THERE IS A MESSAGE HERE - WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO OUR CHILDREN AND THEIR CHILDREN.
THIS IS THE CONSEQUENCE OF APATHY, LACK OF PLANNING
"Heathrow is my home" One of the 1000 homeless people who live at the airport. With pink lipstick and freshly brushed hair, an attractive woman queues up to buy a cup of coffee at a restaurant overlooking the departure hall of Britain's biggest and busiest airport. It is just before 7am, and the passengers ahead of her at Costa will soon be rushing to catch their flights all over the world. Yet Eram Dar has no passport and no ticket. What's more, she isn't in a hurry to go anywhere. Eram's home is Heathrow's Terminal One. Over the past year and a half, she has lived at the airport with all her possessions in a blue canvas bag. Today, she plans to do a bit of window shopping at the airport's stores and, perhaps, buy a bowl of pasta for lunch. She often finds a discarded newspaper and reads it to while away the day.
No place to go: Eram Dar says 'Heathrow is like a good hotel'
As night falls, she will sleep on the floor between an American Express currency exchange booth and a Wall's ice-cream vending machine in a corridor that leads to Terminal One from the underground. She says simply and in a middle-class English accent: 'Living at Heathrow is like being in a good hotel. It is warm, very clean and you don't get bothered. I think I'm very lucky to be here. 'I sleep in the same spot every night, if another person hasn't grabbed it first. Sometimes the airport passengers peer down at me as they walk by. The night cleaners mop and brush around me. I just close my eyes and put my scarf over my head to block them all out.'
Eram is one of an astonishing number of people who, it was revealed this week, live at Heathrow. It is a scenario reminiscent of Stephen Spielberg's film, The Terminal, which starred Tom Hanks as a stateless Eastern European tourist who sets up home at New York's JFK airport after his own country is erased from the map by war. However, what is happening at Heathrow is not the stuff of Hollywood fiction. The fact is the homeless are flocking to British airports as never before. With the cost of living going through the roof, the middle class are heading to the airports for refuge! Over the past three months, it has been discovered that 1011 people are sleeping permanently at Heathrow, and the numbers are growing - 200 homeless are believed to be living at Gatwick and more are expected. Airports are seen as warm, comfortable havens and safer than sleeping rough. Yet charity workers say the homeless have to play a 24-hour-a-day, cat-and-mouse game to avoid detection by police and airport security and being thrown out onto the streets. Peter Mansfield-Clark, a director of the charity Crawley Open House, based near Gatwick airport, explains: 'These people take a rucksack with them with a change of clothes. They use the toilet areas to wash or shave and make themselves look tidy. 'They'll often be in travel gear, so they appear as if they're waiting to go off somewhere or have just come back from a trip. If you look the part, you've a chance of being able to sleep without anyone disturbing you.' Some of the homeless deliberately put on floral shirts, as though they are about to fly to a holiday in the sun, to help escape suspicion.
Eram sleeps in the bus station near the airport, if she is evicted from the airport Most also have a suitcase on wheels, which makes them fit in with the crowds. Some even pose as businessmen in suits, hiding behind newspapers if the security staff come their way, or lie on benches covered with a coat as if they are waiting for a delayed flight. This week I spent two nights at Heathrow, after the London-based charity 'Broadway' was brought in by the British Airport Authority to help the airport's homeless. Howard Sinclair, chief executive of 'Broadway', told me: 'It's not as hard as living on the streets for them. That's why the homeless go there.' One of them is Harban, a 51-year-old Indian who came to Britain 23 years ago. I met him as he was walking into the departure lounge of Terminal 2, about to settle down for the night. He was wearing a thin cotton jacket and rain-soaked trousers. In his left hand was a white bag, containing a camel-coloured wool overcoat with a Harrods label inside. He says he found it under a bench at the airport a few weeks ago. Harban lives at Heathrow by choice, and has done so, since his luck ran out two years ago, after his marriage broke down, when he left the family home and struggled to keep his plumbing business going. 'When I found Heathrow, it was good news for me because, since my marriage broke up, I had nowhere else to go,' he says. As darkness falls over Heathrow, and the last planes take to the skies, the airport goes quiet for the night. Harban creeps into his favourite place, be
I'm honestly surprised given the security in airports, almost every inch is covered by a camera. It also puts in perspective the claim that airports are airtight in terms of security, if these people can live there by learning to dodge the police and the staff, then so can someone whose intentions are not so benign.
We all know the drill here “one is innocent until proven guilty”. Do you really believe that they know where about the homeless are inside the airports? To study them better is to allow them to behave naturally. This policy is adopted only by the British police because they are over confident to stop suspects as soon they become a danger “cock ups do happen” to the society. Most European systems act on suspicions and make a decision as they go along. The American system is the opposite everyone is guilty until they prove innocent.
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