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<h1 id="features_header">Gutter press: Voice of the street</h1>
<p id="article_info"><span>Published 20 October 2023</span></p>
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<p>Now even the Daily Mail is being kind to squatters
</p>
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<span class="dropcap">R</span><span class="firstwords">alph McTell lives on. ‘Speech Debelle rises</span> from streets of London to win Mercury Prize,’ read the folk-loving Independent. When London rapper Debelle won the Mercury Music Prize with songs inspired by her teenage years of homelessness, it provided the hacks with an instant angle and boosted Ralph McTell’s hits on YouTube.
</p>
<p>
‘Rapper Debelle thanks mother as she street talks he way to Mercury win,’ was the London Evening Standard’s take, while the Times opted for a more prosaic ‘London rapper Speech Debelle becomes Mercury queen with tales of homeless life’.
</p>
<p>
Clearly homelessness is where the art is. The Standard revealed that Debelle ‘took her inspiration from her troubled and lonely past when she slept on the streets and in hostels’. She was now reunited with her mother Marilyn, fittingly enough a housing benefits worker. It was left to the Sun to report Speech’s quip that ‘as she headed out to celebrate her £20,000 prize, she said: "I’m not going to know where I live later on".’
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In the next day’s Sun, Speech expanded on hostel life: ‘It was kinda crap, I guess. Lots of alcoholics… I met a lot of interesting people… people who had been really successful and lost it all because of addiction. In this business I can see how easy it is for that to happen. It’s easy to become the next Amy Winehouse.’
</p>
<p>
<p class="caption_263">Speech Debelle wins the Mercury Prize with songs inspired by her teenage years of homelessness</p>
<p>
After a year of misery the media was suddenly full of more feelgood stories when house prices rose 1.7 per cent in a month. ‘House prices jump: biggest rise for five years as gloom lifts,’ trumpeted the Daily Express, although prices were, of course, still down on the year before. ‘House about that?’ read the Mirror, while even the Daily Telegraph got a little over-excited with ‘House prices: biggest rise for five years’.
</p>
<p>
When mortgage lending rose 46 per cent in August the Express tried even harder to talk up the market: ‘Housing market recovers as banks lend again… Britain’s property market slump was declared "well and truly over" as both mortgage lending and new-home loan approvals soared. Tempted by record low interest rates and cheaper prices, house buyers are flocking back.’ ‘Turmoil eases for bank mortgage lending’ said the Times. While the Daily Mail gushed ‘Home loan approvals soar’.
</p>
<p>
There was life after debt too. The Telegraph saluted ‘the great payback’ as ‘the amount of debt British consumers owe has fallen for the first time since records began’. Bank of England figures revealed that consumers had paid back £635 million more than they borrowed in July. The Independent saluted the fact that we were ‘Free at last from spend, spend, spend.’
</p>
<p>
Even the Daily Mail got happy as, for the first time since records began, it was nice about squatters: ‘£30m squatters… The middle-class squatters who have taken over two Mayfair mansions (and they’re keeping them spotless).’ The Mayfair gaffs, one of which was formerly the Mexican Embassy, were now an art collective in the hands of, among others, ‘a Cambridge graduate, a former Marlborough College pupil and the son of Russian composers’.
</p>
<p>
And then came the news that author and Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones’ letterbox had been peppered with shotgun pellets in Exmoor. Jones had offended the men of Dulverton by jokily saying they were ‘toothless’, restaurant owners by claiming that they still served meals in baskets and ‘suggested some old Exmoor families were inbred’.
</p>
<p>
But like most downshifting incomers she defended herself in the Daily Mail by arguing that she had helped create jobs: ‘What is it they don’t like? Since March I’ve employed a local builder, carpenter, plumber, electrician and roofer. I employ a local gardener, tree surgeon, equine vet, two chiropractors, an equine podiatrist, a holistic shearer, an ecologist – oh and a Somerset firm built my ménage.’
</p>
<p>
Clearly the recession must be over if Jones can employ her holistic army. There might be some good career advice for Speech Debelle here too. Just as long as she now moves into a middle-class squat and avoids Exmoor she should be fine.
</p>
<p>
<i>Pete May is the author of </i>There’s a Hippo in my Cistern,<i> published by Collins.</i>
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<p><strong>Tags: </strong><a href="/" title="mortgages">mortgages</a>, <a href="/" title="squatters">squatters</a>, <a href="/" title="speech debelle">speech debelle</a<>
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