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Mike O’Connor, 55, has been sleeping rough in Manchester for the last seven years. Despite having a room in a hostel he has decided to go back to the streets to avoid the ‘pointless’ benefits system.

I’ve slept out here for years. I was a security guard at Wythenshawe Hospital but I moved out of the area to be with my partner, then when that didn’t work out, I had nowhere to go.

I’ve slept in lots of different places, under the Mancunian Way, up near Piccadilly, there are lots of places if you know where to look. I know all of these streets.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

I push a bush open and put my bedding in there.

I go to bed at about 10:30pm and get up at six or seven. The only thing that others me is the drunk people when they’re coming past you, shouting and bawling.

But the weather doesn’t bother me. There are places you can go, benches and other places, where you can be covered if it rains.

I’ve slept in -9 degrees before. I woke up once and my hand wouldn’t move, it was frozen, I went to a centre to have a cup of tea and warm up and saw on the TV that it was the coldest night for years and I thought, ‘so that’s why my hand was frozen’.

I’ve got a place at the moment, a room in a hostel, but I’m going to leave, I’d rather be out here and be free from it all.

You have to sign on the dole when you’ve got a place and it’s pointless - even if there were any jobs, no-one wants to give a job to anyone my age.

The job centre is meant to be helping me but they don’t, they just go through their details.

They’ve got me applying for jobs every day and I know most of them aren’t real jobs. I’ve applied for that many I’ve run out - it comes up on screen saying, ‘you have already applied for this job’ then I never hear anything.

They made me open a bank account instead of my Post Office account, apply for my birth certificate, get an email and I have to go down to a computer place every day to do my job search.

I go to a place in Moss Side and everyone in there is doing the same - it’s basically like another job centre.

They told me I have to apply for my provisional license too in case there is a driving job but who will give you a job on a provisional license?

When I’ve done all that I have £54 a month to live on so I may as well take my chances out here.

It’s always the same. You find a place, sign on, there aren’t any jobs so you lose the place and are out here again.

There are kind people in the city centre, people who really will help you eat and get clean and warm.

The authorities don’t want people like me here. There are places where I used to sleep, under arches and doorways, where they’ve put up metal railings to keep you away but I know I’ll be ok. There are more and more people on the streets in Manchester now but a lot of them aren’t actually homeless.

They’ve got a flat but they come here to beg, then they take their money and go home.

You’d never see me doing that. I won’t sit on the corner and beg.

Have Your Say

We are retracing the journey George Orwell made in his book, The Road to Wigan Pier, throughout 2017 to tell modern stories of working and unemployed poverty.

They’ll appear in a regular series in the Daily Mirror newspaper and here on our special anniversary website.

(Image: Â© the estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell)

If you don’t live on the route but would like to share experiences of living on a low income or struggling with welfare cuts, please contact realbritain@trinitymirror.com where we are keen to hear your story.