Do you give to beggars?

shebangs

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masterlumps

there is a massive difference between a beggar and a homeless person though

yes a homeless person may beg, but to assume every beggar is homeless is naive. a lot of them are seasoned proffesionals

make_me_wise

masterlumps wrote: »

there is a massive difference between a beggar and a homeless person though

yes a homeless person may beg, but to assume every beggar is homeless is naive. a lot of them are seasoned proffesionals

:T

Exactly. Glad there is another poster on here who can see the sitaution from all angles.

arnoldy

Never. The vast majority are professional benefits system milkers (And there are more than enough of those in our Country). Add on to that the tax free money they get from begging and they don’t have much sympathy from me. And by the way most are not homeless at all. I have a direct debit to Barnardos for £20 every month. I think they do a lot of good work.

make_me_wise

Good point arnoldy. You dont need to give to beggars on the street to be aware of how needy some people in society are, or to be able to appreciate their plight.

By making charitable donations to organisations that are set up to help those most in need you are guaranteeing that your hard earned money is being spent to help them out of their predicament. Not adding to their problems in the long run by funding drink and drug habits.

Harry_Flashman

Do I give to beggars? No!

There are many places they can go for help (if they really need it)

pupsicola

I give to the charities that can do most to help people in greatest need rather than give to beggars on the street.

There are all kinds of reasons why people end up begging. Some are genuinely in need of help, others are not and do try to scam the general public. Some will use money given to them to buy food, drink or something to make their unimaginably hard lives more bearable. Others will be so beyond being able to see a future that they will use it to fund drink and drug habits.

I support 'shelter', 'Dr Banardos' and 'The Salvation Army'. I hope that in some tiny way these organisations can use my donations to really help someone turn their lives around and get off the streets back to a life of safety and dignity.

catkins

arnoldy wrote: »

Never. The vast majority are professional benefits system milkers (And there are more than enough of those in our Country). Add on to that the tax free money they get from begging and they don’t have much sympathy from me. And by the way most are not homeless at all. I have a direct debit to Barnardos for £20 every month. I think they do a lot of good work.

In London it is certainly not true that the vast majority are professional benefits system milkers. What sleeping in a doorway on a piece of cardboard with only a sleeping bag in the freezing weather?

Most of them do not get given much money by begging - you only have to look at a lot of the responses on this thread to realise that and I know many people who would never give to anyone begging on the street.

If they are not really homeless why are they lying in the shop fronts at night and again early morning? Do they really just go home after about midnight and set their alarms for very early morning so they can go back to the doorway and fool us all into thinking they are homeless?

At New Year I saw some of the homeless around the area of The Strand queueing up at a truck giving out food. It was absolutely torrential rain at the time and I cannot imagine the huge queue of people pretending they were homeless thought it worthwhile to get completely soaked through just to get a cuppa and a sandwich!

Harry_Flashman wrote: »

Do I give to beggars? No!
There are many places they can go for help (if they really need it)

Can you tell me which places it is they can go for help so I can go to London and let them know. Most hostels are full and cannot take anywhere near the amount of homeless. Also most hostels do not allow dogs and why should a homeless person be denied the company and hopefully protection of a dog?

I know if god forbid I ended up homeless and I do realise it is not impossible unlike some of the posters on here I would want a dog for company and at least feel like I had some protection having to sleep on the street and possibly get robbed or worse

Harry_Flashman

Would you prefer a roof or a dog?

If people want help, they might just need to appreciate that they have to follow rules to get it.

Tropez

Not to any of the local ones. There's a group of beggars that wander around the town centre begging for change. Come the night, you will see the same beggars in a back alley shooting up. There's an NHS Alcohol and Drug rehabilitation unit in the area. If they cared that much about their situation they would be there, not scrounging for change to get hold of smack. They also employ the tactic mentioned on here of somehow getting hold of a dog because it makes people take pity... in the past four or five years, they've had about three that I know of so I don't like to think what is happening to them, or where they're getting them from.

I also don't like the way that they target the elderly in groups of four or five. That's purposely intimidating.

But that said, I do know that there are people out there who have fallen on hard times and are not drinking or shooting up nightly, intimidating old ladies and making an abject nuisance of themselves so I do give to homeless charities and if I come across one of those Big Issue sellers I may just give him the money without taking the magazine.