Anyone with a shred of decency must have felt ashamed for their city and their country on reading of the rising number of deaths of homeless people in Nottinghamshire.
How long will our exceedingly rich country turn its back on this national scandal?
Most of us in Britain are among the wealthiest top few percent of people on the planet and yet show that 11 homeless people died on our streets in 2018.
London is the money-laundering capital of the world and yet, for the sake of a relative pittance in terms of national spending, we tolerate a situation in which dozens of people in this city, and thousands across the land, curl up in shop doorways for want of a home to call their own.
We take to the streets in protest at threats to the environment.
We are oh-so-considerate about how we address people in terms of gender.
We indulge in passionate debate over Brexit - a nice, safe haven of a topic for politicians to lose themselves in while ignoring bigger problems beyond Westminster.
And yet, below our noses - literally, as we hand a few coins to those sleeping rough, or skulk on by, embarrassed - we allow the appalling indignity of rough sleeping.
In an age of much-trumpeted equality, we allow an underbelly of society to grow.
Men and women who, for whatever reason, have fallen on hard times, are nudged towards the temptation of drug abuse and crime in a cycle that often ends in prison, then release from prison with nowhere to go and nothing to spend, ...
As the shameful new statistics show, .
It is time we thrust the issue high up the political agenda and demand of our politicians, when they next seek our votes, that they find the money to provide decent homes and opportunities for self-sufficiency for all.
In short, that they consign homelessness to the history books.
