FIRST of all I would like to congratulate our local MP on being made Minister for Homelessness, it’s a very important job. It’s also very sad that such a job exists.

I’m sure when I was young there was a minister for housing, not homelessness. To me having a Minister for Homelessness is an admission that we as a society have failed, we have failed to provide for our citizens most basic needs.

We seem to have got hung up on the idea that we need to make loads of money and that will provide everything we need. It must be blatantly obvious by now that this isn’t working.

Maybe we need to look at what we as a society really want. I for one would like to live in a society where people were valued, as people, not just in terms of how much money they could make for other people, where people felt they could contribute to the society, and in return they would be paid a decent living wage and could afford somewhere decent to live.

To me that really doesn’t seem too much to ask. Suggesting that homeless people stay with friends and family shows a frightening lack of understanding of the problem.

I hope that during his time as the Minister responsible for homelessness Steve Webb will learn more about the problems involved, and can come up with some creative solutions, maybe he should go and talk to some homeless people and see what they would like to happen, I would happily go with him.

Kate Taylor

Thornbury