White Privilege In Croydon

Considering so many shops and businesses are either working at reduced capacity or closed altogether, central Croydon was quite busy Saturday. Near Surrey Street, a homeless woman I have seen for many months was pitched in a doorway with all her worldly possessions. She is younger than me, probably quite a bit younger, but looks older with her rotten teeth, and as at 64 I am not in good shape, that says something.

I noticed she had a mobile phone. Well, she could hardly have a landline. She told me Crisis had given it to her. I asked her if she couldn’t get hostel accommodation or something, to which she replied the council would split them up, them being her and her husband. I asked about him, and she said he was on the other side of the road.

These two were not begging, at least not aggressively. I walked up to him and asked about their situation. Couldn’t they get housed together in some sort of apartment? He said they, meaning the council, were working on it. I asked him his name, and he said it was Phil. He was probably older than his wife but didn’t look so wretched; a beard can have that effect, and homeless men are not generally as tragic as homeless women.

Talking of the tragic, if it weren’t so tragic it would be comic that we are forever being told – on both sides of the Atlantic – about white privilege and something now called structural racism. Clearly Phil and his wife left their white privilege at, not at home, that is for certain.

Then there are the feminists who never cease reminding us about that other chimera, sexism. Earlier this year, Samira Ahmed was complaining she was paid “only” £440 for an episode of Newswatch while Jeremy Vine collected £3,000 per episode of his programme. What does that tell us about privilege? Primarily that it derives from money, though not necessarily from talent. If you have the connections you can be an unrepentant junkie and still wallow in privilege, but let’s not talk about Hunter Biden. What it does tell us about poverty and social exclusion is that it is an equal opportunity employer.