Tents even being barely tolerated is a fairly recent thing, ten or fifteen years ago you'd barely have time to pitch one before filth were there threatening to arrest you and there's no way you could leave one and expect it to still be there when you got back unless it was hidden well out of the way. This is just what's mostly always happened, because who are you going to complain to the 99% of times it doesn't become a news story?
To be fair, it's not just the view of raging right-wingers. Then-mayor of Manchester Richard Leese faced w huge backlash after trying to ban/criminalise tent encampments in the city centre and fringes.
Weirdly, I just did a quick Google search for Richard Leese tents homeless and was surprised that there weren't more headline stories from Manchester Evening News, Guardian etc at the top of the results because it was a huge story at the time that led to an embarrassing (for Leese) backtrack, after the public basically responded to his initiative/crackdown with 'Wtf, why's a Labour politician attacking and criminalising homeless people?'
But then again, there's that statement further down about how some results might have been removed... Maybe Leese and/or his minions didn't like how badly it affected people's perceptions of him?
[Aside: Not me, though, I'd already concluded he was a cunt after he accepted a caution for assaulting his partner's teenage daughter, temporarily stood down then resumed office to great fanfare a few weeks later. Fucking cunt. And his Labour Party and local media enablers were all cunts too. How can someone guilty of assaulting a child, child abuse, using physical violence against a child, remain the head of local authority that acts in loco parentis to 'looked after' children? What message did it send to abuse kids that the leader of the council that is required to step in to prevent and respond to abusive situations they might find themselves in is guilty of abuse himself?!? How could children have any faith or trust in that authority to act in their best interests over and above that of their abusers when everyone in positions of authority in that authority had backed a child abuser, ie someone who had accepted a caution (ie admitted guilt) for hitting a child? Cunts, the lot of them, but especially him.]
I found an article further down the results page though.
The use of so-called Public Space Protection Orders is on the rise across Britain.
www.wsws.org
www.standard.co.uk
