DON'T ENCOURAGE JUNKIES

Re: Bums prefer ocean views (B.C. Views, Sept. 7)

I have just returned from a two-week holiday visiting my family, most
of whom emigrated to B.C. around 50 years ago. I now have two aunts,
three cousins and their extended families living in Maple Ridge and I
always receive a warm welcome.

I congratulate you on your article, which I read on the internet. Here
in Scotland we have the same problems with the so-called "homeless
drug addicts" and we also have the same bleeding heart politicians and
social workers with their schemes, projects and solutions to the
problems of crime, illegal squatting on private property and vandalism
caused by these people.

Throwing public money at them, giving them sympathy, free needles and
places to inject, etc. it's all futile. I know - I'm a civil servant
in the Department of Work and Pensions, and the word "work" is simply
not in their vocabulary. We have them here too: people who would
rather commit suicide rather than do one day's honest hard work in
their natural lives.

And why should they? When our government and its agencies give them
welfare, so-called community care grants and everything they need to
lead a comfortable life and all at the taxpayers' expense?

We live in crazy times, and with increasingly crazy liberal
governments not only tolerating these parasites in our midst but
encouraging them, things will never change.

Your article was accurate, not only describing the junkie issue in
Canada, but throughout the Western world.

Thomas Toye,

Paisley, Scotland