Prince William 'We can end homelessness"

[Thedom]

Part 1, I thought it was a really insightful and thought provoking documentary, very well produced and some impressive people working tirelessly to support the homeless community.

William came across as passionate and very articulate, knowledgeable without appearing to be preaching. A great cause and hopefully will be successful, it's great he is working so closely with those who are on the front line daily trying to make a difference.

He looks so like Diana, not only his appearance but his mannerisms and expressions, could have been watching and listening to Diana at times.

Don't know how it will do on Disney+ though, it is very UK specific, an unsexy subject and I am sure they will have to add subtitles in places.

@wordler

It’s PW saying ‘we’ though isn’t it. It’s not the collective charities. It’s touted as PW spearheading this. So that’s how it will come across.

I disagree with what his role is.

After the Russian revoltution, the RF were spooked. Socialism was spreading across Europe and the UK and there were genuine concerns at one point that the RF could become a target. This was compounded by WW1 and the mourning of the ‘lost generation’. This lead to monumental social change in the UK and the RF realised that their role had to be to seen to serve. So Queen Mary would visit hospitals etc.

This was designed to stave off a growing anti monarchy feeling brewing in the UK.

In this modern era, the RF still have to first and foremost serve Britons. Not driven with ego and passions, but with the purpose of providing stability to the country with an apolitical approach.

We have elections to vote those to parliament to deal with the issues of the environment and homelessness. And when they fail (which they often do) we can vote them out. This is how it should work.

William is playing with fire with this approach

Then we, as the electorate and taxpayers then hold them to account

We all want to end homelessness. It's an ideal we all dream about. When I look at train cars filled with sleeping homeless on bad weather I don't think I'm being political when I want them to have a home.

He's bringing in experts, letting them experiment, and providing his own money. He's contributing to charity. It reflects well on your RF that the POW is spending his new millions on housing people in his Duchy.

Again - you are completely misinterpreting both the project and it’s scope and what it represents as a community project being highlighted and led by Prince William - you would understand it better and reassure yourself that he really is not ‘playing with fire’ if you would just watch the documentary.

Then you’d have the source material and context rather than snarky TV reviewers versions or anti monarchists opinion pieces from the papers.

Some people don't feel the need to post links after links to events where someone was at to try to justify the person's participation or what they wore. The King and Queen were on their tour. They did what they were required to do. The photos were taken. It was reported in the press. Job done.

Perhaps you are used to the posts by H and M supporters who post endlessly about them?
About the fashion M wore?

No! 😅
The visit to Australia was quite a big thing given his health and having been to island countries in Polynesia myself, a truly magical part of the world, I looked for chat about their visit to Samoa on here. Not interested in their clothes ! (Although Charles did wear a very natty take on a safari suit which I thought was very in keeping with Samoa)

What really puzzles me is how the government were able to house all the homeless during Covid suddenly. They were swept off the streets and housed for a long period. So it’s possible to do!

Where did they all go? There seem to be so many more people on the street recently. There is a shelter close to where I work and it seemed overflowing during Covid. I would assume there was extra money coming in either from the government or charity.

Plenty of chat and pics on the Royal style and beauty threads if you're interested.

This is precisely my point.

I won’t watch the documentary. Most people won’t, let’s be honest. Just like Heart of Invictus didn’t get many eyeballs.

But whether you think I’m misrepresenting the docu or not, the takeaway for most people is….the PW thinks he can solve homelessness in 5 years. That’s why involving yourself with issues that can be viewed politically can be misrepresented…very easily.Theres already an article or two in national papers highlighting the optics of this doesn’t look good. A couple of articles isn’t a backlash I grant you, but for having such a laudable aim…..there hasn’t been much reaction at all. I think people are just choosing not to say the quiet part allowed.

This is why, when you stick to a more traditional line up of royal jobs, they are less likely to be misrepresented. Cutting the ribbon the new train station is going to attract negative headlines in the way that this did. Even if it was only a couple.

He now flying off to SA for an environmental awards do….that doesn’t really sit well me either. But that’s another argument.

Listen, I want POW to do well, want him to become King. But I just think he’s taking risks that may not pay off.

@BemusedAmerican

But the reason why so many end up homeless has its based on Politics.

There was a very interesting article in the Washington Post the other day, about how the east and west coasts of the US- that both share a progressive and liberal outlook, have very different outcomes on homelessness and drug use.

The writer who was from the west coast, was writing about policies, in particular how changes in drug legislation had a devastating impact on homelessness and how that meant that California and Oregon had some of the highest rates of homelessness sun the US.

I agree that we all want to end homelessness but to solve these problems, we have to recognise that many of the causes are political and can only be solved by government.

I guess that long-term solutions aren't that easy. I should think there are places where homeless people can go - for a night or two. That's probably relatively easy to organise. It's dealing with the long-term issues which present the challenge.

My daughter bought a flat which was her pride and joy. The council then bought one in the same building and housed a previously homeless man with alcohol and other addiction problems there. Her life was made a merry hell! And of course, she can't sell it and move on with her life because he makes a point of sitting in front of the main entrance smoking, with a pile of junk next to him. Woe betide anyone who politely asks him to move, or to take this stuff with him. There's nothing she or anyone else in the flats can do about this, apparently. He's not breaking any laws - he's just an unpleasant man who makes people's lives miserable.

My point is simply that such people have complex issues and housing them is never going to be easy. And the problem will always be with us - that's why it's so stupid for people to say 'Oh - we've STILL got a homeless problem - why?' There'll always be new people become addicted to substances and new young people being chucked out of their family homes because Mum's new man (or Dad's new lady) don't like them - or worse - escaping abuse.

Of course we should prioritise this problem, but let's not waste our breath expressing surprise at why it hasn't already been sorted out.

There are 2 hotels near us and many homeless people were moved there during Covid .

Why won’t you watch the documentary? How can you make judgements if you don’t? How strange.

Read the post. My point is most people won’t watch, but will still have an opinion. That tends to happen when you are heir to the throne. So that’s why you must be careful with the projects chosen.

70 million Britons live in the UK, most won’t watch it. In addition, it is also on Disney+ which will limit how impactful it will be, because it will depend if you have a subscription or not.

I have zero interest in such a show. It’s not my idea of an interesting watch. Just like Heart of Invictus.

In my circle I seem to be the only one who hasn’t yet watched the programme ! I volunteer for a charity on a Friday and it was being discussed .
I plan to do so later .

How do you know most won’t watch it?

Twisty, I don’t think any project that William does or doesn’t do will have any effect on the way that he is viewed as heir to the throne because people either accept the idea of a hereditary monarchy or they don’t. Whatever he does is highly unlikely to change opinions on him with regard to that. He is unlikely to
make a major gaffe as he has been sensible
enough to take lots of advice over his projects and to engage with lots of experts and professionals. Like I said earlier, there were lots of rumblings about Charles before he was king as to whether he would be any good or not and lots of derision of his ideas on the environment and climate. How wrong those people were 🤷‍♀️

As for the documentary being on Disney+, it is now but it was first shown on ITV on Wednesday and Thursday so it was free to access

Tell You what, come back to me when you have the viewing figures. Then we can discuss.

@smilesy

Disagree with that the projects taken on by a Royal will have no impact if someone believes in the monarchy or not.

It would colour my opinion.

I believe that having a constitutional monarchy is a positive and stabilising institution in the UK. I wouldn’t want a repbublic.

However, the RF only stay in their privileged position if we say so. They serve us.

These projects (to me, clearly not others on this thread) taken on by POW are vanity projects. I don’t support royals using their platform for their own personal interests. Even if these interests have good intentions.

If this is a path that William continued to go down, then as time goes on, then I would question the role of the monarchy.

The only way the RF survived the socialist uprisings of early 20th centuary is that they realised they must become public servants. That the public perception of them must be that of someone humble and in servitude.

That’s a big part of where meghan went wrong, she didn’t understand this. If she had taken advice, then she may have stood a chance but she didn’t. Therefore, she came across as attention seeking and at times tone deaf - affirmation bananas anyone?

Anyway, my support of the monarchy is not absolute. I suspect most people feel this way.

I take on the point that once King, he will pull back. However, this itself highlights that he is chosen partisan projects that he knows he couldn’t possibly undertake as king.

So how do you feel about the Princes Trust and Duke of Edinburgh awards, which, imo, have done immense good over many decades?

We've just come out of the longest ever reign, which provided stability in a time of great change. Charles has come to the throne in old age and at the time his health sadly took a hit, so I think it unlikely he will be doing anything too dramatic, at least not at the moment.

The role of monarchy has always evolved. For a large chunk of the history of the British variant, "being very good at fighting and leading in battle" was a pretty much essential qualification. That changed under Elizabeth I and more so under Charles II, who fully grasped he was there by public tolerance (although he ruled without Parliament for the last 4 years of his life)

William may have a short window to at least contribute to helping counter a real social evil before the constraints of the symbolic role as HoS takes over. There are many, many worse things he could do as PoW than this and I don't think it's a vanity project, I think he's sincere (his longstanding commitment to Centrepoint indicates that) and support it wholeheartedly. I certainly wouldn't mind a King who thinks people being homeless is a terrible thing that needs to be addressed and actually does his best to help with that.

It doesn't matter if people don't watch the documentary. This is a five year social experiment pilot. At the end of the 5 years, it will be assessed. If it works, then it may be replicated around your country to help people outside of the experiment.

NYC spent a billion dollars on a program called Thrive under the last mayor that didn't work.

https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/05/09/thrive-nyc-nypd-diversion-centers-for-mentally-ill-sit-empty/

If you read the article above, part of the problem was that no one assessed the pilot before it was spread out. William's group is starting small, assessing, and at the end of the 5 years will pass on the results.

I lived in LA and Seattle in the early 1990's. One of the reasons there was a large homeless population was the weather. Both cities were warm in the winter and there was no snow. Homeless encampments could stay up all year round.

We currently have migrants sleeping under bridges in NYC. When the cold and snow really begin, they will move into the subway tunnels and passageways along with the American -born homeless and become less visible.

The programmes were on ITV. Aren't they available to be seen on ITVX?