With rents in cities far outstripping the wages of service workers like janitors and waitresses, union officials said their members had complained that they had a choice between squalid living situations in the city where they work or commuting hours from a bedroom community.
Oblique, indeed: there is nothing especially hard or squalid about the situation of the two orphaned brothers, Manus and Finbarr, who grow up under the care of their deceased mother's half brother Mr. Collopy and his daughter, Miss Annie.
It's an irony that has continued to force indigenous groups into squalid roadside camps, but the situation is seen as something to boast about by local officials.
Engulfed in a financial crisis, the government in Athens struggled to deal with the situation, leaving refugees in squalid and under-managed camps.
"God, this place is squalid," the daughter exclaims.
But despite the gloomy figures, the place is far from squalid.
Consequently, the overall impression has been that of the UK military being asked to do more, with less.OverstretchThis impression has been exacerbated by the worsening security situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and a raft of press reports highlighting the squalid state of some military barracks and alleged poor care for injured troops.
About 20,000 refugees are now camped on the island in squalid conditions in what its mayor, Spyros Galanos, has described as an intolerable situation.
As any anti-trafficking expert will tell you, when a person comes out of a situation of entrapment, violence and exploitation – be it a city centre brothel or a day labourer's squalid trailer in a Lincolnshire field – they face a potentially daunting decision: whether to talk to the police or to anyone "official", and what to say anyway.
His apartment was squalid.
