It Beggars Belief

We've all seen it, in most cases, many times...

Before you start to feel sorry for the poor, scruffy, down on his luck chap though, who approaches cap in hand, asking if you can spare 30 pence for a cup of tea / sandwich / hot dog / bus fair , consider the fact that he will likely have been asking everyone he's seen this very same question all day long.

Lets work on the assumption that in a town centre, likely close to a bus/train/tram/underground station, your beggar has probably asked for 30 pence from anything up to 1000 strangers today. Based on the rough rule of 25% return on his begging (which is about the national average according to my reading material), and assuming only 20 pence per "donation", your beggar has likely received somewhere in the region of £50 per day.

Assuming this £50 per day return, and assuming a 5 day week, your beggar has an annual income of over £13,000! This is more than enough for them to get off their arse, get themselves a place to live, clean themselves up and get a job paying something like a similar amount of money to that which they make on the streets, begging for change from strangers.

National minimum wage, for a typical office job doing 40 hours per week will get you in the region of £10,000 per year!! This means, that if you work hard in an office 40 hours per week, you could still be coming out up to £3000 per year worse off than the beggar who you are confronted by on your way home at night, and worse than this, their income is tax free!

Beggars, you sicken me! If you are genuinely "down on your luck" that's fine, I wont be giving you any of my cash, you have a handful of my sympathy though - but you should at least have the decency to get off your arse and try to do something about it, acceptance is not a strategy! Deciding that you're onto a nice cushy little number and becoming a career beggar is not an acceptible source of income.

Beggars, UP YOURS!