building and calling it their “home” doesn’t work either. A home is only a home if it provides sanctuary, safety, and allows someone to retreat from the excitement, danger and chaos of the world. For some, the place that we may call their “home” represents the opposite - isolation, abandonment, and the physical manifestation of the prison of their own mind. For some, the streets are where they feel connected, where they are noticed, where they have an identity. Where they feel safe.

It is meaning and purpose that ultimately drives humans. Where we find them is where we will stay.

This is what I try to convey in this latest piece. I hope you enjoy it…

You want me inside,
I get it,
I'm an eyesore,
A sore sight for sad eyes,
I'm the punchline to a tragic sentence, 
An image of the kind which punishes the retinas, 
And sends a sombre message in these very troubled times. 

That's not to say I don't believe you care,
In your own way,
And that you don't go about your day when you look at me and say,
"Darling, it's an outrage, a dirty rotten shame,
An unjust display of barbarism,
In this supposedly civilised day and age,
Something must be done,
That could have been our son, 
We simply cannot look away and hope the problem goes away,
Everyone deserves a place to stay,
And a home to call their own."

And so you want me to be scooped up and spirited away,
To a warm and sunny sanctuary,
Where no one puts their hands on me,
Where I can finally close my eyes, 
Without the fear that any time,
Anyone could come along and ruin my fucking day,
With their verbal abuse, 
Their obtuse look, 
Like I'm household refuse, 
Like I'm just a piece of human waste that needs washing down the drain. 

And you hope that a heart in the home is waiting for me,
Warming up the love of which I've always been deprived,
And that I might get a little taste of serenity, 
Cradled in the manger that I thought I'd never find. 

But baby it's cold inside, 
How can I reside? 
Staring at these four sides, running down my time, 
Or as my mother called it, the currency of life, 
Either way it ticks away before our very eyes,
And you want me to hide so you sleep a little easy,
But running in the streets is the way that I survive,
It's the way that I find, the meaning that I'm needing, 
And the only way I chase away the silence and the lies. 

So what does a home mean to you? 
How does it feel to you? 
When you close that door on the World, and shut out the noise,
What does that sound of wood on wood symbolise? 
Peace? Comfort? Security? 
The return to your brood, your tribe, your greatest admirer? 
Is that the sound of your feet as they warm by the fire? 
Your phone ringing, doorbell dinging, 
The sound of your loved one singing from the kitchen, 
Is that the busy sound of love? 

Because to me that is the sound of being forgotten,
When that key turns, the World turns its back,
And I am forced to endure the indignity,
Of these four walls, 
Who insult me with their silent sympathy, 
The calm before the storm,
Before they turn into my wailing thoughts, 
And I am drowned in self pity,
And the drip drip drip of the sink as it sings to me,
No brood, no food, no family gatherings on Zoom,
No sound of my loved one calling from the next room,
Only the voices of the dead, 
Who chase me round my head,
Taunting me, and calling me to take their place instead.

And I can only shut them up by wrenching that fucking door open and getting back on my feet,
Back to the street,
Back to where the World happens,
Where the noise deafens,
Where the smells and sounds of this life assault my withering senses,
And I am blinded and reminded that, for now at least, I am still alive!

Cos baby it's cold inside,
How can I reside? 
Staring at these four sides, running down my time, 
Or as my mother called it, the currency of life, 
Either way it ticks away before our very eyes,
And you want me to hide so you sleep a little easy,
But running in the streets is the way that I survive,
It's the way that I find, the meaning that I'm needing, 
And the only way I chase away the silence and the lies. 

Sweet little lies, 
That's what they tell us,
Like how we're not corrupted by the things that make us jealous, 
How cruelty and weakness, will always be defeated,
By the wisdom and the bravery we all possess within us,
And through my innocent eyes I believed it all,
I stood tall,
Puff chested,
Ready to be tested,
To fight for a system I believed should be protected,
And the childish hope that I would always be accepted,
But what do you do, when that system doesn't believe in you? 
Where do you turn when that hope is burned,
On the pyre of the faith that you never saw returned,
And when the community, of which you thought you were a member,
Disappears behind each door, 
Takes pride in their tribe no more, 
But in a great act of spiritual surrender, 
No longer can remember why it ever stood before. 

Baby it's cold tonight,
But I'll be alright,
I'll just sit here, beneath the streetlights, 
And wait for the sun to rise. 

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

When someone becomes homeless, and their friends and family are unwilling or unable to help them, or indeed don’t exist, what happens? What’s the mechanism by which they can be helped?

Basically, if all else has failed, they need to go to the council. Councils are responsible for providing housing to people in their borough, as long as they have a “local connection” (having lived in the borough six months out of twelve, three years out of five, or having close family there). Assuming they do, the council must assess the individual and try to work out a suitable solution.

The primary pieces of legislation governing this process are the Homelessness Reduction Act (2017) and the Housing Act (1996). Standard practice in recent years — since most people stopped having any money — has been for councils to attempt all sorts of hocus pocus using these laws to avoid accommodating someone; questioning their connection and palming them off onto another council, claiming they’re not vulnerable enough to be considered “priority need” (which includes most single men), or arguing they’re not eligible because they made themselves “intentionally homeless” (an ugly term with an intentionally broad definition). It sounds cruel, and it is, but given the state of councils’ finances and the ludicrous cost of housing, it’s understandable how we got here.

Following Andy Burnham’s Day One pledge to “end rough sleeping”, which anyone who read my piece a few weeks back will know I’m sadly sceptical of, he’s now announced the “Everyone in by Christmas” scheme. I won’t go into the details, but given the figures pledged are in the millions rather than the billions, I’m not holding my breath for a long‑term fix. In the short term though, councils will be under renewed pressure to stop playing their dirty games and get people in no matter what.

So the council have reluctantly accepted they need to accommodate you. Now what? Where will you go?

Given that housing stock and access to support services vary wildly from borough to borough, this depends on where you are. It also depends on your needs and circumstances — are you a single woman fleeing a violent relationship? A family? A dependent drinker? Recently released from prison?

Some will be placed in emergency or temporary accommodation; a hotel paid for by the council, or a HMO (house of multiple occupancy) either owned by them or rented from a private landlord. Generally bleak, soulless places providing little to no support, there are roughly 135,000 households — including 177,000 children — currently living in this type of accommodation. Many are stuck for years in the ultimate limbo.

Others will be referred to supported accommodation — a hostel or HMO run by a charity, where staff are either on site or conduct home visits. These charities get the lion’s share of their funding from councils, and their housing stock comes from various sources — housing associations, private landlords, and increasingly properties owned by the charities themselves.

UC v HB

From 2013 onwards the benefits system was overhauled, and Universal Credit (UC) was introduced. The idea was to tidy up the clunky old system by replacing it with a single monthly payment from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). This payment includes housing benefit (HB), now known as “Universal Credit Housing Element”. Over the years the old system was phased out and now virtually everyone who claims benefits receives UC, including housing element to help pay rent (this does not include disability benefit — now known as personal independence payments (PIP) — which is still paid separately). However, this did not apply to people in homelessness accommodation. Their rent is still covered by the old system; HB paid out by the council.

If you’re employed, UC is paid on an intuitive sliding scale — the more you earn, the less UC you get. Earn enough and it knocks out your UC for that month completely. Earn less the next month and your payments restart. You track all this on your UC account. It’s not the best system, but it works well enough if you vaguely know how to use a computer or phone (for those who don’t, it’s a nightmare, but that’s a separate issue).

Old‑style HB is not intuitive. You apply on the council website and they send you a letter confirming that you’re eligible (which will get to you when it gets to you). They will then pay your landlord, but a month in arrears. From the jump, you’re a month behind on rent.

If you’re unemployed and claiming benefits this isn’t such a problem. If you’re employed it’s a big problem, for two reasons: first, they won’t calculate how much HB they’ll pay until after they’ve received your latest payslip. You can do a benefit entitlement check, but it’s only an approximation. Second, if you earn more the following month, it won’t be until the month after that that you receive your reduced HB — and you won’t know how much it’s been reduced by until you get it! Most people earn roughly the same month to month, but people in supported housing are more likely to be in causal or insecure employment, where hours — and wages — go up and down.

The Trap

So you already have a big incentive to work less to avoid being hit with increased housing costs. The other problem is that supported accommodation is incredibly expensive, due to insurance, staffing, and a host of other costs. Supported housing is heavily regulated and insulated from market rates, meaning a room costs a similar amount wherever you are in the country — but this is still about £1,350 per month, far more than most people would pay for a room in a shared house even in London. Even if you work 20 hours per week you still need to cover a little over half of that, on a low income, before you’ve paid for anything else.

There’s a vague threshold of about 16 hours per week that councils and job centres claim people can work before their HB gets reduced, but this is nonsense. It’s not about hours; it’s about earnings. You can easily work under 16 hours and this still affect your HB. You need to be working closer to 10 hours to be safe, and if you can find me a low skilled job offering 10 hours per week or less then do please let me know.

Naturally, people who end up in supported accommodation make the calculation that… it ain’t fucking worth it. And it’s not hard to see why. There’s going to be a reason why and how they ended up in the situation they did. Most are coming in with mental health, physical health, and addiction issues ranging from the relative to the very serious.

So most, when they move in, will likely be unemployed and already on basic UC (£400 per month for a single adult, dependent on sanctions/deductions). Or they may already get the upper rate of UC (limited capability to work), possibly with PIP to boot. This can total an income of between £1,000–1,500 per month. And as long as they’re on benefits and not working, guess what — their housing benefit will be paid in full.

If they’re only on basic UC, support workers are under significant pressure to maximise their income. And how are they going to do that? By helping them get a job? Not when you explain to people already struggling with the prospect of working how much less money they’ll have if they do. Instead they are encouraged to maximise their benefits. And it’s not just support workers — probation officers, social workers, recovery workers, and any other professionals who come into regular contact with people in supported housing, are forced to advise the same thing.

As I’ve already stated, some people in supported housing really aren’t capable of working. But plenty are, and when they arrive they’re immediately disincentivised by this financial trap. In some cases people actively want to get a job, and are advised against doing so because of how much harder it will be for them to make ends meet! We take people already in a vulnerable state, already starting from a point of low self‑esteem and self‑worth, and then reinforce this by encouraging them to insist to the government that they aren’t well enough to work!

Aside from this being a cruel and economically fuck‑witted system, it also gives the likes of Robert Jenrick — bad faith actor though he is — just cause for going after people on benefits. Reform’s benefits proposals are questionable to say the least, but the simple argument that too many people aren’t working who should be, and that we should therefore discourage this and make it harder to claim benefits, is clearly going to land when we have madness like this going on!

And it’s a simple fix. You just need to bring supported housing rates under UC housing element, or reform HB so it works on a similar sliding scale. And instead of having this ludicrous system of people having their housing benefit paid a month in arrears, and only finding out how much they’re getting when they receive the fucking statement in the post, you allow them to track it online as with UC. If there was a clear and reasonable cap people could earn before their HB was reduced, it would be much easier for them to manage work while living in supported housing. And much easier for support workers to argue for the merits of working.

There is no doubt the benefits system is broken in this country. There is no doubt far too many people are economically inactive. By having a system which actively discourages people from working, even if they want to, we perpetuate this broken system and fuel the fire powering the far right. Not to mention break the spirits of people when we should be lifting them. If the government is serious about ending rough sleeping and breaking the cycle of homelessness then ending this lunacy would be a welcome start.

Tune of the Day:

Electro Deluxe - Let’s go to work

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

When love is over, what will you do? 
Howl your sorrow at the moon? 
Will you wallow in regretful tears, and fear the furious and piercing pain that comes when one must face the truth? 

What will you do? 
When the glittering stars that once smiled down upon you so kindly, so benignly, are extinguished with a whisper, 
The black sky fired like an arrow, which disappears over the horizon, and plunges your world into suffocating shadow. 

Will you hide in your room? 
And confide in that malicious old friend? Whose invariable answer to the question of what to do is rooted in his peverse presumption of inevitable doom... 
His vicious words a familiar comfort to you, 
An excuse to surrender to the gloom. 

This blazing sunshine, it heats our souls,
And moves the music through us all, 
We dance beyond the midnight call, 
Upon the ledge, 
Then over the edge, 
We fall, 
To ecstatic depths,
Resisting our troubled and weary rest,
For this is the true test,
When we are left to play, alone and bereft,
Among Love's empty halls. 

For when the light fades, 
When it disappears beneath the waves, 
And carries away that perfect day, 
That endless second,
That immortal moment, 
That dream,
In which you prayed that you would always stay,
What will you do? 

Will you refuse to accept? 
And in a fruitless attempt to prevent the inevitable,
Turn and sprint back to the fault line with desperate intent, 
Only to discover that fear and fury are useless,
In the face of that cruel and unforgiving mistress. 

This endless quest for the very best this world has to offer mere mortals,
This "vision" of the young and free, to follow our dreams across the sea,
To always chase what we believe, and how we wish this world to be,
But,
From the wind my child, you'll see,
We take our marching orders. 

And when it turns, what will you do? 
When journey's course is commandeered and steered beyond control, 
And we must bow to the mercy of the elements, 
Which attempt to drown our spirits and steal our souls,
Break our hearts and break our bones,
Will you retreat below deck, and surrender the rest of what is left or,
Take a breath,
Take the lines and summon the strength to tack west,
Until the storm has passed,
Or taken you to your final rest. 

When love is over,
When the sun has set,
When joyous memories are tinged with regret,
When the music stops,
When the sound of laughter and the bellows from your fellows are lost,
When your heart's voice is gone and can sing no more,
When the tribe to which you once belonged, 
No longer fights with the pride it did before,
What will you do? 

Will you fall to your knees? 
Surrender it all? 
Slowly sink to the ocean floor? 
Will you hide in the trees? 
Disappear into that screen? 
Desperately attempt to forget the unease of everything you've seen or,
Will you breathe? 
Taste the air and feel the breeze? 

And remember that if you can see the sky and smell the sea then you are still free,
You are still a marvel,
A startling collection of hopes and dreams that shimmer and sparkle,
Like sunlight dancing on the surface of the rivers and the streams,
You are Adam and Eve,
You are the World,
You are God,
You are the Universe,
And everything in-between,
You are Love,
And you are never over.

Tune of the day:

When Love Is Over - Villem, Mcleod, Leo Wood

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

The Issue

It’s been a couple of weeks since Andy Burnham took the reins of his new government, and the policy proposals have come thick and fast. In that time we’ve had announcements (some quite vague, others more detailed) on tackling:

• Rough sleeping

• Social care

• Defence

• Cost of living

• Energy

• Housing

• Devolution

Achieving genuine lasting change in any of these areas will be complex, expensive, and with plans liable to be stalled by political deadlock and interference from certain entities with special interests. And delivering on any of them before the next general election (which at the time of writing could be anything from three months to three years away), is a mammoth task.

One area of public policy which has not been subject to a big, media-attention-grabbing announcement is mental health. There have been some statements and proposals scattered across the landscape, but nothing akin to what’s been announced on homelessness or social care reform.

The scale of the mental health crisis is huge, and one of the biggest challenges is the strain that it places on other services, primarily the NHS and the police.

Most people, particularly those who live in big towns and cities, will have seen someone in public who is clearly having a serious mental health episode. Their behaviour would have been alarming, erratic, and seemingly likely to put either themselves or someone else in danger.

Imagine you were a bystander who had decided to intervene. What would you do? Hopefully, after assessing the risk of danger, you’d call either the police or an ambulance.

The Gap

The idea of approaching our mental health like our physical health has become more ubiquitous in recent years, with analogies like treating a broken leg or an infection often parroted. You don’t ignore these things and allow them to get worse, you seek appropriate care. So, if this is what we’re meant to do with our mental health, what does that mean for responding to mental health emergencies?

While responding to mental health emergencies has become an increasingly important part of police and paramedic training in recent years, it is highly dissatisfactory for ultimate responsibility to lie with them.

The role of the police in society is to protect life, preserve the peace, prevent and investigate crime, and bring offenders to justice. In a situation where there is a risk to public safety it is their duty to respond. But because of their standard training, everyday experiences, and traditional role in society, if what they are responding to is someone in acute mental health crisis, they are likely to make the situation worse.

They are the first to admit this, and since the Right Care, Right Person protocol was introduced in July 2023, the police’s threshold for assessing risk and responding to a mental health emergency has significantly increased. Now if you call 999 in such a situation and ask for the police, they will most likely recommend you call an ambulance.

So, provided the individual is no perceived risk to public safety, it’s the paramedics responsibility to deal with them. They are usually better placed than the police, but their expertise is still in physical health. Their role is to provide specialist care, diagnostic assessment and treatment to people who are acutely ill or injured in an emergency. It is not to respond to those in mental health crisis.

If we are to believe that mental health and physical health are different and should be treated as such, how can we expect emergency responders to be experts in both disciplines? You would need to devise a five-ten year degree course and pay them a six figure salary to justify the training and skill level expectations.

Currently paramedics’ training is insufficient, and responding to mental health emergencies places considerable strain on their time and resources. Crucially, they also do not have the statutory powers needed to detain people and section them under the Mental Health Act if they believe them to be a threat to themselves or others. These powers are limited to the police, which is why they are often required to respond to these types of incidents, despite it being inappropriate for them to do so.

The Solution

Not hard to see where I’m going with this is it… you establish a mental health emergency service. 999, blue lights, sexy uniforms, and with the proper training and necessary powers to appropriately deal with people in mental health emergencies.

Now, a reasonable question is - what classifies as a mental health emergency? What if someone is feeling suicidal, can they just call Mental Health Emergency Response (MHER - working title)?

They can, but it will be up to the trained call handler on the other end of the line to determine whether the situation warrants a call out. Just as it is when someone calls 999 and asks for the police or an ambulance. Those calls are screened and the case triaged by someone with the training and knowledge to decide whether this is an emergency or not.

If the individual goes on to tell the handler that they have been having sucidal thoughts, and possibly even active plans to take their own life, then it may be appropriate for the handler to gently, but firmly, explain that this is not the right number and to give them an alternative. There are several 24hr mental health crisis lines, like the Samaritans, that exist to provide people in this situation with the right type of support. It would therefore be best practice for a MHER handler to redirect the call.

However, if the individual is screaming down the phone, audibly smashing things up in their vicinty, and threatening to do themselves and others harm, then the handler is likely to send a response team.

Ah, but what if that person was exagerrating the severity of their situation, and when the MHER team showed up it turned out it wasn’t that serious? Fine. The police and ambulance end up being called out on bogus and unneccesary calls all the time. The point is it won’t be them having to deal with this call as well.

Other cases are more clearcut. Like when a member of the public witnesses someone standing on a bridge and suspects that they are about to jump. They have to make a split second decision on whether it’s the police or the ambulance. They don’t seem to be a threat to the public… on the other hand what happens if they need to be detained? Maybe call both? Well then you’ve got both the police and paramedics needing to attend the scene, to deal with a situation that neither are appropriately trained to respond to. That is when you call MHER.

Similarly if someone is walking down the street evidently experiencing psychosis, half naked, screaming and crying. Their behivour is alarming, and could potentially be dangerous, but it is clear to any reasonable person that what they need is care and support, not to be wrestled to the ground and cuffed. That is when you call MHER.

But how could mental health workers be allowed to physically restrain and detain people? You simply give them the power. The police have it, so there is nothing stopping us from introducing legislation to grant similar, limited powers to a different service. It is not difficult to imagine how this would work in practice. There are countless, daily examples of the police responding to incidents like this. Surely it makes more sense for it to be trained mental health professionals instead?

So, once the mental health patient has been taken into MHER’s care, what then? As it stands, 46% of individuals taken into police custody following a mental health episode are taken to A & E, and this rises to between 50 and 60% of those being taken into care by paramedics. The rest are either deemed safe to leave at home, or taken to a Health Based Place of Safety (HBPoS) - a safe and secure location, usually within a mental health unit or general hospital. This avoids the individual being wrongfully taken to A & E or into police custody.

In order for MHER to successfully direct mental health emergencies away from police, paramedics and A & E staff, HBPoS will need to be expanded into a network of mental health emergency departments, either based within general hospitals, mental health hospitals, or as separate mental health units. They will of course be smaller and less numerous than regular A & E departments, but will still alleviate a huge amount of pressure. Here patients would be triaged and then either treated and discharged back into the community or, if secondary care is required, transferred on from there.

The Reality

None of this is simple, and there are obvious criticisms.

Some will say this is too ambitious, too expensive, or too disruptive to existing services. Others will argue that giving mental health professionals powers of detention is a step too far, or that creating a new emergency service risks confusion, duplication, or mission creep. And some will insist that the answer is simply to “fix what we already have” rather than build something new.

These are fair points, and deserve to be taken seriously. But the reality is that the current system is failing — not because the police or paramedics are doing a bad job, but because we are asking them to do a job they were never designed for. Mental health emergencies are fundamentally different from physical emergencies or public‑order incidents, and pretending otherwise has created a structural gap that no amount of training or goodwill can close.

If we genuinely believe mental health should be treated with the same seriousness as physical health, then our emergency‑response system needs to reflect that. A dedicated mental health emergency service is not a luxury or an overreach, it is a common sense solution to a massive problem that causes untold suffering and economic damage on a daily basis.

It would:

• Alleviate pressure on the police and the NHS, saving these services potentially billions each year

• Give people experiencing mental health crisis the right kind of support in the right moment

• Improve outcomes not just in health but also social care settings

• Provide clarity in terms of the remit of our current emergency service setup

• Make the UK the world’s first country to establish such a service, and therefore the world leader in mental health emergency response

This isn’t a fully‑formed blueprint. It’s the start of a conversation — one that needs to happen, and one that I intend to keep developing. Over the coming weeks I’ll be refining the idea, testing it, and inviting others to do the same. Because if we’re serious about improving mental health outcomes in this country, we can’t keep relying on a system that everyone quietly agrees isn’t working. We need to imagine something better. And then we need to ask, honestly and rigorously, whether we have the courage to build it.

Tune of the Day:

Remedies - Mollie Collins and Ruth Royall

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

Burnham’s premiership is a week old, and the vibe is loud and clear. Be the opposite of Keir Starmer. That means slick social media, charm and charisma, and ideas. Lots of ideas. Statements, activity, action! Here is my plan! Here is my vision! I’m here for it. My god, have we needed a group of politicians to come along and tell us a good story, and show us that they intend to use their power to make life better for people.

Given that I’ve spent a large chunk of my career working in homelessness services, both as an outreach worker and residential support worker, you would therefore think I’d have jumped for joy at Burnham’s Day One pledge to “end rough sleeping”. But the truth is when I first heard it, my heart sank. It was like I was future me, already sad about his inevitable failure to make good on his promise.

I know that’s absurdly pessimistic, but this is an issue I care deeply about and the thing is… we’ve heard it all before. From Teresa May, from Boris Johnson, from him! He said he would end rough sleeping in Manchester, and he didn’t! I’m not judging him for that. He did great things on homelessness, possibly more than any single politician has in the last two decades. The man donated 15 percent of his mayor’s salary to the fucking cause, clearly he really cares about it! But caring isn’t enough.

It’s a mind bogglingly complex issue, and for anyone who’s interested I go into more detail in a piece I wrote earlier this year. But the fundamental point is this… fixing rough sleeping is not just about putting people in buildings and calling them “homes”.

Why did Burnham’s A Bed Every Night (ABEN) scheme in Manchester ultimately fail to end rough sleeping? Why did the Everyone In campaign in the wake of the pandemic unravel, and see the thousands of people that it accommodated end up back on the streets? Because once you’ve found someone a bed for the night, or the week or even the month, then what do you do?

The majority of rough sleepers have chronic mental health and addiction issues. In lots of cases they are traumatised by experiences of abuse and personal tragedy. Andy Burnham clearly understands this, which is why he says sensible things about properly funding mental health and addiction services. He understands that cuts to the prison and probation service have contributed to the sharp rise in rough sleeping over the past decade or more. He understands that local authorities being brought to the brink of financial ruin has made everything much worse, and that the state of housing, both costs and pressures, is utterly obscene.

But what is the common thread? What links the stories of the people who end up on the street? Isolation. Being disconnected from themselves and the people around them.

If I lost my job, or my relationship broke down, or I was evicted from my home, and I started drinking and using drugs to cope, I would not end up living on the street. That’s because my family and friends wouldn’t let that happen. And that goes for the majority of the population. People end up living on the street because their social support network has broken down. This could have been due to their upbringing, born into a socially dysfunctional and chaotic environment, or be a consequence of their own decisions and actions. Either way, an inadequate or non-existent social support network is by far the greatest risk factor.

Rough sleeping and homelessness exploded under Thatcher, an era defined by the ideological belief in the sanctity of the individual. “Collectivism”, “solidarity”, “state intervention”, these were ideas associated with socialism, which was the antithesis of freedom and liberty. But what those ideas also underpinned was the concept of community.

The smaller people’s worlds are, and the more individualised their perception of citizenship is, the greater the pressure on themselves and their immediate circle to not fail. To not fall down. Because if you fall you will hit the ground hard, and with only yourself and your immediate circle taking the strain, it will be that much harder to get back up.

As an outreach worker I met many rough sleepers who had places to sleep for the night, whether they be shelters, temporary accommodation or even their own flats. Many people can’t get their heads around this. Why on earth would someone choose to sleep on the streets if they had a house? Because a house is only made a home by the people who live in it. By people who feel connected, loved and cared for. Who feel safe and comfortable within its walls.

These people didn’t feel that connection to a place that other people had moved them into and called their “home”. All they were to them were buildings, which contained nothing but deafening and suffocating silence. Where were the people? Where was the activity, and a world to engage with? The streets. That was their community.

I’m not saying this applies to everyone rough sleeping, but it applies to far more than most people realise. Far more problems than you can resolve by simply finding houses and sticking people in them. The problem is not the absence of a house, it is the absence of purpose. It is the absence of a settled home that exists in their minds.

When Andy Burnham talks about “rolling back 40 years of neo-liberalism”, nebulous as this statement is, I do genuinely believe that what he’s talking about is rebuilding communities, and reversing the damage caused by the hyper-individualism that has engulfed our society. And he is talking my fucking language. What a feeling it is to have a prime minister with whom I share not only core values but also the ideas behind actually making society better! What a moment. What an opportunity.

Which is exactly why the overriding feeling I had when Burnham made his Day One pledge to end rough sleeping was anxiety. The scale of the problems we face as a country is quite overwhelming, and the conditions within which a prime minister has to work in order to solve them have never been more challenging. An incredibly toxic, never ending media cycle and the increasing influence of AI, an electorate who want immediate solutions to very complex problems, and a climate of chronic disdain and mistrust of politicians. Not to mention dizzying global challenges and our over-exposure to their effects. It is within this environment that Burnham is trying to rebuild society. And it will be a matter of weeks or months at most before his opponents in parliament and the media claim that he has reneged on his rough sleeper pledge, despite the fact that they all know a short term solution to this problem is impossible.

At the same time, he has a chancellor who dramatically resigned as defence secretary only 6 weeks ago over Britain’s woeful military and defence capabilities, an ever threatening Russia and a straight up hostile US, who’ve made it clear they have no intention of defending Europe anymore. There is pressure on all sides for him to deal with this problem, and it will be painfully complex and eye-wateringly expensive. Then there’s social care, the NHS, and his pledge to oversee the “biggest house building programme since the post-war period”. Addressing all of this will take time and money, two privileges he’s unlikely to be afforded ahead of the next election.

If Burnham does succeed at reimagining the way our society is structured and implementing his vision, then ending rough sleeping may well be a happy consequence of that. But it will take decades. As I’ve already emphasised, you don’t end rough sleeping by throwing money at it. You have to gear the machinery of government towards tackling its causes as well as its symptoms, and for that you need to not only rebuild communities, but re-establish people’s sense of collective identity. You need to lead the way in encouraging people to consider themselves part of something bigger and more important. You need to lead them out of the age of the worship of the self, and you can’t do that with good faith and a sound public policy programme alone.

I have read many arguments about how the pledge shouldn’t be taken too literally, and that what matters is the symbolism of it. It is a signal of his values and the direction he wants to go in. I don’t buy that. This is an issue that he clearly deeply cares about. It would be perverse to say the least if he had made that pledge on the first day of his premiership and didn’t intend to, or believe he could, deliver it.

If he had stood on the steps of Downing Street on Day One and pledged to build a National Social Care Service, or get defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, I’d have been nervous sure, and bracing myself, but I’d have believed it. I’d have thought oooofff, that’s gonna be tough but maybe he can do it. But he can’t do this. He can’t end rough sleeping while he’s prime minister. And I fear that this pledge will be one he comes to regret. A stick his enemies will beat him with with relish. Proof of his all things to all men style of politics, and ultimately his failure to deliver on his promises. This is what I fear, and I desperately hope that I’m wrong.

Tune of the Day:

Delegation - Oh Honey

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

A few months back I was feeling a bit low and lost, and decided to go for a walk in a nearby town to try and clear my head. I ended up in the graveyard of a very old and historically signiciant church. Contrary to popular opinion I really like graveyards and cemetaries. I don’t fear the dead, and I don’t pity them either. They have been freed from suffering and are simply resting, and so I find them exceptionally calm and peaceful places.

As I weaved through the headstones I saw one in the distance that had an inscription on the back. I found this quite unusual and was intrigued. As I got closer I was able to read what it said:

“When I see you again, I’ll be dancing.”

I moved round to look at the front. It read:

Margaret Elizabeth Johnson

14.04.1944 - 15.04.2017

To live in the hearts of those we love is not to die

Anyone who knows me well will understand just how strongly I would have identified with the words that this woman had chosen to immortalise. Admittedly I am a hopeless romantic, and my imagination does a lot of heavy lifting as I interact with the world around me, but it was like she knew me, and had appeared to me when I needed her to. And when I reached out and touched the stone I felt this energy flowing through me, filling me with both serenity and clarity.

It was a hugely significant moment, and there and then I decided to write something for her. All I have are those few words and the experience that I had when she appeared to me, but it was enough for me to imagine her life and commit it to verse.

So, this is the Ballad of Madge.

(I don’t usually do this, but I’d recommend listening to the audio for this one)

Margaret was born in the shadow of the bombs, but in the mid-spring mild the daylight shone,

A ready made wise child, blinking in the sun,

Charming everyone,

With wide eyes and ready made smiles,

While the world wined and the war raged on,

No need to cry little one,

No need to cry, we’ve almost won.

Wrapped up tight in the 47 freeze, an arctic bear cub with knobbly knees,

She couldn’t keep up her sister teased, but Madge was a warrior queen,

And she could have caught her if she pleased, but there was no need for her to plead,

For the queen struck fear in her enemies,

A flash of steel she’d wield the blow and leave them to bleed in the snow,

Margaret, the warrior queen.

And the queen daydreamed of distant shores, the sea and the sun and the rattle of oars,

She dreamed of people, places and sounds, the salt in the air and the treasures she’d found,

Margaret, the pirate, at the back of the class with her head in the clouds,

“Margaret Thomas, are you there?!”

Came the call from Mr Blair,

“You always seem to be elsewhere girl, have a care girl, do share the wares of your wandering ways, we’ve got all day after all!”

But Mum and Dad and Auntie May were all au fait with Madge’s ways,

The way she’d sing and dance and twirl, her golden curls… their golden girl…

She’d laugh all day and spin the world, into a game where magic made,

The cold and hunger stay away, the dull and darkness kept at bay,

With her wild and wondrous ways, and every day they hoped and prayed,

Mum and Dad and Auntie May, that she would always stay the same,

Margaret, their golden girl, whose golden glow lit up their world.

But their little cub was growing up, and blowing up and throwing stuff!

Her little paws were growing claws, for smashing floors and slamming doors,

And banging seemed a nobler case, than to confirm to petty laws,

To Madge it seemed like weakness born,

From narrow minds in narrow walls, and narrow lines on narrow lawns,

“My god” she thought, “no life at all, is this not why we fought the war?

“To spread our wings and sing our call, laugh at those in uniform!?”

To be free… and not let freedom fall to dust, and ruin,

For this young woman a plan was brewing, “yes” she thought, “I’ll see it all”,

Margaret, the explorer, the golden girl in the big wide world would learn what came before her.

And so our Madge said her goodbyes, to Mum and Dad, who cried and cried,

And Auntie May… who claimed she had been waiting for this day,

Simply sighed, and then eyed our Madge with a knowing smile,

“For you my child, we’ll wait a while… but know you’ll always find your way.”

So,

To the trail our Madge was called, and hailed the first bus from St Paul’s,

To Dover, Belgrade, Istanbul, Mosul, Tehran and Kabul,

She sang and swayed and laughed and played, our Madge was back to her old ways,

The traveller, the warrior, the pirate, the explorer,

And every fellow that she met would soon come to adore her,

Every local that she dazzled as she hopped across the border,

Would say a prayer for one so fair, and marvel how she never scared, but while her way to anywhere, and smile all day with grace and air,

In sun and shade or wind and rain, in the face of joy or pain,

The magic that her music made would always help her on her way,

And those she met would always say…

That if one day a man could take his hand in his and hold her,

Then his happiness would know no end,

For no brighter light would shine again… nor ever keep him warmer.

And such a man he did exist, and was in fact in Madge’s midst,

A quiet kind and thoughtful soul, whose truest love was rock n roll,

His name was William Johnson, but by Billy he did go,

And joined their ranks as their gang drank, on the banks back in Aleppo,

He proved himself a mellow fellow, and strummed until the sky turned yellow,

He didn’t bellow or play the fool, nor make an effort to be cool,

He didn’t swoon or strut his stuff, just took his place upon the bus,

And from afar would look at Madge, then turn away when she looked back,

With corners creased and manner mild, she saw the kindness in his smile.

And when he’d flick his long dark hair, and raise a cheeky brow,

It made her tummy tumble in a way she knew not how,

And though among their number there were others with a hunger, to win the heart of Margaret with their style, wit and wonder,

She had no time for show offs, or the ones who loved the stage,

It was Billy then, and always would be Billy from that day.

So passed a year and one full day, and many miles to her name,

Our Madge was ready to return, to face the life that she had spurned,

But armed was she with knowledge most could only hope to learn,

About this magic marvel, and the spin we take in turns.

So Madge and Billy bade farewell, and made their way along the trail,

Back, across the cradle, and the source of humankind,

To the northern lands of Europe and some treasures still to find,

And though the shores of Blighty were still firmly in their minds,

They had one or two ideas of how to spend their precious time,

For Billy had heard Jimi would be playing on the Rhine,

Though Madge was more a Dusty girl she’d never have declined,

To see the god of rock n roll, and feel his magic shake her soul?

Their hearts were pounding as they stole, the bus that took them to the show!

But as they joined the thousands who were wild in their chanting,

Our Billy had a twinge of fear and didn’t want to chance it,

He turned to Madge and asked what they should do if they were parted,

And Madge replied, with shining eyes, that Billy shouldn’t fear,

For if that were to happen she would never not be near,

And when she’d finally appear… as the crowds departed…

He would know it was his love indeed, cos when he saw her, she’d be dancing.

On their return they tied the knot and settled down for good,

They made their home in Wiltshire in a cottage in the woods,

With a scrap of land to try their hand at tending their own crops,

And though they often failed they were happy with their lot,

Our Billy bit the bullet, and went to work in town, dealing every day with in-trays, pushing paper round and round,

And though the job meant little, he was grateful, more than he could say,

For what was there to greet him when he came home every day.

And as for Madge, she had a stab, at music art and drama,

And proved a better teacher than she ever was a farmer,

She loved the kids, they loved her more, she took them to the farthest shores,

Their little minds were opened wide, as she’d guide them to the door,

To all the wonders she herself had witnessed in her life,

And taught them all they could be more, than just a husband or a father, a mother or a wife.

And as for motherhood, come it would,

Though fearful she had always been, she embraced it, as she knew she always could,

She held her babies in her arms… and love… had never felt so good.

Madge and Billy built a castle in their happy little wood,

Playing in their garden every moment that they could,

They read them C.S Lewis, Tolkien, Charlie Dickens, Roald Dahl too,

They formed a band and clapped their hands and sang until the twilight hue,

They built a family, made from happiness at home,

That led the children on their way, until they made their own.

Many more blissful years did pass, for Billy and our Madge,

Their little ones became big ones, and many more were had.

But then one day, when they were grey, Margaret got the news,

She had succumb to sickness, and gradually it grew,

And though the doctors tried their best, eventually they knew,

That Madge’s time was ticking, and there was nothing they could do.

The warrior had fallen, the pirate sailed her last,

The days of her exploring, were firmly in the past,

Our Billy couldn’t understand, nor see the die was cast,

His angel was withdrawing, and she was fading fast.

At first he couldn’t cope he started falling from the sky,

Spinning into grieving madness only screaming “why?!”

His golden girl was leaving him, surely they were teasing him, he just wouldn’t believe that they were running out of time!

But then our Madge held out her hand… and drew him to her side,

And whispered in his ear,

That he shouldn’t fear,

Though all of time, and every dime, couldn’t buy a year of life,

For always she’d be here,

“With you my darling William, and you know the reason why,

“For living in the hearts of those we love is not to die”,

And though our Billy cried, he knew that it was true,

That Margaret Johnson would live on,

That she would always sing her song,

In every heart she knew.

And that when he’d close his eyes, he will always hear his darling,

Singing to the skies, for all the world… and always laughing,

And when she turns around he’ll see that smile so enchanting,

And know it is his love indeed, cos when he see’s her… she’ll be dancing…

She’ll be dancing…

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

The weekend before the story of the murder of Henry Nowak broke, I was sitting on the square of a pretty market town in the south of England having a drink with a friend. There was a group of kids on the other side of the square being loud and dicking around, as is their civic duty as British teenagers. There was a noise, a commotion, and then I saw was two male police officers dragging a teenage girl to the floor and handcuffing her. She did not go quietly, screaming and struggling for dear life, and when they pulled her to her feet and tried to drag her to the car she managed to get a hand free and punched one of them. She really was banged to rights then.

I didn’t see what had happened before the arrest, so I have no idea whether the police’s actions were proportionate or not. But what’s interesting are the reactions of some of the people I’ve told this story to.

They also had no idea what had happened, but immediately assumed that this was a case of heavy handed, bullying thuggery on the part of the police. I’d then tell them the part about her punching one of them and they’d go “oh”, as if to imply that maybe the police’s actions were justified after all. The point is that the police have such a bad reputation at the moment that without any knowledge of the details of an incident, people assume that they must be at fault.

What made this incident all the more jarring was that as it was taking place, every single kid watching had their phones out filming it.

You may have no sympathy for the police, and if so then you won’t agree with the sentiment of this article, but just imagine for a moment what that must be like. Having a job that requires you to interact with the public, in often challenging and volatile situations that require you to think quickly, and knowing that your every action is being filmed. Not by CCTV, or TV cameras, but by random members of the public who, with absolutely no thought or reflection, will then post it on the internet for all the world to see.

Some may argue that this is a good thing, as it serves to hold the police to account. But what happens when the only thing people see is one short clip of an incident? Say, for example, two police officers pinning down and cuffing a screaming teenage girl? What are most people going to think when they watch that video and have no knowledge of what took place before?

Which brings us to Henry Nowak.

There are so many awful angles to this story, but one of the most chilling was seeing the mob showing up at Vickrum Digwa’s family’s street in Southampton, presumably in an attempt to attack their house or anyone they suspected of being connected to them. Uglier scenes have since been seen in Northern Ireland, and are part of a wider and worrying trend of street violence and civic unrest.

Thankfully the police were there to stop them. But then what happened? Aside from the missiles and abuse hurled at them, what did the mob then do?

Filmed them.

It is one of the eeriest things I see on TV at the moment, footage of people shoving their phones in other people’s faces and convincing themselves that it is their civic right. That they are somehow assuming the role of a heroic citizen journalist broadcasting the truth to the the world. The reality is that they are pouring petrol on a wildfire of online misinformation and propaganda that is already out of control.

As citizens we have a duty to try and keep society functioning, to help maintain trust in each other. We teach children not to lie, cheat or steal, not just because it is the right thing to do but because trust is key to our survival. If it breaks down, and we stop trusting our fellow citizens and the vital institutions that keep our society functioning, then we’re fucked.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not lamenting the purity and virtuousness of a misunderstood minority. I’ve met plenty of police officers in my time and a lot of them have been tossers. And there are communities up and down the country who’ve been long terrorised by the police, and have every right to fear and loath them. But that does not apply to the majority of us. Most people don’t appreciate this, but we are actually incredibly lucky to have the police that we have. In most equivalent countries, like the US, France, Italy, Spain etc. they are heavily armed, and far more heavy handed and quick to use violence, not to mention corrupt.

Alongside the shitty coppers there are just as many who are decent and trying to do the right thing. A few of them are my good friends, and some the bravest and most hardworking people I know. Two in particular are detectives with 25 years experience between them, trying to raise a family of three kids in London on a combined income of less than £100,000. They are great parents, shit hot detectives, and despite all the bollocks they have to put up with, they show up every day and do their jobs to the best of their abilities because they want to make the streets safer for people.

And my god do we need people like that to want to join the police. Because if we make working conditions for potential officers so unbearable that no one with a brain and a conscience wants to do it, then the only ones left will be the type of skull cracking meat heads who end up joining the ranks of organisations like ICE in the States. The more we assume they’re all bad apples, the more bad apples we’ll produce.

The bodycam footage of Henry Nowak’s last moment is unbearable, and it is very troubling that those officers didn’t believe him immediately when he told them that he’d been stabbed. But the people claiming that this is some kind of George Floyd I can’t breath equivalent, and evidence that white people are now treated like second class citizens by the police are, to put it politely, full of shit.

The police killed George Floyd. Vickrum Digwa killed Henry Nowak. And when those officers in that video realised what had really happened, they were the ones who tried to save his life.

And as ridiculous as it is to suggest that the police are now so woke that they’re being racist towards white people, we also shouldn’t assume that they are all inherently racist, sexist and homophobic. It’s not to say that some of them aren’t, or that there aren’t serious cultural problems within certain forces, but we tarnish them all with the same brush at our peril. Just as we know that some officers are capable of doing terrible things, we also know that a teenage girl is capable of doing something that justifies being forcibly detained by them. Her right fist can attest to that.

I’m also not suggesting that no one should ever use their phone to film an incident that is taking place. It can often be a very useful and necessary tool to record crimes, help keep people accountable, and bring people to justice who deserve it. What I’m saying is that people should think about why they’re doing it, and what the consequences will be if they do. We all have a responsibility to strengthen society, not weaken it.

Last weekend I went to the International Sea Shanty Festival in Falmouth, Cornwall. I’ve been going with my friends for ten years, and it is one of the happiest places on earth. Three days of drinking cider and singing shanties, with thousands of others in pirate garb, all there for the pure, ridiculous and unadulterated joy of it. The most wonderful moment I witnessed was a young mixed race girl (dressed as a pirate obviously), right in front of the stage with her white grandmother, jigging her little heart out. I cannot think of a more contrasting image, and a better antidote to the hideous scenes of racist violence that have played out on our screens in recent weeks.

And what were the police doing during the festival? Moving through the crowds, smiling and laughing with everyone else, and checking they were all ok. And we saw similar scenes during the amazing celebration parties that shut down New York City following the Knicks’ historic NBA finals win the other night. Police officers, fire fighters and bus drivers dancing and celebrating with everyone else. I think these are far more potent and powerful images, and say much more about our society too. Let’s try and keep them in mind.

Tune of the Day:

The Jolly Grogsters - Hog Eyed Man

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

The prose are pure poetry. Brilliant colour, sweeping nostalgia, the wistful musings of a hopeless romantic. After reading it I discovered the Laurie Lee Wildlife Way, a five mile circular walk around Slad Valley, and some of the most beautiful Gloucestershire countryside. The walk finishes in Slad at the Woolpack Inn, which was Lee’s local, and opposite the pub is the church where Lee is buried. I went to pay him a visit. On his grave it simply reads:

Laurie Lee

1914-1997

He lies in the valley he loved

I then took a seat in the garden of the Woolpack, looking out over the valley, and wrote this piece over a pint. I had written haphazardly for years up to this point, but something in me felt different this time.

It is inspired by a leaving present that was given to me by a former colleague, from an outreach service that I worked for a fair few years ago. It’s a notebook, and on the front it says - All I ever wanted was everything.

I think she probably got my number.

All I ever wanted was everything. 

Ok, not EVERYTHING,

I have the good fortune to not care for wealth, or fame,

Or for people to know my name,

I care not for luxury, finery, fine dining, or “nibbles in the winery”. 



I don’t want to be driven to a first class lounge, and a first class flight to a first class resort,

Where I am… “sir”… and …“very good”… and …“anything you please”… and …“your wish is my command!” 



I don’t want to command! 

Or issue orders, 

Or demand an answer to a discrepancy I “cannot abide!”

I don’t wish to reside in a country estate, 

Or a plush apartment with a balcony view of the “enviable part of town…”



I don’t even care so much to know that I will always live in comfort and security,

“Until the day I depart, and leave a surety to ensure that all my earthly desires are realised, and followed to the letter!”

The only letter of importance that I pen is to myself,

For the life that we lead, whether long or short, is only known in truth to ourselves in the end. 



So, in the end, all I want is… everything. 



I want to bask in the sunshine, 

Shelter from the cold, 

Brave the driving winds wrapped in a tartan scarf,

And dry my damp socks over the fire, 

As I listen to the rain beat down on the roof of the caravan that I have somehow acquired. 



I want to marvel at the shimmer of the moonlight through the trees, 

And sing with the birds,

Who laugh at the cut of my ridiculousness. 



I want to frolic in the field,

And move in time to the rhythm of life with my fellow revellers, 

Who mock me for my enthusiasm, and hold me close with a chuckle and a whisper. 



I want beauty, and laughter, 

And quick witted comments that acknowledge my efforts, 

Remind me of flaws, 

Leave me wanting more, 

And questioning the future. 



I want meaning, and purpose, 

I wanted to be wanted, and needed, 

By my kin, 

My neighbours, 

And those I do not know and can never hope to understand. 



I want to cry hard bitter tears for those who do not know justice, 

And for whom life is merely the roll of a dice in a game they cannot afford. 



And I want to laugh so hard that I crash to the ground like a felled tree,

That can only be righted again by the wonderful bastard who cut me down in the first place. 



All I want is love, 

And loss, 

Family, 

And solitude, 

Clarity, 

And mist, 

The warm hand and tender lips of the girl of my dreams, 

And a long adventurous road that only I can tread. 



Now, is that so much to ask? 

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

As we endure the fallout from the local elections, and a subsequent political shitstorm the likes of which most of us had desperately hoped we had left behind (at the time of writing Starmer is still clinging on), I’d like to say a few words on community.

Given the degree to which politics has, at least since 2008, failed to find any solutions to the problems we face as a country, it is more important than ever to look at ourselves, and each other, and ask whether those solutions may be closer to home than we realise.

Cost of living, social care, housing, economic inactivity, a crumbling NHS and a mental health crisis that feels out of control; these are just some of the headline headfucks we are dealing with at the moment. And generation after generation of politicians have told us they’ll fix them, and failed. Why?

Some argue it’s our failure to compel the super rich to pay their fair share. Others will point towards large scale immigration and demographic changes over recent decades. Global events and our over-exposure to them will usually get a mention. Maybe fundamental socio-economic and political failings are woven into the fabric of our society and we need a total overhaul? Maybe it’s all of them. Or none.

Whenever I ask myself that question though, I keep coming back to the idea of an absence of community. In a decade of working in frontline social support services, and witnessing the plight of some of the most marginalised people in our society, I have come to understand that, while all individual stories are different, it is isolation and disconnection from their fellow humans that has united their suffering.

Loneliness. Feeling like you’re not part of something. Like you’re not a valued member of a group. Like you don’t matter. The more I think on it, the more I am convinced that this is the primary source of the problems we face. That this is the key driver of the nationwide mental and physical health crises we are witnessing, the economic inactivity that plagues us, and ultimately that collective feeling of hopelessness that, whether real or imagined, seems to hang over us like a stationary black cloud.

In more dramatic moments within public discourse we even ask ourselves whether our very society is coming apart at the seams! We ask questions like “is Britain ungovernable?”, and then some people argue yes, and other people argue no, but rarely are those conversations constructive or lead to any kind of plan to rescue us from this miserable malaise.

Clearly society is not collapsing. For most of us life goes on, we keep our heads, we take care of our loved ones, and we get by. But I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to suggest that society is not functioning as it should, nor that the idea of “Britain”, as a conduit for a shared identity that unites us as citizens, is clearly fighting for survival.

I recently read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (late to the party I know), and it was on this issue that I found his commentary most compelling. Harari argues that what allowed humans to work together on a much greater scale than we had naturally ever done before, in towns and cities of thousands and millions, was the idea of shared myths. The only way to trust a stranger is to have common ground with them, some kind of shared identity or set of values. It is upon this foundation that culture, religion, and later nationalism evolved. It is how we went from lighting fires in the woods to writing Substack posts in the pub.

For centuries global society has ticked over, relying on the shared myths of money, the economy, religion, culture and national identity. But what happens when belief in these things starts to break down? What if we find ourselves speaking to our neighbours in the street, but no longer able to understand them?

We are living in an increasingly atomised world, with individuals siloed off into their little digital units, and the harm this is doing to our collective social health is becoming clearer. But to what extent is this also the consequence of people no longer being connected by a shared belief in God? Or a shared love of the King? How much more insecure do we feel when we stand on the precipice of our existence and have no idea who we are, why we’re here, or what we’re meant to do in the time we are?

None of this is ground-breaking. Much smarter and more impressive people have said all of this before and more. But it may be helpful in times like these to remind people of how much better they feel when they’re connected to others, when they’re contributing to something they value, and when they believe in something that’s more than the sum of their own parts. Maybe, crazy idea but hear me out, following a polarising election at a time of deep and bitter national division, might be a good time to remind people of this?

Whether it be music, art, theatre, sport, literature, or (dare I say it) politics, we share these things with our fellows, and use them to inform our identity beyond just being Jack or Gill … a mother or a sister… a nurse or a neighbour, who smiles politely but then puts her head down and closes the front door with gentle awkwardness. They’re what make us whole. They’re what make life worth living.

But are they enough to keep a country of 70 million working together in relative harmony? We are forced to share a national identity by having the same passport, the same prime minister, the same visa access to Nepal. But do these things serve to shape us? Are they key components of a collective idea of who we are, or our place in the world? I would imagine for most people probably not.

For nearly two millennia going to our parish church and worshipping with our neighbours was the cornerstone of our sense of self and where we belonged. It shaped our values, informed our actions, and influenced how we perceived and understood one another. And then suddenly, it didn’t.

I’m not arguing for or against having a strong sense of national or religious identity, their value is in the eye of the beholder. But like it or not they are what built the country that we all still live in, and it is therefore pertinent to ask ourselves what happens when people stop believing in them.

Even for the people lining up behind the likes of Tommy Robinson and Matt Goodwin, these ideas are becoming increasingly irrelevant to every day life. No matter what the populist right say about their quest to save “Judeo-Christian civilisation” (which is an odd crusading tagline given the rampant antisemitism within their ranks), genuine love of God and country have been in freefall for decades, across the whole of society. And under these circumstances, how long can the idea of the nation state expect to survive?

In 2025 the government launched its Pride in Place programme - £5 billion on revitalising areas of deprivation across the country that are in serious need of investment. It is what puts the C in MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), and you’d be forgiven for not knowing that such a programme even exists. It’s not salacious Westminster gossip, and it’s a good thing the government are doing, so naturally most of the news media don’t give a shit about it.

Personally I think it is one of the most important things happening in public policy at the moment, and if done properly has the potential to genuinely improve people’s lives up and down the country. Who knows, maybe some of the approximately three million people who voted Reform last week might just be persuaded to change their opinion of the Labour Party in time for the next general election, if they were to feel the benefits of Pride in Place and the government can sell itself as its worthy architect! Although something tells me that particular responsibility won’t be lying with Keir Starmer…

This is also probably fanciful. How likely is it that the government are going to be given enough space to a.) implement this programme effectively, and b.) tell people about it?

Its success is also contingent on a collective understanding of what community means, and what it is for. From the reading I’ve done of the prospectus my concern is the focus on stuff. A leisure centre, a new church hall, a playground… Having these things is all well and good, but if people don’t feel part of what they are bringing to their communities, if they don’t feel like they are theirs, then how much do they really benefit? I appreciate that these issues are quite abstract, and very difficult for a government to build a policy programme around. But community is ultimately a mindset, not a new leisure centre. If people don’t feel part of it, they don’t benefit from it.

How do we stand up to selfish and irresponsible politicians who keep failing to deliver on their promises? By coming together within our communities and taking care of ourselves. Mrs Sawar at no.84 becomes much better protected from the considerable shortfalls in our social and healthcare systems when we offer to do her shopping, pick up her meds, or pop round for a game of Scrabble.

And how do we stand up to the cartoonishly evil tech barons that seem determined to destroy the real world, and turn us all into NPCs in their virtual fantasy fuckfest? By turning off our devices and going to the park or the pub with our friends and neighbours.

Do not underestimate the power of these very simple acts of resistance.

It may be beyond the capacity of the political class to even understand this, let alone find the courage to guide us there. If so then no matter, we can guide ourselves. All we need to do is get up, open the front door, and step outside.

Tune of the day:

Just Jack - Alchemist (have linked to the video, because it’s so lovely).

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

In November 2017 I was just starting out as an outreach worker for a rough sleeper service in South London. I was hired at the same time as a woman called Kath who was also new to the sector. Despite our lack of experience, the plan was for the two of us to take over the running of two of the boroughs the charity covered.

Unfortunately, due to personal difficulties (which included being homeless herself), Kath decided it wasn’t for her and left after a week and a half. Management told me to sit tight and wait for her replacement. For how long? They didn’t know. In the meantime I was told to do the best I could on my own.

It was daunting, particularly as I’d only been in the job for two weeks, but I did fine. Then thankfully in January 2018, Faye was hired.

The first time Faye was introduced to the rest of the staff was at an away day, and she immediately lit up the place. She managed to turn a dry and awkward collection of “team building exercises”, on a grey winter day in a soulless business centre, into a very jolly afternoon. She had a way of encouraging people to be earnest, and engage them in conversation, while mocking the world with dark eyes behind her round glasses. She had a big, cheeky smile and a mane of crazy curls. She looked like a hippie librarian. With a guitar.

From the first shift we did together my job became much more enjoyable. We talked, we laughed, we sang, we talked. All while we whizzed around our patch of London, night and day, meeting and greeting some of the city’s many lost souls.

A few weeks after Faye joined, Gary showed up. Gary was the new Outreach Team Leader, and so technically our new line manager. He had been working in outreach for seven years, across five different services, and it was this experience that had apparently earned him the title King of Outreach. It didn’t take us long to conclude that this was a title he had given himself.

I needed cover for a shift one night, and as Gary needed to get to know us and the boroughs we worked in, he arranged to do the shift with Faye. Faye didn’t drive so this responsibility fell to Gary.

The day after the shift I got a call from Faye.

'Oh my god, Ted mate… mate…’ she seemed to be half in shock, half in hysterics. ‘Gary is fuckin’ crazy! Honestly, I’m just happy to be alive.’

I instantly started laughing. ‘Oh shit, what happened?’

‘First of all, he drives like a lunatic. Like, swingin’ round corners way too fast, chain smokin’ the whole time. He literally smoked like twenty fags while we were out! He doesn’t watch the road cos he’s always lookin’ for his fuckin’ lighter!’

I already couldn’t breathe.

‘And he’s got this white Subaru, like proper boy racer car, and he’s playin’ his music so loud, I could barely hear him! And I’m thinkin’ mate do you want us to get pulled over? I mean if he didn’t want people knowin’ what we were doin’ then it was good thinkin’, cos no one in a fuckin’ million years would guess we were on outreach lookin’ for rough sleepers!’

Still couldn’t say anything because I was laughing so hard.

‘And the whole time yeah, he’s just bangin’ on about how he’s the King of Outreach, and how no one knows the streets better than him and reh reh reh. Ah man I wanted to kill him like five minutes after he picked me up! And when we actually did find someone, Gary’s promisin’ him the world without even checkin’ to see if he’s on CHAIN (the rough sleeper database) or if the shelters are open! He says he’s been doin’ this for seven years, I’ve been doin’ it for two weeks and I reckon I’m already better at it than him!’

I had the pleasure of making Gary’s acquaintance a few days later, when all three of us did a night shift. Obviously I drove. There was no way I was getting in a car with him behind the wheel. Faye got in the front next to me, leaving Gary in the middle behind us, leaning forward between the seats like an eager child being taken on a trip.

‘Don’t mind me guys, I’m just here to observe ya, know what I mean? See how you go. I’m ya manager, but that don’t mean I’m gonna be interferin’ or nothin’, you guys got this.’

As I started the car and pulled away I stole a sideways glance at Faye. She widened her eyes and I choked back a laugh.

The first attempted contact we made that evening was a priority. According to the referral the client was blind, and sleeping on the basement floor of an old brick two story car park. The winter night was chilly, and as we descended the steps into the darkness we were hit by a blast of cold, damp air that made us shiver. We turned on our torches and started to edge our way round. A bleak, dim electric light came on in the corner which lit up one side of the car park. As I reached the end of the row of cars I found a man sitting upright against the wall under a bundle of blankets.

His name was Billy. He was in his 30s, and had an air of boyish innocence, but also the weary and weathered features that a hard life gives you. His head was shaved, and under the layers you could tell he was far too thin. Soon into the conversation he disclosed that he was heroin dependent, which he believed had contributed to his current circumstances, although he had struggled with homelessness on and off for most of his life.

In the dim light you could tell, as he turned to speak to you, that he was unable to focus. When he was a teenager he developed a condition that caused him to lose his sight, and in darkness was unable to move unaided. In daylight however his vision was about 15 % - so he could make out the shapes of buildings, street lamps, and crucially the edge of the pavement.

‘And cos I know the area so well, I can work out where I am based on the shapes of things around me and the curve of the pavement. So as long as I stay in the road and follow that line I can get about ok.’

‘Wow, that’s amazing,’ said Faye.

‘That’s why they call me the Road Runner,’ said Billy with a cheeky smile.

At this point, despite Gary’s insistence that this was our shift and he was just observing, he took over. Billy couldn’t go to one of the shelters for first time rough sleepers as he was already on the rough sleeper database. Given his disability he would have been eligible for emergency housing, but Billy understandably didn’t want to go anywhere outside of the local area, and this could not be guaranteed if we called up the council there and then and asked them to place him.

In the end Billy said that he didn’t mind staying where he was for the night. There was an old boy who lived up the road who looked after him sometimes, so he would go up there the next day when it got light. Gary assured him that with a bit of time he would be able to convince the council to place him in emergency accommodation locally.

And to give him his dues, the King came through. Neither Faye or I were involved in his wranglings with the council, but he managed to convince them to place Billy in a local Travelodge. The plan was for Gary to collect Billy on Friday afternoon and safely deposit him there.

The following Monday I was sat in one of our little offices - a room on the ground floor of one of our hostels with a couple of desks in it - waiting for Gary. We were due to have our first supervision, and he was late. A little while later I received an email from him telling me that something had come up and that he wouldn’t be able to make it.

This level of half arsedness towards his managerial duties would continue throughout our time working together, and I was neither surprised nor bothered. In fact he did me a favour and saved me an hour I wouldn’t have gotten back.

The next day I was sat in the office preparing for that night’s outreach shift. Faye had text me to let me know she was on her way over. The text also included this:

Omg, have the funniest thing to tell you about Gary. It’s amazing. Can’t stop laughing.

A short while later she crashed through the office door, red-faced and flustered, waylaid by the multiple bags and many layers that she always had slung over her. She unloaded everything and then collapsed into the spinny office chair opposite me. I turned away from my laptop to look at her and she immediately burst out laughing. This then set me off, and it was a little while before we had composed ourselves.

‘Right, that’s enough,’ I said finally. ‘TELL ME…’

Faye took a deep breath, trying to settle the giggles. ‘Ah mate, it’s so good.’

‘Fucking tell me then!’

‘Ok ok! So… Gary was in head office yesterday.’

‘Hang on,’ I cut in. ‘Gary was meant to meet me here yesterday for supervision.’

‘Oh yeah he forgot.’

That was it then. He was over at head office yesterday and had completely forgotten the meeting. I shook my head in amused disbelief. ‘He told me something had “come up last minute.”

‘Ha!’ Faye scoffed. ‘That’s bullshit. He was just sat there chattin’ all afternoon not doing anythin’ … ANYWAY… That’s not the funny thing. So, you know he went to pick up Billy from this old boy’s house to take him to the accommodation that the council had sorted for him?’

‘Yeah…’

‘So, first of all, he doesn’t get there til like 8pm or somethin’…’

This in itself was bizarre, given his working hours were 9-5. But in time we would learn that Gary didn’t follow any identifiable working pattern. ‘That’s so fucking weird,’ I replied. ‘What is he doing all day?’

‘I know,’ said Faye. ‘So he’s like sooooo late when he gets there, it’s completely dark, and Billy’s not even there. So he has to wait for him for like an hour, and he’s just there chattin’ to Billy’s mate right. And then Billy shows up, Gary helps him get his shit together, and then they step outside the house.’ At this point she leaned back into her chair and took a dramatic pause. ‘And then he realises… he’s completely forgotten where he parked the car. Like, hasn’t got a fuckin’ scooby. So they’re walking around for ages right, and he’s walkin’ down this street and that, and he still doesn’t know…’

‘Oh my god,’ I cut in. ‘I can see where this is going…’

Faye was bursting with glee. ‘Yep…’

‘Billy found it for him…’

‘YEEEEES!’ Faye screamed with sheer joy. ‘AAAAAHHHH… THE BLIND MAN FOUND HIS CAR FOR HIM!’

It’s true. As Billy had already explained to us, his knowledge of the area was such that he had mapped it out in his head, and could identify where he was based on the shapes of physical structures around him. And like one big ridiculous game of Marco Polo, asking Gary for any descriptions he could recall of where he had parked, the Road Runner managed to guide the King back to his car.

This incident was just one on a long list for Gary. He and I would never get to have our supervision in the end. He cancelled two more last minute before I managed to convince our operations manager to line manage me instead, thus removing any authority that Gary had over me. He managed to stay on at the charity for a while after both Faye and I had left, although his chaotic, and at times incoherent, approach to the job did eventually get him fired (which is an achievement in itself. It’s really hard to get fired in this sector).

His final, baffling act before leaving was to write an unhinged and rambling email and send it to every big cheese in every homelessness charity in London, as well as a load of commissioners from several councils. In it he accused every senior member of our organisation of all manner of corrupt and and negligent practices, and warned that no one should work with us or commission us to deliver any services ever again.

The cherry on top was cc’ing every internal member of staff, as well a load more from other services. In total, over a hundred people received the email. Sadly, as I had already left, I was not one of these people. But a few months later, when I met up with former colleagues for a drink, I was lucky enough to have it read to me. A masterpiece, of masterly stupidity that only the King himself could have scribed. Long may he reign (provided it isn’t over a kingdom anywhere near me)!

Tune of the day:

Fink - Walkin’ In The Sun

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

As I drove over the Gloucestershire hills in the hazy autumn sunshine, I admired the colours as they rolled past me. I love driving. It is one of the great joys of my life. It is escape and adventure for me. It allows me to process any emotion. As long as I am behind the wheel, and moving, then I’m ok.

On this occasion I had a passenger. His name was Kelvin - Kelly as he was known to most people - and he was a forty-five year old resident in the hostel that I worked in. He was slip of a thing, short and slim with cropped black hair and dark eyes. He had ADHD, and a host of other mental health and behavioural problems that made him quite erratic. But today he was calm, and wearing his usual expression of mischief, although this was normally in anticipation him saying something offensive or doing something chaotic, as was his raison d'être.

Kelly had been under our service for three years, after being picked up by the rough sleeper team. Following a spiralling cocaine addiction, and a relationship breakdown with his partner of fourteen years and mother of his four children, he lost everything and ended up on the streets. Now he had been offered a social tenancy with a housing association, and we were on our way to a village in the Cotswolds to view the flat.

Anyone with an understanding of social housing in this country will appreciate how much of a big deal this is. But it’s actually much more straightforward for single people to secure council and housing association properties than for families with children. This is because they need studio and one-bed flats which come up more frequently, whereas families need properties with two or more bedrooms, which are much harder to come by. Single people, depending on the local authority, can expect to wait an average of three years to be matched to a property. For families, it is much longer.

Kelly had been down south for a long time, but he was originally from Glasgow. All I knew about this was that he was a Celtic fan, and that he had mentioned his Scottish family a handful of times. But I didn’t know the full story.

‘So when did you move down here?’ I asked.

‘When I was seventeen. I got out of nick and came straight down here to live with my brother.’

That would explain him having lost the accent. He hadn’t lived in Scotland for nearly thirty years. I also knew that he had been in prison but didn’t know the details.

‘What did you do?’

‘I stabbed someone.’

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘D’you kill him?’

‘Nearly,’ he replied.

I asked what happened.

He told me that when he was twelve years old, living on a sprawling estate with his mum and five siblings in the early 1990s, he heard a scream coming from outside the front of his block. He looked down and saw his mum being manhandled by someone he didn’t recognise. He explained to me that he was very small for his age, which was evident given his slight stature as a fully grown adult. He turned around and picked up the nearest weapon he could see, a small sharp blade, and sprinted down to where his mum was attempting to wrestle herself free. He jumped on the man’s back and stabbed him multiple times.

The man staggered back and collapsed on the grass. Kelly remembered hearing his rasping breath, and then seeing the dark blood pooling beneath him. It was then that he realised it was a police officer, who’d been attempting to arrest his mum.

Several of the residents on the estate saw what had happened, and rushed down to the scene. They knew that if a copper died on their estate, murdered by one of their own, the response would be even more brutal than it was already going to be. It was in their interest to save his life, and get Kelly out of there as quickly as possible.

A short time later he was being driven by his grandma to Carlisle, where he jumped on a train and headed down to Bristol where one if his older brothers was living. His brother worked as a farm hand, and the accommodation he had was set quite far back from the main road.

‘So we had a lot of warnin’ if anyone was comin’, Kelly explained. ‘My brother had a space under the floorboards where he used to hide me whenever the police came lookin’.’

This was nuts I thought. A twelve year old fugitive wanted for the attempted murder of a police officer, hiding under the floorboards of an old farm building!

‘How many times did they come looking?’ I asked.

‘Three or four.’

‘So how did you get caught?’

Kelly laughs. ‘Ah mate, I was so fuckin’ stupid. I went to pick up some weed from this dealer near my brother’s place, and the day I go round there to pick up the cunt gets fuckin’ raided and everyone got nicked!’

The police soon discovered who they had caught, and weren’t taking any chances. They air lifted Kelly back to Glasgow in chains, where he was convicted, and spent the rest of his childhood in a young offenders institute.

Upon release he did not hang around in Scotland, but headed straight back to the West Country, determined to build a new life for himself.

I asked Kelly if he had seen much of his family recently.

‘I’ve got one brother down here who I see, but that’s it.’

‘What about your mum?’

‘I ain’t spoken to her for a long time.’

Kelly went on to explain that the last time he went up to Glasgow to visit his family he went with his partner and their kids. The oldest one, Kelly’s son Bobby, was nine years old at the time. Kelly’s mother was an alcoholic, physically dependent, and very chaotic as a result. Kelly knew that she drunk drove, but she had insisted that she would not do so with any of Kelly’s kids in the car. Kelly and his partner agreed to allow his mum to mind Bobby for the afternoon.

Later that evening they got a call from the hospital. Kelly’s mum had wrapped her car around a lamppost. She was in a stable condition, but Bobby was critical. He did survive, but spent six months recovering in hospital from his catastrophic injuries.

Kelly refused to speak to his mum again after that. He also later reflected that this was probably the moment that his relationship with his partner started to break down. She blamed him for allowing his mum to take Bobby out with her, and a distance grew between them that he filled with cocaine and gambling. She dealt with it by having an affair. When Kelly found out about it, and who the guy was, he beat him up in public, in broad daylight. He was then charged with assault, battery and ABH, and given a two year prison sentence. Upon release his partner secured a non-molestation order, preventing him from having any contact with her, and a protection order which prevented him from seeing his kids. It did not take long for things to spiral out of control.

Four years later the scenery was looking quite different for Kelly. We met the agent outside the flat, who led the way through the front door. As housing association places go, he had been lucky. New carpet, new kitchen, spacious living/bedroom, and big windows on both sides of the flat that let in lots of light.

I turned to him. ‘Well?’

‘Ah mate,’ his face broke out in a cheeky smile. ‘I love it.’

The following week we packed up my car with all his stuff and moved him in. This time his girlfriend Chloe came along for the ride. An incredibly caring and patient soul, which you would need to be to be able to deal with Kelly.

After unloading his stuff, they both came down to the car to say goodbye.

‘Thanks for everythin’ Ted,’ said Kelly.

‘Ah don’t mention it mate, it was no trouble.’ Compared to the life he had lived, it really hadn’t been.

The flat itself was on a tiny residential estate, next to a primary school and playground. I remembered some of the many ways that Kelly had made a nuisance of himself in the hostel, and felt a sudden fear of him making all those same mistakes and losing his tenancy. We had already had a pep talk about this but I took this opportunity to underline the key points one last time.

‘Remember, don’t play your music too loud, at least at the beginning, until you’ve got your neighbours on side. Use your headphones when possible. And no smoking weed in the flat or outside the building.’

‘Yep I know, I’ll walk far away mate. There’s nice views around here, I’ll walk up one of the hills or summit’.

‘Ok, cos you’re next to a school man. If people smell weed they’re not gonna fuck around with it.’

‘I know! I know… Listen this is the first time I’ve ever had my own place. I’m not takin’ any chances with it, I can promise you that…’

One would be justified, upon hearing Kelly’s story, in strongly condemning some of the actions that he had taken in his life. They might even go as far as to suggest that it was indicative of his bad character, and that the criminal justice system had not treated him harshly enough. Clearly! Given that he then went on to commit a serious assault after having served his time for attempted murder!

To that I would ask them to consider the circumstances in which he was raised. Enough people should be aware of what it meant to grow up in poverty on a crime fuelled Glasgow estate in the 80s and 90s. An absent father, an alcoholic and unstable mother, and a large family raised on benefits, and without enough food or love to go round. As previously mentioned, Kelly was a small guy and an even smaller kid. Growing up in this world, it is not hard to see why he would have assumed that his only way to survive would have been to demonstrate to others a willingness to use extreme violence in an instant. It is how many learn to survive.

I do not suggest that Kelly was not responsible for his actions, and that he shouldn’t have faced any consequences for them. In fact I think that, given the state of our arcane, cruel and utterly backward criminal justice system, he did ok. He was given the opportunity to rehabilitate and start a new life, and despite many slips and falls along the way, he managed to find relative peace. And don’t we all deserve a bit of peace?

All names and details have been changed to protect anonymity.

Tune of the day:

Pip Millett - Make Me Cry

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

Ring ring.

‘Hello?’

‘Oh hi, is that the Fuck Witted National Debates Commission?’

‘It is indeed.’

‘Hello, it’s the Long Suffering British Public here.’

‘Oh dear, our sincerest apologies.’

‘Not to worry! Just calling to check and make sure drugs are still top of the agenda?’

‘As ever.’

‘Excellent, glad to hear it. Keep up the good work…’

So, the other week Zak Polanski, the leader of the Green Party, went on one of those BBC political things and said that he thought our drug laws should be reformed. This is in the year 2026 by the way, just in case you needed reminding.

In fact, his exact words were that he wanted “a grown up conversation based on evidence, taking a public health approach that looks at prevention, intervention and makes sure that afterwards people can get the support they need.” Before that bit though, he said he wanted to “legalise all drugs”.

Our generally tragic and flailing prime minister was able to enjoy a moment’s respite in the House of Commons on 21st January, when he got to use the line that Polanski was “high on drugs, soft on Putin”. I imagine this was then followed by some cringe cheers and embarrassing braying from the Labour MPs sitting behind him.

Polanski hit back in the BBC interview saying that it was a “cheap joke, delivered badly”, which I’ve no doubt is true. Thankfully I’ve only seen the words written down. But as political trash talk goes, I thought it was actually quite funny. I also happen to agree with the second part. I think the Greens calling for us to leave NATO and unilaterally disarm, when the world is the way it is, is incredibly dumb. I wish we all lived on MDMA rainbow clouds too, where we could love and dance the night away, but sadly we can only visit those places. For now at least, we can’t live in them.

What’s even dumber though is that it’s been 60 years and we’re still having this debate. We seem to never be more than a Greek tragedy away from this bollocks once again being splayed out across our screens and newspapers for all to feast upon. All it takes is one public figure to go on TV and say that we need to reform our drug laws, and the circus of stupidity kicks into life once more.

That pretendy Fox News UK channel took great pleasure in quoting Jeremy Clarkson’s Sunday Times column the other day, when he said he was “staggered… to hear that Green Party fella with the bad teeth and silly walk saying he wants to legalise it.” Anyone with half a brain cell knows not to take anything that Clarkson says seriously, so naturally they ran a whole piece on it. They also reported that the Green Party want to “hold a vote on legalising HEROIN” (you know it’s scary if it’s capitalised).

The Labour party have also used it as an attack line in the context of the upcoming Gorton and Denton byelection, accusing the Greens of being “extreme and dangerous” because they want to “legalise all drugs”.

These reactions are moronic but not surprising. What is surprising though is that this is apparently the Green’s official position. At this point, I still don’t know whether they really do want to legalise all drugs, or whether they actually want to decriminalise them and are getting confused. If it’s the former then it’s very silly, but at least Polanski knows what the policy is. If it’s the latter then he doesn’t know what the policy is, which is even sillier.

Quick clarification - legalisation means that it is legal to manufacture and use drugs for recreational use. Then, depending on which country you’re in, also advertise and sell them. Decriminalisation only refers to the removal of criminal penalties for possession for personal use. The production and sale remain illegal.

For obvious reasons, there are no countries in the world that have legalised all drugs, and if that genuinely is official Green Party policy, they’re being very thick. But, the arguments that usually follow when they talk about it - that it should be treated as a public health issue, that users should be supported to use safely, and that those suffering with addictions should be treated with compassion rather than cruelty - are perfectly sensible. They are also arguments that you would make if you were advocating for a decriminalisation model.

Polanski has publicly talked about “the dangers of the black market”, and referenced decriminalisation in Portugal before, so he probably does know the difference. But the fact that none of this seems to have been clarified is mind boggling!

It also lends totally ill-deserved weight to the ridiculous charges from the right wing press, about kids being encouraged to get their hands on the nearest needle or pipe and have at it!

The Greens do publicly support things like the introduction of heroin assisted treatment, and the expansion of drug consumption rooms. Again these are sound and sensible policies. If, when they say “legalise”, they are referring to allowing certain drugs, that are currently illegal to be used for medical purposes, to be prescribed by doctors in certain circumstances, then again that is a perfectly reasonable position. But that is very different to “legalising all drugs”. Again it sounds like a policy platform that would come under a decriminalisation strategy, and if that is what they mean then they really need to spell it out.

And across all the coverage from mainstream media outlets on this latest row, still no one seems to have bothered to point out the difference! It shows the level of bone-headed idiocy and incompetence that is not only thriving whenever this issue comes up, but still determining what the law actually is.

Every politician knows that our current drug laws are disastrous and that any sane society would repeal them. Every single one. And yet every politician that has even the slightest hope of ever getting their mitts on the levers of power will state publicly that we actually shouldn’t change the laws, that drugs are terrible, anyone who does them is a loser, and that we should always treat this as a criminal issue. And they do this because they are STILL shit scared of the right wing press running exactly the type of stories quoted above from the total bellends on Fox News UK. Despite hearing that the newspapers are losing their power in this country, they STILL have a strangle hold on this issue. They are still determining government policy. “Get tough”, “smash the gangs”, “zero tolerance”... it’s… all… utter… gob shite.

If we were to have a grown up and sensible conversation about what the legal framework should be for the existence of psychoactive substances in our society, then it would go something like this;

Some form of the legalisation of cannabis, as has been introduced in numerous equivalent countries, like Canada, Australia and Germany. The arguments against this are along the lines of “strong weed is dangerous…mental health problems in young people” etc. And they are easily batted away.

With a legal market the purchase would be age restricted, probably to 18, and the strength would be regulated. Most street weed sold in the UK has an average THC content (the thing that makes you high) of 14-16 percent, when the average should be 4-6 percent. This is the main driver of mental health issues caused by its use, especially in young people.

Of course just having an age restriction doesn’t mean that kids won’t be able to get hold of it, as is the case with alcohol. But it will make it harder than it is now, and even if they do the strength will be much safer. Some kids may still smoke stupid strong black market weed, but far fewer than do now. People aren’t seriously worried about kids getting hold of and drinking 75 % homemade moonshine, and if they were, we still wouldn’t be calling for alcohol prohibition.

There’s also a perfectly sane and rational argument to be made for the legalisation of drugs like MDMA, magic mushrooms and LSD. When used sensibly they are relatively safe and non-addictive, not to mention great fun and jam packed with positive properties that would supplant countless prescription drugs, and significantly weaken the power and influence of the big drug companies (go figure).

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Trying to convince millions of people who’ve been drinking idiot juice about illegal drugs for decades, fed to them by disingenuous journalists and politicians, isn’t going to happen overnight. You need to be sensible how you frame it, and realistic about what you can achieve.

With drugs like cocaine, crystal meth and heroin, arguments for legalisation start to falter. If we could completely rebuild society from the ground up then you could do it. But starting from where we are, it’s just not workable. They are far more addictive, powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the other drugs mentioned, and framing an argument for their recreational use is just not realistic.

However, heroin assisted treatment (HAT) - the prescription of heroin by doctors to those that have a physical dependency - is not only sensible but urgently needed. The provision of methadone, a much less potent synthetic opiate, does prevent patients from going into withdrawal, but that’s it. It is designed not to provide any of the euphoria produced by heroin, so of course countless patients simply use heroin on top.

It’s quite something that in a supposedly humane and civilised society we are still allowing heroin users to suffer with hideous infections from unsafe injecting, die of overdoses, and commit crimes and put their lives at risk in order to fund their habits.

The prescription of heroin by doctors to addicts is not new or radical. We did it all the way up until 1968, when the War on Drugs was just kicking off and restrictions came in that made it much harder. In the 1980s and early 1990s there was a clinic in the Wirral that provided heroin to its patients, with great success. Long term users found it much easier to live normal lives, hold down jobs and relationships, and stay healthy because what they were using was clean and administered under medical supervision.

Then of course the twats in the US media told the twats in the US government about it, who duly told the twats in our government to shut it down, who duly obliged. Within months many of the patients it treated were back on the street or dead. What d’ya know.

Efforts to reintroduce HAT in the UK have stuttered back into life, but due to funding restrictions recent trials have been discontinued. The only thing currently resembling HAT in this country is one drug consumption room in Glasgow.

With drugs like cocaine and crystal meth (meth-amphetamine), the merits of medical prescription are outweighed by the political difficulties. Withdrawal from these drugs is not life threatening, and they are highly addictive. Therefore possession of small amounts should simply be decriminalised, the manufacture and sale remain illegal, and the police and organised crime will have to keep playing their elaborate game of cops and robbers. At the moment, it’s hard to see a better alternative.

It’s very welcome that the Greens are saying sensible things about the need for drug reform, and that a party leader is advocating for it on national television. But the messaging is very confused, they clearly haven’t thought it through properly, and the conversations are still being led by people who don’t seem to know what they’re talking about. Polanski felt compelled to add in that interview that he has never taken drugs in his life, as if that makes his views on the subject more credible!

Not that simply having taken drugs makes you a good candidate to talk about why the law should be changed. Any one who remembers the embarrassing appearances of Matthew Perry or Russell Brand on Newsnight from a few years ago can attest to that. It might have made more sense to get people like Neil Woods, a former undercover police officer who spent 14 years infiltrating drug gangs and wrote two books about it, or David Nutt, the renowned neuropharmacologist and founder of the research and campaigning organisation Drug Science, to talk about drug reform? Rather than the sad version of Chandler and the born-again grifter/alleged serial rapist?

Sensible drug reforms are not a path to utopia. There is no perfect answer, and there are always costs to any big social changes. What a grown up and sensible society does is use the evidence to weigh the costs against the benefits and then make an informed decision.

Alas, we are not a grown up and sensible society. The Home Affairs Select Committee repeatedly calls for a complete overhaul, and a push to a decriminalisation model. So naturally the Prime Minister - a dry, bumbling technocrat who knows full well how stupid our drug laws are - goes on the airwaves to say that his government will never liberalise them!

And a good thing too! To hell with those crazy dope smoking hippies on the Home Affairs Select Committee.

With a Reform government on the way the discourse is bound to be elevated to new levels of sophistication. Only the other day Zia Yusuf challenged Zak Polanski to a debate, accusing Polanski of believing that “it should be legal to buy crack cocaine, heroin and fentanyl, but illegal to rent out your flat”.

I do wonder though if Yusuf is aware that his own lord and master, the future Great Patriotic Leader of this Once Proud Nation, used to be a strong advocate for drug reform, and even said in 2014 that “the War on Drugs has been lost” and called for the introduction of a Royal Commission on drugs (hey even some obnoxious cunts are right twice a day).

So what happened? Oh right, yeah, that was when he was still a ranting drunk on the fringes of British politics. Now that Farage has got a genuine path to power, he believes that drug reform is a very bad idea indeed. And I’m sure this change of heart comes from a place of deep concern (ha!) for the fragile minds of Britain’s young people.

This madness will stop eventually. But not until the mostly older people in this country, whose ignorance and fear of drugs can still be relied upon, die off. Because then they will no longer be able to vote or read newspapers, and therefore no longer be of any use to those representatives of the political and media class that have long weaponised this issue for their own benefit. Until then, on with the show!

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

This is a story about love lost at sea…

Hear the gulls as they cry into the blue June sky,

See them circle with greed above the buzz of the square,

Unhindered, and jubilant, we are laid bare,

The rhythm of the spectacle dances in the air.

As we gather to witness, the marching of the tide,

The pounding of the drums and the beauty of the bride,

She shines like a vision, of the future in his eyes,

Standing there before him, she beams with pride.

And so her father cries, ‘For all to see! Here’s to young love, and the next are on me!’

And with a ‘Whey!’ and a ‘hear, hear!’,

The cheers from the crowd,

Sing to the evening,

And echo all around.

But in the morning he must sail, the blue he is bound,

Oh, the agony, to wave away the joy that he has found,

God, how he wishes to take her with him,

To keep him warm against the night, and safe from the storm,

But he knows,

It’s bad luck,

To bring a woman aboard.

In a gap in the festivities, your smile appears,

Through the chinking and the cheers, you edge your way near,

I follow your gaze, and as you turn your head, mine spins,

And I am giddy as you catch me with a grin.

Dizzy, as you burn me, with seductive sapphires,

Sirens of the sea that beckon me to your danger,

My heart quickens, and I am stricken with excitement and fear,

At the power of the twirl of a handsome stranger.

And along with the band, your body sways,

To the rap tap tap, as the sound of the sea plays,

You move your head, and your hair dazzles every dancer,

Blazed by the dying Sun,

Bathed in the brilliance of the light that is shone.

You turn back to me,

And I am illuminated by your stare,

Aware of nothing but you,

And the direction of your attention,

Like that glorious glow on the horizon,

It is the destination of desire,

And I am ready to be swallowed up,

Consumed by the fire.

Oh, how I wish to take you with me,

To keep me warm against the night,

And safe from the storm,

But it’s bad luck to bring a woman aboard.

The torches are lit, as dusk settles over the crowd,

Down by the key side, the night moves with heady revelry,

You take my hat from my head,

And wear it with a tilt that drives me wild.

Arm in arm we step, and circle in time,

You finish your beer, and then help yourself to mine,

I laugh with outrage, indignant with a smile,

All the while, losing myself in the depths of your gaze,

Like a long, warm summer’s day, I pray,

That you never end.

I am ignorant now,

Intoxicated by our dancing,

Deaf and blind to the world that still spins,

Mercilessly marching,

Time, is lost on the wind.

For in the morning I must sail,

The blue I am bound,

And I’ll wish I’d stayed, as I wave away,

The joy that I have found,

And God, if I could take you with me,

I’d keep you warm against the night,

And safe from the storm,

But it’s bad luck to bring a woman aboard.

We break from the throng,

And I breath cool air, unsullied by sailor sweat,

No longer bathed in the fumes of our fellows,

I turn to you, and take you in,

The flush of your cheeks,

The torchlight blazing in those eyes,

Holding my heart in your gaze,

Breathless beneath the stars,

We listen, as the sound of the sea plays.

Side by side,

Our staggers become steady and rhythmic once more,

Each step taking us further from the shore,

To a place where I may lay beside you, and hold you close,

To a world where the Sun won’t rise again,

And we shall never see the dawn.

For I sail in the morn,

And it is bad luck, to take you aboard.

When the day breaks,

And I wake, to the smell of smouldering embers,

And the scent of the sea air,

You are gone,

Lost to me,

Like the dream I always feared I would wake from.

Into the past without a trace,

You have fled,

And I choke in the silence that is left.

Step by step,

Heavy in the chest,

I wind wearily down the deserted streets,

Haunted by the ghosts of ourselves departed,

Taunted by their dancing,

The echoes of their laughter scorn,

And leave me with nothing but my journey to the shore.

As we are guided out of the harbour,

I desperately search the waving hands that are sinking into the distance,

For your face,

Willing to catch your gaze,

So that I may wave away the joy that I embraced.

I close my eyes,

But when I open them again,

You are only a memory,

Lost to me,

Like the dream from which I wish I did not wake.

Into the past without a trace,

You have fled,

And I choke in the silence that is left.

The rain pounds the deck,

The sea rises to the heavens with divine fury,

The wind rips through the hull without mercy,

The Spirit of the Sailor’s Widow is unforgiving in her wrath,

As she claims the souls of the poor fools,

Who dared to cross her path.

He sinks beneath the waves,

And as the icy silence engulfs him,

He thinks of her,

Of how he wishes he had stayed,

So that she could have kept him warm against the night,

And safe from the storm,

Aye,

Tis bad luck,

To leave a woman ashore.

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

On 3rd February 2026, the MSP Ash Regan’s ‘unbuyable’ bill was defeated in the Scottish parliament by 64 votes to 54. The proposed legislation would make the purchase of sexual services a criminal offence in Scotland, while decriminalising the sale - the so called ‘Nordic Model’ (as it was Sweden and Norway which first introduced it). The Scottish government’s refusal to back the bill, despite “agreeing with its principles” was due to concern that sex workers would be at “higher risk of violence” if it were enacted.

As Vice-Chair of the Josephine Butler Society (JBS), and having spent years working with sex workers and survivors of sexual violence in various frontline support roles, this debate is up close and personal for me.

On one side are the supporters of full decriminalisaton - the removal of criminal penalties for consensual adults buying and selling sexual services. This allows sex workers to work more safely, access labour rights and protections, seek support from health services and law enforcement without fear of arrest, and reduces stigma and discrimination.

On the other side are the Nordic Model advocates. They believe that all sex work is inherently abusive, and their goal is to abolish it completely. They intend to achieve this by placing harsh criminal sanctions on the buyers of sex to act as a deterrent, ultimately killing demand.

At JBS we support decriminalisation. Not, as our critics like to claim, because we are “pro sex work”, but because we believe it is the legal model most conducive to sex worker safety. We accept that in an unequal society people will sell sex out of economic necessity, and we should therefore be taking a harm reduction approach. We oppose the Nordic Model because, based on the evidence from similar countries that have introduced it, like France and Ireland, it increases the risk of violence and exploitation of sex workers, not the other way around.

Supporters of the Nordic Model unfortunately believe that anyone advocating for decriminalisation is an apologist for sexual violence and exploitation. A member of the “pimp lobby” as they fondly refer to us. The fact that the “pimp lobby” includes the vast majority of sex worker led organisations around the world, as well Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the World Health Organization and various other UN bodies, to name a few, seems not to faze them.

Josephine Butler - the pre-eminent Victorian social reformer and founder of our organisaton - is often cited by Nordic Model advocates as an inspiration for their campaign. Clearly there is a belief among this group that, were she still alive, she would also support their position.

The question of what Josephine would think now is one I have reflected upon many times. It’s impossible to know for sure - she died in 1906, twelve years before women secured the vote, and over half a century before the social revolution of the 1960s. From Josephine’s time to now, this country, and with it our common understanding of decency, respectability and morality, has completely changed.

One thing we do know however, is that she was no stranger to the kind of schisms in feminist activist circles that we see today.

The late 19th century saw deep divisions appear between groups that had previously worked together, under Josephine’s leadership, on the successful campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts. These were a series of repressive and discriminatory laws designed to limit the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), by detaining sex workers and subjecting them to forced examination and treatment.

They had also fought side by side to raise the age of consent from 13 to 16, in the face of shocking revelations of the extent of child trafficking and forced prostitution in Britain.

While we can’t say with certainty what Josephine would make of the current debate, looking into the public disagreements she had with some of her former campaign colleagues may go some way to giving us insight.

The Contagious Diseases Acts were finally repealed in 1886, and the age of consent raised under the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.

At the same time momentum was also building behind the “social purity feminists” - predominantly educated, middle and upper class women who feared what they saw as the rise of “immoral behaviour”.

Drinking, gambling, sex work, and other activities associated with the “casual poor” undermined the social fabric of society, and needed to be stamped out by the moral zeal of figures like Laura Ormiston Chant, founder of the National Vigilance Association (NVA).

As well as raising the age of consent, the Criminal Law Amendment Act also outlawed brothel keeping. After the government’s disastrous attempts to regulate sex work during the period of the Contagious Diseases Acts, this volte-face saw a dramatic rise in the number of prosecutions and closures, which continued through the 19th and early 20th centuries. This was cheered on by the NVA, who warned of letting properties to “suspect women” through fear that they intended to use them for sordid purposes. This resulted in not just sex workers from being excluded from housing, but also many single working class women, whom in the eyes of many of the social purists were guilty of living “fast lives” simply by virtue of their circumstances. Ironically, this often pushed them into the arms of pimps and other abusive men, in a desperate attempt to appear more “respectable”.

The NVA were also closely allied to the British Temperance Women’s Association, led by Lady Isabella Somerset, as well as titanic reforming figures of the age like Millicent Fawcett and Florence Booth. They believed that the streets needed to be cleaned up and, through their close relationship with the police and Home Office, encouraged “vigorous action to clear the streets of prostitutes”. This meant using the law to target sex workers, leading to prosecutions for “vagrancy”, “indecency” and “annoyance”.

In 1885 the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was close at hand, but the divisions between Josephine and her more “repressive” campaign colleagues were beginning to show. Despite their disagreements Josephine was still keen to emphasise unity, and in a speech at Exeter Hall in London she said:

These people are not our enemies… mistaken as we think they are in their methods, they are still honestly desirous of getting rid of prostitution… the advocates for the Contagious Diseases Acts desire the very opposite. They believe prostitution to be a necessity… It is the fervent desire of my heart to win and gain over entirely to our side all that crowd of repressionists who are now… going in a distinctly wrong direction.

In the years following repeal, Josephine’s hope of maintaining unity begun to fade. She was particularly concerned with the actions and the rhetoric of the NVA in respect of the Criminal Law Amendment Act and its use in the closure of brothels.

Ten years after the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and following the sustained campaigns against “immorality” of the social purity feminists groups, Josephine’s patience seemed to have run out. She warned her colleagues:

Beware of ‘Purity Societies’… ready to accept and endorse any amount of inequality in the laws, any amount of coercive and degrading treatment of their fellow creatures in the fatuous belief that you can oblige human beings to be moral by force.

One of the fatal flaws in the position of Nordic Model advocates is their refusal to to talk to sex workers themselves. They do this, I imagine, because it is terribly inconvenient when the population whom you claim to be trying to protect almost unanimously opposes you. The English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), the oldest sex worker led organisation in Britain, says of the Nordic Model:

Criminalising clients will not stop prostitution, nor will it stop the criminalisation of women. But it will make it more dangerous and stigmatising for sex workers.

It is also opposed by the Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement (SWARM), the Sex Workers Union, and National Ugly Mugs (NUM) the UK’s leading sex worker safety organisation.

Far from refusing to speak sex workers, Josephine instead opened her home to them as a refuge. Firstly in her house in Oxford that she shared with her husband and greatest supporter George, then when she moved to Bristol, and again when the family moved to Liverpool after the tragic loss of their four year old daughter.

In 1866, while in Liverpool, she set up one of the first refuges for marginalised women. This included sex workers but also other victims of a sexist and inherently unequal society - such as single working class women that had been seduced by male employers, fallen pregnant, and then been cast out. Exactly the type of people who would later be labelled by the social purity feminists as “suspect women”. Josephine’s hostel was famed for the way that residents were treated with love rather than judgement, and cared for rather than punished for their immorality.

Let’s be clear, Josephine Butler was not some proto sex-positive, bra-wielding feminist. Her religious and cultural values undoubtedly led her to be deeply troubled by the sex industry in all its forms. She clearly had nothing but contempt for the male clients of sex workers, and the fiercest of her criticisms were levelled against a political establishment that believed sex work to be a necessary evil.

We should also acknowledge Josephine’s initial desire to maintain unity, and respect for her former campaign allies.

Much of the NVA’s work included providing support to victims of sexual violence, including legal representation. They campaigned for the introduction of female magistrates and police officers, and for important changes to laws concerning sexual offences.

The temperance movements were driven by their outrage at the way in which domestic violence was fuelled by alcohol, and how husbands could be disposed to treat their wives so monstrously when they had been drinking.

There is no question that Josephine admired and applauded much of this. But she was also clearly troubled by the measures that repressive feminists were willing to take in their determination to abolish prostitution in its entirety.

The NVA and their allies believed that sex workers who did not wish to be “saved” by them had become demons themselves, and therefore deserved to have their livelihoods destroyed.

Over a century later the debate is still raging. This time the abolitionists are not labelling sex workers as demons and suggesting they deserve to suffer if they do not wish to be “saved”. Now they consider anyone involved in the sex industry, specifically women, to be victims of exploitation and entirely without agency. It is the men who use the services of sex workers who are now the demons, and must be crushed with the full force of the law.

The new abolitionists framing is a classic fairy tale of good versus evil. In the face of the hideous reality of sex trafficking, and widespread rape and abuse experienced by those involved in the sex industry, they seek a simple narrative. Women in the sex industry are victims. Men who use sexual services are abusers. Therefore those willing to use the law to punish them are waging a just war.

The reality, as with most things in life, is much more complicated. And as difficult as it is to accept in our relentless world of forced binaries and fierce subcultural tribalism, multiple things can be true at the same time. A bit like how the NVA could have been a force for good and a force for harm. Or how the temperance movements could have been justified in their hatred of alcohol but also misguided in their methods for how to reform society. Or how Josephine Butler was clearly a wonderful and remarkable woman, whose views would today be considered patronising and paternalistic.

While plenty of people are trafficked and forced into prostitution, many more sell sex of their own accord. They may not enjoy it, they may even be doing so because they are in desperate financial straits, but they are still making a choice.

Plenty of clients of sex workers are bad people who seek their services as a way to exert power and control. Many others however do so because they are simply that, would-be clients seeking a service. There may be any number of reasons as to why they are doing this, and provided they are respectful and compliant with the sex workers conditions of service, in a free society, it is nobody’s business but theirs.

Sex workers repeatedly warn of the dangers of introducing the Nordic Model. The way in which it forces them to take greater risks in order to find work because potential clients are much less willing to provide personal information, or make themselves identifiable in anyway. And clients that aren’t identifiable are much more likely to evade justice if they commit a crime against a sex worker. This is part of the reason why sex workers being able to use adult services websites (ASWs) to advertise makes their work much safer, because it’s so much easier to vet potential clients.

Nordic Model advocates argue that ASWs are hot beds of sex trafficking, and therefore want to shut them down. And sex workers in turn are forced to explain again and again that doing so would likely push them onto the streets, or into the arms of unscrupulous brothel managers. This is not theoretical. It is what happened when similar legislation came into effect in the US in 2018.

The NVA and other social purity feminists believed that the harm caused to sex workers and other marginalised women was a price worth paying for the higher purpose of abolishing prostitution. Josephine Butler profoundly disagreed, and I am confident that were she with us now, she would disagree with the new abolitionists for the same reason.

The ‘unbuyable’ bill’s defeat in the Scottish parliament is a rare and welcome victory for supports of decriminalisation. It serves as a reminder that there are enough politicians willing to listen to the very people affected by the legislation, and is hopefully an indicator that similar scrutiny and vigilance could be exercised when the issue inevitably rears its head again in Westminster. The new abolitionists are down but not out, and we must be ready and willing to stand up to them at every stage.

However, despite the intensity of emotion in this debate, and the bitterness of the divisions, we should heed Josephine’s words when she said “these people are not our enemies”.

Advocates of the Nordic Model are not inherently bad because of what they believe. They are misguided, and it is concerning how much potential damage they are prepared to cause in their determination to pursue their ideological goals. But they’re not evil, they’re just wrong.

And that’s ok. They can be wrong and not expect to be subjected to appalling online abuse, or the threat of violence, and the same goes for those of us on the other side of this debate. It’s very sad to have to spell that out. It should be assumed that in a civilised, liberal democracy, we can have disagreements without threatening to annihilate each other. This is what we believe at JBS, as did the great woman from whom we take our name. Of that at least, we can be certain.

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

It’s that time of year again! Yes, Christmas is over, and the festive spirit has been packed away for another year. Now, on the less cheery side of winter, it’s time to dig in and hold out for warmer, brighter days.

It’s also been fucking freezing. And whenever it’s fucking freezing, the same stories about the grim picture of rough sleeping and homelessness across the UK land in our newspapers and on our screens. Right on cue.

Two rough sleepers, 47 year old Anthony Thorn and 26 year old Michael Heaton, died on the streets of Manchester on Boxing Day and 30th December respectively. Then, a few nights ago in the same city, another two rough sleepers were turned away by a Holiday Inn, despite their rooms having been paid for by a local charity. It was minus 6 outside. Thankfully they were accompanied down the road to a Travelodge, who were apparently much nicer, and duly booked them in. Unsurprisingly, Holiday Inn quickly put out a shit we know how bad this looks, we’re really sorry statement.

Shocking those these stories are, they are neither surprising, nor infrequent. They are among countless examples of similar cases, that occur all year, every year. And every year we ask ourselves the same question… how do we stop this madness?

Whenever this debate is rehashed in the media, and in public discourse, the first issue that tends to be raised is housing. There is acknowledgement that this is not the only driver of homelessness of course - mental health, addiction, relationship and community breakdown etc. But there is a tendency in certain elements of the media, particularly on the Left, to suggest that the main driver of the issue is a lack of affordable homes.

At this point it is important for me to distinguish here between homelessness and rough sleeping. According to the latest figures, there are roughly 132,000 families, including 169,000 children, currently living in temporary accommodation. These may include hotels, BnBs, or HMOs (houses of multiple occupancy). Sad and soulless buildings that are not home to anyone, and are no place in which to raise children. A massive state run house building programme, something that we have not seen for over half a century, is desperately needed, and would indeed change their lives, there’s no doubt.

But when it comes to rough sleeping, it’s just not that simple.

Back in 2018, when I was an outreach worker based in South London, I was working with a rough sleeper who’d been on the streets for many years. He slept under a railway bridge next to a busy underground station, and was one of the first people in Britain to be accommodated under the Housing First scheme.

Housing First is a model that was first conceived in the early 90s by a Greek Canadian psychologist called Sam Tsemberis. He argued that instead of forcing rough sleepers to navigate countless obstacles to getting into their own place, it is more effective, humane, and cheaper, to give them their own place in the first instance. Then you provide the wrap-around support necessary in order to help them maintain their tenancy.

It’s a great theory, and when properly implemented, it can work. Unfortunately in this case, it wasn’t properly implemented. Across the UK, local authorities were not given the necessary budget, and so instead of a team of workers supporting one client, you ended up with one worker with a caseload of as many as ten high needs and complex individuals, all needing support in their own homes.

Despite being given a one-bed flat to call his own, my guy kept coming back to sleep under the bridge. His Housing First worker would even ask me to go and see him when I was out on shift, to try and convince him to go back to his flat.

When I would ask him why he wasn’t sleeping in his flat, he would give me different variations of the same answer.

‘It’s too quiet.’

‘There’s nothing to do.’

‘It’s boring.’

You see the pattern.

Clearly taking someone who’s lived on the streets for many years, suffering with all sorts of complex mental health and addiction issues, and just “giving him a house”, is not the silver bullet that some might have you believe.

In the UK we have something called the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP). When there is an extreme weather event, usually a cold snap resulting in the temperature dropping below zero degrees, but this could also include a heatwave or a severe storm, local authorities will offer temporary accommodation to anyone who is rough sleeping - hotels, guest houses etc. This is what those two guys who were turfed out by the Holiday Inn would likely have been being accommodated under.

Interestingly, this is not a statutory, legally binding directive. Councils don’t have to do it, but it has become the status quo purely on a humanitarian basis. It seems obvious that we shouldn’t allow people to die on the streets because of extreme weather, but in this day and age money being spent by local authorities on helping desperate people, purely because it’s the right thing to do, is rare and very welcome.

And there have been times when I’ve been out on outreach shifts when SWEP has been triggered, and offered accommodation to people sleeping on the street, and been turned down. Once I stood over a guy sleeping in an alleyway at 4am, when the dial was at minus 11, and he still said thanks but no thanks.

Now clearly these were not decisions being made by people that were mentally or emotionally stable. Mental ill-health is one of the primary support needs of people who end up rough sleeping. But it shows that just having a roof over your head is not enough of an incentive. In most of these cases the individuals certainly had the capacity to make the decision, and to know why they were making it.

When I worked for a street-sex worker outreach service from 2019-2020, I would spend many hours parked up on a notorious road in South London speaking to our clients. When things were quiet I would observe the behaviour of the many other street dwellers that lurked around those same corners and crossroads. There were two mental health supported accommodation projects nearby, and some of the residents would simply pace up and down the same patches of pavement. Midnight, 1am, 2am… They had “homes” to go to, and beds to sleep in, and yet they chose to be outside, amongst the chaos of the city.

I think I understood why. Four walls, and the silence contained within them, can be like a prison. It can suffocate you, when you have no reason to be there other than because it isn’t outside. At least outside there is life, there is activity, there is something happening.

A sex worker living on the street came to our day centre one morning. I had only been in the job for a few months, and she was a long term client I hadn’t met before. She had disappeared for a while, as they often do, and had come to us in crisis. The breakdown of an abusive relationship, spiraling crack cocaine use, untreated psychosis and schizophrenia, and with no phone and nowhere to sleep.

I took her on a bus to the council’s housing department with the purpose of getting her accommodated. It would have been relatively straight forward. Given her vulnerabilities, she would have been deemed priority need and placed in emergency accommodation. As the bus approached the building she started to get more agitated, and insisted that we get off. She then collapsed on the pavement and started to wail. She didn’t want to go in there, she didn’t want to speak to them, she didn’t want anything they had to offer.

After an anguishing hour or so of trying and failing to convince her to let me help her, I gave up and left. She disappeared again, as was the norm, and she wouldn’t resurface again for many months, by which time she had been seen by different services in different parts of London, almost always rough sleeping. Despite her significant issues, which one could argue certainly impaired her judgement, she was still making a choice. She wanted to be outside.

I’m not saying that access to affordable housing won’t have any impact on the numbers of people rough sleeping. The more suitable accommodation that councils can offer people in crisis the better. Some rough sleepers do choose to take their chances on the streets rather than stay in run down, dilapidated, and in some cases straight up dangerous places, and much improved housing stock would make a difference to them.

My point is that just giving someone somewhere to live is not enough. All these people had somewhere to live at some point, and what happened? They lost their way. They became isolated from themselves and the people around them. They turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with their psychological pain. They developed severe mental health issues and didn’t have the tools or the support to manage them properly. They burned their bridges, and were rejected by conventional society. For some it happened when they were very young. For others it happened much later in life, but either way, you can’t fix it just by giving them a house.

Now you may ask, quite reasonably, how do you fix it?

Obviously if I could answer that in one Substack article then I shouldn’t be sat at my desk in my bedroom, I should be at the side of the Secretary of State for Housing as one of his senior advisors. But in truth it’s a mind bogglingly complex issue, with so many moving parts, and no government in the foreseeable future is likely to come close to solving it.

It’s about the breakdown of communities, and the rise of loneliness and social isolation. It’s about the decline of living standards and the stagnation of wages. It’s about having a totally backward and dysfunctional criminal justice system that prioritises punishment over rehabilitation. It’s about councils and public services being hollowed out and starved of the funding they desperately need. But above all, it’s about the march of a society not made up of citizens with a common set of values, goals and a shared identity, but of individuals siphoned off into their digital silos, increasingly disconnected from each other or any purpose other than to just exist.

Take heart from the knowledge that there are people out there doing what they can to tackle this crisis. That there are protocols, schemes and mechanisms in place, overseen by the public and third sectors, to support people that are desperately in need.

Those guys that died on the street in Manchester weren’t nameless individuals that were forgotten about by a society that didn’t care about them. They were known to services, would have been regularly visited by outreach workers, and were offered different types of accommodation at different points. They just weren’t capable of managing it. They weren’t capable of operating in the version of the world that was presented to them.

We don’t save people like that by putting them in a building and calling it their “home”. We have to present a better version of the world to them. One where they feel connected, and part of something. One where they feel like their life matters, and that it’s worth getting up in the morning. This is what drives you and I to go to work, pay our rent, care for our loved ones. To live our lives. Not burn it up on aluminium foil, or wash it down the drain with a can of Special Brew.

© Teddy Maxwell, 2026. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

The following post is in aid of Second Tree - a humanitarian NGO on the frontline of Europe’s refugee crisis - to support their Christmas campaign. Please like, share, donate and support the work of this special organisation.

Many moons ago, when I was a starry-eyed student, burning with righteous indignation at the World’s ills, I dreamed of being an aid worker. I would fly to far-flung places, where local populations affected by war and natural disasters clearly needed the help of middle-class white guys from Britain, with no language skills, medical knowledge or cultural understanding of any of the places they wanted to work in…

In the end, my life went in a different direction, which was probably for the best.

There’s no doubt I was nurturing a white saviour fantasy, a bubble swiftly punctured by the reality of working in social support services in the UK charity sector.

But I never let go of the dream completely, and last year I took a chance. I secured an interview for a voluntary role with a humanitarian non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Second Tree, based in Ioannina, Northern Greece.

Their work consisted primarily of providing education classes for kids and adults in the two camps outside Ioannina, and organising community engagement activities – day trips, social events, etc., among other things.

The day of my Zoom interview was the day that Donald Trump was re-elected. I had been up until 5 am that morning watching the results, and wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I sat down at my laptop a few hours later. Luckily for me, my interviewer was Caroline, Second Tree’s comms manager, and a more engaging and personable individual you’re unlikely to meet. She soon shook me from my rumination.

‘So Teddy, let’s say you’re running an English class, and one of the Afghan men comes to you one day and says that the men don’t want to be educated with the women anymore. It’s an affront to their cultural and religious beliefs, and they want to be separated. How would you deal with that?’

My socially liberal core wrestled with itself. On the one hand, believing that treating boys and girls differently is wrong, on the other, having it instilled in me that you need to be very careful not to offend another’s cultural sensibilities.

‘Well, I’d take the dilemma to my manager and ask them what they thought’, I replied.

‘Nice try,’ Caroline retorted. ‘I’m your manager, and I’m saying it’s your decision. What do you do?’

After some deliberation, I said that I would try to get a gauge on what the women thought, try to judge whether this was what everyone wanted, and if I was satisfied with this, then agree. Ultimately, if it’s what they wanted as a community, then I should respect this.

‘So you’d segregate them along gender lines?’ Caroline asked.

I equivocated.

‘Ok, let me put it this way,’ said Caroline. ‘Do you think that gender segregation in education is a good thing?’

Of course I didn’t.

‘So why do you think it would be a good thing in this context?’

This was the vein in which the interview continued. I was prodded, challenged, had my own unconscious biases and prejudices laid bare… and I was hooked. I knew by the end of it that I wanted in.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this was also my introduction to RAP (Refugees are People) - Second Tree’s ethos.

Image: Lake Pamvotida, Ioannina: Ed Maxwell

It sounds obvious, but in reality, refugees are not really treated as people. Not in the media, and not in public discourse. They are victims, villains, or heroes, depending on your point of view.

But “refugee” is simply the legal status of an individual rendered stateless as a consequence of events beyond their control. It is our perception that leads us to define an individual on this basis.

In the humanitarian sector, the perception of a refugee usually falls within the “victim” characterisation. They are poor, weak, defenceless people who need to be nurtured by our compassion and generosity. But as they are also likely to come from Africa or the Middle East, we mustn’t challenge their cultural practices or religious beliefs, as this would be disrespectful. We must wrap them in cotton wool, as the delicate and fragile things they are.

Such a patronising attitude is unsurprising. The historic relationship between Europe and the rest of the world is questionable to say the least, and in the post-colonial age, the pendulum has swung the other way. The progressive do-gooders that comprise the majority of humanitarian NGOs are so preoccupied with this that a contortion of inherent guilt and fear of criticism is where they have arrived.

A point at which refugees are not treated as individuals with different personalities, stories and desires, but as victims that must be held at an emotional distance for fear of offending them.

Second Tree was born out of a rejection of this dysfunctional orthodoxy. Volunteers in Katsikas refugee camp, just outside of Ioannina, saw how it was damaging the relationship between the camp residents and the NGOs that were meant to be helping them. Unfulfilled promises, dishonest conversations, and an unequal allocation of support and resources bred mistrust, resentment, and in some cases, hostility.

The founders of Second Tree imagined an alternative vision. A relationship with the refugees in Ioannina based on trust and mutual respect. A relationship with a group of unique individuals, as opposed to helpless victims or brave heroes, defined as such purely because of their status as refugees.

I spent three months out in Ioannina with Second Tree, predominantly working in community engagement and their youth programme – helping to run and organise events.

In that time, I was able to witness RAP in action and play a role in Second Tree’s overarching mission to reimagine the way in which humanitarian organisations engage with refugees.

Fairness is at the heart of this. It is the way you build trust with the people you are working with, something severely lacking across the humanitarian sector.

This means following through on the commitments you make, and never promising anything you can’t deliver.

It means not showing favouritism to one individual or group over another, because you have developed a connection with them, or become attached through learning their personal story.

This is how you avoid charges of discrimination against a particular group – “you are nicer to them because they are Kurds… you prefer them because they are Christians…”, accusations that are regularly thrown at humanitarian organisations providing support to refugees. Accusations which are hard to refute when staff and volunteers naturally develop their own relationships, but are not transparent and disciplined in the way they manage them.

If properly managed, it is then possible for staff to be friends with the refugees they work with, a common taboo in the humanitarian sector because of the fear of being exposed to the above problems. But if the principles of fairness and unbiased support are adhered to, and rigorously implemented, as they are at Second Tree, then it works.

And with friendship comes the ability to challenge someone you disagree with. Plenty of refugees come to Europe with beliefs and values that many of us would find objectionable. The stereotypical progressive lefty would shy away from these conversations in order to avoid being “disrespectful”. The stereotypical right-wing, anti-immigration nationalist would argue that this is why they don’t deserve to be in our country.

But if you believe that you can be friends with someone you disagree with, and want the best for them even if you find some of their views intolerable, then the only way is forward. This is a strongly held belief at Second Tree, and why friendships between staff and refugees are not discouraged, but celebrated. It is what breathes hope into the possibility of genuine integration.

‘What about the power imbalance?’ I asked Giovanni, the President and co-founder of Second Tree, on a drive back from dinner one stormy night.

He thought for a moment. ‘We acknowledge it. We are aware of it. Of course, we have to be. But it will always be there in this type of relationship, and if we believe in what we are doing, then we have to accept this, work with it, and keep moving. What’s the alternative?’

It clearly works. Second Tree is the most trusted humanitarian NGO in the region. Their relationship with the Greek government, who run the refugee camps in Ioannina, is healthier than with other organisations because of their consistency and reliability. With this, they are able to exercise more influence over the government and lobby more successfully for the refugees’ interests.

It also gives rise to beautiful moments of connectivity. Of extending hands across ethnic, religious and cultural lines. No easy thing when you bring together such a diverse group of people, living through such difficult circumstances.

Moments like one of our volunteers from Israel, “achieving peace in the Middle East” with one of our Syrian refugee friends, at the height of the conflict in Gaza, whilst playing cards at one of our weekly get-togethers.

Or watching a 6ft 8 Guinean refugee friend sitting next to an Afghan toddler, playing Jenga with his teenage mother on one of our market trips.

Or sitting with an older Afghan woman and a young Senegalese guy, drinking tea and listening to them complain about the anti-social behaviour in the camp that they both live in, as neighbours, as members of a community.

Moments like this are possible because of the mutual trust and connectivity that Second Tree builds with the refugees that it works with.

Over the years, Second Tree has grown far beyond its work on the ground. The principles they have developed, packaged under the umbrella of RAP, have been transformed into a training programme delivered to dozens of humanitarian NGOs and governmental agencies across Europe. This is part of a wider pan-European project, in which they are the lead partner, to train humanitarian workers across the continent, and influence the ways in which European governments work with the refugee populations in their respective countries.

As an organisation, it punches far above its weight in terms of manpower and resources because of its unique approach, guiding principles, and the extraordinary efforts of its staff and volunteers.

For me, the experience was profoundly important and has had a huge influence on my life, both professionally and personally.

So this Christmas, I ask you - donate, share, and support the incredible work they are doing. Not just for the benefit of the refugees, but for all of us. In such dark and difficult times, a light of cohesion, optimism, and friendship is shining brightly in Ioannina, across Europe and beyond.

© Teddy Maxwell, 2025. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

November is drawing to a close, and I’m sure many are celebrating. For them it is a limbo month, representing shorter and colder days without the merriment of Christmas to warm them. The golden leaves have fallen from the trees, and now lay sodden upon the earth.

I feel differently.

November has always meant a lot to me. My nostalgia dial goes haywire. The cool air and autumn colours evoke deep emotions, of adolescent ignorance and love left long in the past.

Bonfire night is my favourite event in the calendar. It is a treasure trove of memories - chicken rolls and sparklers with my dad when I was little. And later on getting pissed and stoned with my mates, marvelling at the whizz-bangs and laughing until we fall over (I’m 34 and we definitely still do this).

Likewise, Remembrance Sunday is very important to me. Every year my family go to the church where my grandparents are buried, and we lay our poppies on their grave. I close my eyes, and think of those that have laid down their lives in war. Heroically, or needlessly. With courage, or paralysed with fear. In defence of this country, or any other. They all deserve a moment in our thoughts.

Also in my thoughts around this time of year is Sasha.

Back in 2019 I was an outreach worker for a homelessness organisation based in Lambeth, South London. Primarily I worked for the sex worker street outreach service - we would drive around known hot spots and distribute sexual health provision, sanitary products, clean needles and other basics.

We’d also carry out welfare checks, chit chat and get the goss from the streets. In the day centre we would meet clients to complete assessments, as well as provide food, showers and other types of support. It was here that I met Sasha.

She had started sex working when she was 15. Despite being a long standing client of ours, I did not meet her for the first few months I was in post, as she had been serving a custodial sentence at HMP Bronzefield for GBH and wounding with intent (she attacked someone with a broken bottle).

Sasha’s story was fairly typical of our clients. A cycle of homelessness, sexual and domestic violence from a young age, with alcohol and crack cocaine addiction following soon after. Sex work had probably seemed inevitable.

She was a larger than life character. You heard her long before you saw her. She found humour in everything. She mocked everyone around her mirthlessly. She was liked and respected by many, feared and even hated by some. I would never condone violence and threatening behaviour, but it goes hand in hand with the kind of life Sasha had lived.

She took to me quickly. After a few weeks of working together she started calling me her “little brother”. Much of our time together was spent sitting around in the centre drinking ludicrously strong coffee (hers with about 8 sugars in it, a standard dose for a crack user), laughing hysterically and blathering the day away.

Most of our sex workers were rarely seen at the centre during the day. If they were it was because they were in crisis and needed urgent support. But Sasha came to hang out. For her it was a space where she felt genuinely safe, and like she belonged.

One day I came into work to discover that Sasha had been recalled to prison. She had missed her probation meeting and had not made any attempt to communicate with her probation officer. As it happens, I had just started attending a bi-monthly multi-agency meeting at Bronzefield.

Sex worker services from across the south of England would gather in the visitors hall, and inmates with a history of sex work could come and speak to us about the support available to them upon release. I arranged to meet Sasha there.

When we sat down to talk I could sense a change in her. She was quieter and more reflective. Being recalled had shaken her. Her life had been a chaotic and violent blur, and she had rarely considered the consequences of her actions. The fact that she was back inside after only a few weeks of freedom had sparked something in her. A desire to change, to imagine a different future.

She had been off crack since she had been back inside, an advantage to prison which may surprise some. Media stories tend to focus on the prevalence of drugs in prison, but for many of my clients it has been one of the only times in their lives they have managed to stay clean. It provides structure and regulation that has long been absent.

When Sasha was released again, it was to what is known as an “Approved Premises (AP)” - temporary accommodation for people leaving prison. Historically they have been more commonly known as “half-way houses” or “bail hostels”. We got word from her that she was settling in ok, and when her tenancy was up we would start the ritual of approaching Lambeth council and getting them to put her up in temporary accommodation (the never ending cycle).

The following Monday morning I was making tea in our tiny little office kitchen when my colleague Sue walked in. Judging by the cheery way I greeted her, she assumed that I hadn’t heard the news.

Sasha was dead.

It was one of those moments when the world tips over, and you feel as though you are tumbling into the sky…

After a few days the dust settled, and we were able to learn more.

Sasha had been overweight, and had put her body under a lot of strain throughout her life. She had been off crack for two months when she had been placed in the AP, so her tolerance was low. She had scored, and would have done so without being sure of the quality of the gear she was using.

She hit too much in one, and the shock triggered a cardiac arrest. She was already gone by the time she was found in her room by staff at the hostel. She was 36.

The news rocked our organisation, and the wider community. Some of my colleagues had known her since she was a girl. I had known people professionally who had died before, but this was the first time I had lost a client I’d been close to. It hit me hard.

Some of her family did not want us, or her friends from the streets, to attend her funeral. The associations, and reminders of the life that she had led, were presumably too painful, or shameful. It was agreed therefore that we would host a memorial service for her in the centre.

In the week or so leading up to it, my manager Mary tried to convince me to prepare something to say. I declined. As much as I had cared for Sasha, we had only known each other a few months. I was touched by Mary’s words of encouragement (“it’s what she would have wanted… it would have meant so much to her…”), but I did not feel comfortable standing up in a room full of people that had known her considerably longer than me, and speaking as though my role in her life had been any more important than theirs.

The weekend before the service was bonfire night weekend. I went to Bristol to see one of my best mates who was at uni down there. We got a good group together, and drank a lot. On the Saturday night, after watching the fireworks at Western Super Mare Pier (the fireworks were great, WSM not so much), we travelled back to Bristol and headed to a house party. I won’t recount the story here (another time maybe), but I ended up in hospital that night having impaled my leg on a spike.

After the operation, the consultant informed me that the spike had missed my femoral artery by an inch. Had it been nicked, I would have likely died in a matter of minutes. As I lay there, contemplating my good fortune, I thought about what Mary had said, and decided to write Sasha’s poem.

The service took place the following Tuesday evening. Due to my… accident… I had missed work on the Monday and Tuesday. I managed to wriggle myself into a suit, and sheepishly limped into the centre to assist my colleagues in the set up.

It was quite a sight. Messages and artwork prepared by our clients were displayed along the window sills. Pictures of Sasha had been pinned to the walls, and hangings artfully descended from the ceiling. One of my colleagues, Tami, had enrolled her brother and sister, both very talented musicians, to provide the music.

Most special of all was the turnout. All the staff at our organisation were accompanied by at least a dozen other professionals who had known or worked with Sasha. Clients of our service, old and new, attended in large numbers, including some of our sex workers that we had not seen for months, but had heard the news and come to pay their respects. The rest of the attendees were people who had known her at different points in her life. Those of Sasha’s family that had been willing to attend were deeply moved by the spectacle.

The local pastor, whom had known Sasha and her family, and was a supporter of our organisation, officiated the service. Several staff members, and one or two of our clients, said a few words. I read my poem.

After the service, the family approached me to express their gratitude, and appreciation for the words I had written. I happily agreed to print it off for them, so that they could take it home. After I had spoken the words, I felt that they no longer belonged to me, but to her family. In this vain, I have not shared them, nor spoken them aloud since. I will however share the last two stanzas here:

And like that bird, 
You're free from hurt, 
As now you've spread your wings,
You're that rustle in the trees now, 
You're that whisper in the wind,
And there's no need, 
For you to be,
Scared or angry no, 
Because the pain and sadness,
That you've carried,
Is finally let go.

And though we're shaken, 
As you were taken, 
Away so very young, 
We are not forsaken, 
Nor mistaken, 
God wanted you for his own,
And now we have, 
This chance to dance, 
And sing out just for you,
But we're not saying our goodbyes no,
We're saying, 
See you soon. 

As I get older, I try to not shy away from the hard reality of death, but engage with it as much as I am capable. Some of my friends and family find this morbidity taxing, and decline to discuss the subject with me.

Modern Western society’s relationship with death is utterly baffling to me. It is an inevitable, predetermined state, without which life could not exist. And yet we consider it the worst possible thing that could happen and, simultaneously, treat it like something that never will happen! And then, when it inevitably does happen, we are blindsided. Paralysed by grief, immobilised by the shock of loss, and the fear of being confronted with our own mortality. It is a cultural attitude of incalculable self harm.

Losing Sasha, particularly in the manner that we did, was extremely painful. But our only hope in the face of such tragedy is to believe that beauty can be born from it.

Sasha had been in pain for much of her life, but now no longer. In silence, there is peace. It is why I do not find cemeteries places to be feared, but appreciated. To walk between the graves is to walk with those that no longer suffer.

Coming together to remember and celebrate Sasha was one of the most moving events I ever had the good fortune to be a part of.

Feuding members of our community put their differences aside to pay their respects. Family members that had struggled so much to be reconciled with Sasha when she was alive managed to make peace, in the presence of the many that loved and appreciated her. For her humour, her courage, her honesty, her refusal to sit down and shut up. To be cowed.

Like the golden leaves on the trees in November, we will all fall eventually. It is heart breaking, and as beautiful as the spring blossoms that will eventually bloom in our place.

(All names have been changed to protect anonymity)

© Teddy Maxwell, 2025. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.

I was pleasantly surprised and slightly apprehensive when I discovered that the latest File on 4 Investigates episode was on chemsex. Whenever your profession is the subject of media attention, there is always the fear that reasoned analysis will give way to sensationalism — particularly when it involves sex, drugs, and everything that goes with it. Most people still haven’t heard of chemsex, although the fact it was the subject of a Radio 4 programme indicates that this is changing.

Put simply, it is using drugs to enhance sexual experience. But when we use the term “chemsex”, we are referring to this activity being practiced in groups, predominantly (but not exclusively) by men who have sex with men (MSM).

The drugs have varied over the years. Currently, the most common are crystal meth (methamphetamine — known colloquially on the scene as Tina), GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate — “g”), and, to a lesser extent, mephedrone (M-CAT or “drone”). Together, these drugs produce a high combining dizzying euphoria with the desire and ability to have sex for hours, sometimes days.

There are no prizes for seeing the potential downsides. Crystal meth is a powerful, highly addictive stimulant that can prevent the user from sleeping for hours which can easily roll into days. For anyone who’s experienced a bad comedown, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve come off a binge on Tina.

Along with the crushing comedown and sleep deprivation, be prepared to say hello to our old friend paranoia, which, entertained for too long, can open the door to full-blown psychosis. People who’ve been up on Tina for too long may experience hearing voices, imagining conspiracies against them, feelings of immense dread, and fear of imminent death.

GHB, in turn, is an extremely potent sedative. Taken at a safe dose — 1–2ml depending on tolerance — it increases libido and produces intense euphoria and relaxation. But the margin for error is tiny. One misjudgment — even 1ml or less — and you are staring down the barrel of a fatal overdose.

It’s the most common cause of death among people on the scene, and most regular chems users I’ve worked with have either seen or known someone who’s died this way.

In 2021, my good friend and mentor asked me to help set up a chemsex support group through the sexual violence support service he worked for. I had recently qualified as an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA), and this, combined with my experience, led him to choose me as co-pilot. Four years later, it is still going strong.

The aim was to create a safe, supportive space for sexual abuse survivors who’ve been involved in chems. Their abuse could have been prior to chems, or happened in a chems context. In most cases, it’s both.

Combining sex with strangers and powerful drugs always carries a risk of sexual abuse and exploitation. Whether targeted by a predator, or unable to consent to sexual acts performed on them, this has been the experience for many of our clients.

Most of the men who come to us have also battled homophobia, social isolation, and mental health struggles for most of their lives. They are also dealing with the trauma associated with their experiences of sexual abuse, often suffering in silence for years before seeking help.

The File on 4 episode was generally very good. It did not sensationalise or patronise. The guests were wide-ranging, knowledgeable, and compelling. Its aim was to challenge unsympathetic and judgemental attitudes, and argue that awareness raising, harm reduction, and resources for mental health and addiction support are the keys to tackling chemsex-related harms.

However, whenever a story involves dangerous drugs, the drugs usually end up being the story. Indeed, this was the case with File on 4.

The lion’s share of the forty minutes focused on the types of drugs, their effects, dangers, emergency response, the impact of criminalisation, and available support to users. Most people have little experience or knowledge of illegal drugs, and so they fascinate, tantalise, and horrify to such an extent that they are catnip (ha!) to the media.

But the drugs themselves are not the real story. Crystal meth provides the tempo, GHB the melody, but combining drugs and sex is not new, and these substances only became the chems of choice relatively recently. What we should be asking ourselves here is… why?

Why do people get involved in the chems scene? Why has it exploded as it has? Why is it most commonly associated with the MSM community? What is the appeal? Why are individuals willing to take such incredible risks to reach the emotional and sexual heights that can be achieved? What about the experience, aside from the addictive qualities of the drugs, makes it so difficult for some to stop?

My analysis is not exhaustive. It is informed by my professional experience and insight, not by formal research — I rely on what I’ve learned anecdotally from diving as deep into the world of chems as is possible without experiencing it first hand.

This does not apply to everyone who engages in chemsex. Plenty just have a very good time, use infrequently, and don’t become addicted. This discussion is only in relation to those who become trapped by it.

So don’t ask me to show my working. Please just indulge me if you can…

Community

Imagine living in the modern world as a young LGBT+ person, raised in a conservative or religious household and subjected to homophobic bullying. Imagine suppressing your sexuality out of fear and shame, then breaking free, moving to university or a big city to start a new job, and in turn a new life, prospects, and friends.

This has underpinned the queer scene for decades. Big, modern cities were the genesis of LGBT+ movements — fighting for rights, identity, freedom, and having a really fucking good time while doing it.

Patriic Gayle, co-founder of the Gay Men’s Health Collective, spoke very eloquently on File on 4 about escaping provincial life to the heady excitement of London in the 1980s. Before smartphones, if you wanted to get laid, or off your nut, you had to go out. You got your glad rags on and hit the clubs, the saunas, the cruising spots. The scene, as he describes it, was one of solidarity, cohesion, and collective identity. Of course we can over-romanticise the past, and we do. But Patriic’s point was that people were more connected, and because those connections required more effort to build, they were stronger.

Now, with apps and swipe culture, much of that connectivity has been lost. Young LGBT+ individuals finding themselves in a new place are still seeking community. But where and how they find it is changing, and these changes have fueled the modern chemsex scene. A scene which those individuals are much more likely to stumble across now than in the past.

COVID

Don’t get me wrong, the chemsex scene existed before 2020. With the same drugs, and hooks up organised in the same way. But the pandemic accelerated its intensity and ubiquity. Many of the guys in our groups became embroiled in the world of chems during the lockdowns, when the clubs and bars were closed, and partying and socialising were, for all intents and purposes, illegal.

Imagine what this did to the queer scene. Imagine the numbers of young, single people that the pandemic robbed of their indelible right to have a good time. Apps had already started to take over at this time, but in the post-COVID world they have become the masters, and we the slaves.

With apps dictating how, when, and with whom we connect, has come the addiction to the apps themselves. Swiping, messaging and flirting with strangers, updating profiles incessantly. These have almost become ends in themselves.

And the way we have been funneled into our digital silos, inside the physical silos of our flats and houses, unable to stay away from our phones for as long as it takes for the kettle to boil, has led many to believe that the only way to find a human being to talk to, cuddle, fuck and laugh with, is through an app.

That we can now acquire drugs more easily than takeaways only serves to fuel the uncontrollable beast that the modern chemsex scene has become. No more texting a dealer, getting in the back of BMW and being driven round the block, before a couple of wraps are handed to you, which you obviously won’t properly check, then handing over the cash, jumping out and scurrying away. Now you can shop, order, pay and have the gear delivered without even getting off the sofa.

Sexual identity

Self-discovery and seeking community is fundamental to the LGBT+ experience, particularly for an individual who has been raised in a conservative culture that is intolerant of their identity.

Remember, all the guys that come to our groups are survivors of sexual violence. Many of them have been sexually abused as children. Consider the impact this trauma will have on a child’s development, their ability to form stable relationships, and to have a healthy understanding of sex and intimacy.

Combine this with the experience of growing up LGBT+ in a world that others you, surrounded by people that make you feel ashamed of who you are. Many of the guys I’ve worked with who got sucked into the world of chems had never felt capable of expressing themselves sexually. Of even perceiving themselves as a sexual being. And then one day someone gave them a hit of Tina and… BOOM… suddenly they were free. Suddenly they could be open, share, imagine what sex could really be like. Experience what it could be like.

It is no wonder though, that the road from sexual self discovery through the use of powerful drugs, to chaos and self destruction, is a short one. One can quickly become aware of the physical and psychological damage, caused by their dependence on Tina and GHB to be physically intimate, and yet find they cannot stop. Forgetting what it’s like to have sober sex, or never having had it in the first place, is a common experience for many that become addicted to chems.

Shame

The cruelest of emotions. It eats away at us, and yet we cannot fight it because we pretend it isn’t there.

Shame is one of the most common themes of our groups. Why our guys become entrenched in the world of chems so often comes back round to it. Shame of their sexuality, their bodies, their behaviour. Shame of their inability to stand up for themselves, to bullies, to the person who abused them. It is inextricably linked to society’s perceptions of masculinity. It is why it takes an average of twenty six years for a man who has been sexually abused to seek support.

Chems have the power to unlock an individual’s sexual identity, and allow them to explore that side of themselves for the first time. But it can also serve to bury their shame, by losing themselves in a chaotic blur. Shame also feeds a fundamental lack of self-worth, and ultimately the desire to self-destruct.

Most people can relate to this. It is why when we feel shit about ourselves we reach for the booze, the drugs, the food, the porn or whatever. We know its bad for us, and that’s the point. We want to fuck ourselves up because we feel that it’s what we deserve.

When this is linked to deep-seated shame, sexual identity, and the use of powerful substances, it can take on a more extreme form. Many times I have heard from my clients of how they had reached the point where they felt so disgusted with what they saw when they looked in the mirror, that getting fucked up on chems to the point of near unconsciousness, and then being passed around in a group, to be used and abused by anyone and everyone, was justified. Somehow, it was all they were worth.

Defiance

For many, the experience of growing up LGBT+ is to be placed on the margins of society before even knowing who you are.

And given how society also treats people who use drugs - in the eyes of conservative, conventional society - chemsex could be considered the ultimate deviant act. It is about as far as it can possibly be from what is “normal”.

I will never forget this being conveyed to me in a group by one of my clients. Given the harm that chems had caused him, it was with both glee and bitterness that he described its power and appeal.

‘They just have no fucking idea… And they never will…’

Our chemsex group is the professional achievement I am most proud of. The conversations we have, and the cohesion and connection in those groups, is unlike anything I have experienced. Despite the pain and suffering, I have rarely known a group of individuals more self-reflective, thoughtful, tolerant and patient.

I have never known a greater propensity to consider forgiveness and acceptance over rage and revenge, from those with more just cause to choose the latter. We have created a community in which they feel understood for the first time in their lives.

As bleak a picture as I have painted of the world of chemsex, it is worth remembering that life is never just one thing or another.

The chems scene is not just sexual violence and drug-related deaths. And people do it for reasons beyond simply the high from the drugs or the intensity of the sex. The community, the connections, the collective experience, the acts of resistance. These can be real. But only for as long as they exist alongside a world that is separate from it all. The point at which the world away from chems is lost is the point that the individual is lost to themselves.

As the chemsex phenomena becomes the focus of ever greater public attention, my hope is that these deeper and more conceptual questions, of how and why it has evolved in the way it has, will inform future conversations. If it does, we may have a chance of preventing the harm it causes, and sparing the victims that it claims.

© Teddy Maxwell, 2025. All rights reserved. Please share via link, not by reposting.