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Oh for feth's sake Yohdrin, get off your high horse. The guy is speaking about his personal subjective experience, specifically about particularly aggressive panhandlers. He isn't making any wider point about disability or the poor. And he isn't shirking any fething responsibility. He pays his taxes, which funds public services. He might even donate to charities for all you know. You're presuming to know his heart and his motivations, and extrapolating a whole lot of speculative nonsense. Any excuse to finger wag and virtue signal.

but that most of the people they see who appear to be those things are just faking it to take advantage of their sympathy than it is to acknowledge the problem and either do something about it, or just admit to themselves that they don't actually care enough to try.

Some of them ARE faking it and taking advantage of people's sympathy. Its impossible to know for sure if the person who just approached you is genuine or a con-man. We've had several people argue that its better to donate money to local charities with good reputations who can have a greater impact than to give money to random strangers. Those charities presumably will also learn to recognise the gangs.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I know genuine homeless people when I see them. And I’ve done work to help them too. Which is why I detest the fraudsters so much. So spare me your sanctimonious self righteous bollocks.

What, like working in a charity or soup kitchen? Its probably more than Yodhrin has done! Thats the thing with people who go off on self righteous rants about poverty.
Its always somebody else's money that they're demanding be spent.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

beast_gts wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
If anyone knows of any decent small charities, soup kitchens or homeless shelters in the York area, please send me a PM.

My brother lives in York so I'll ask if he knows of any.

Cheers mate.

@ Shadow Captain

Thanks for having my back. I’ve done fundraising a couple of times in my student days. Standing in the street with the t-shirt and the bucket collecting money. I also helped out with food drives too. A friend of mine had access to a license or whatever it was which allowed us to shop at a wholesellers. Decent food at a discount for the kitchens come Christmas. Neither was much but every little helps.

Okay guys, laying into Yodh like that is no better, and potentially much worse when considering infringements of Rule 1. Knock it off or the thread'll end up getting locked by the mods.

Since the topic seems to have moved on more naturally to include the subject of homelessness in Britain; I used to interact with a few of them when I was duty manager at a Travelodge. They used to dash in to lock themselves in the public bathroom and wash, and I'd sometimes make them a cup of tea and let them doze in reception on the colder winter nights. Must have been a good two dozen locally I was aware of.

Upon chatting with a lady one night, I was shocked to discover that there was only a single shelter with about half a dozen bunks locally with very stringent rules about entry. This was in Kingston-upon-Thames, a very wealthy area in Outer London. Disgusted me more than a little, especially when the only viable alternative (the local churches opened up the pews for Christmas) booted them all out into the winter snow because the holiday had passed. Anecdotally at least, there's a real shortage of provision for this sort of thing.

Today's news says the £100 million promised by the government to solve homelessness by 2027 is not new money.

Government's '£100m plan' to eradicate rough sleeping is not new money, minister admits

Half of it is money already allocated to homelessness.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
@ Yodhrin

Enjoy your little self righteous gurning session there did you?

If she was homeless, then could you explain to me why she got picked up and dropped off by what appears to be family members driving what was then a fairly new BMW? And why she was always so clean and tidy? And why she had keys to a house in the university district? Could it be that she’s not actually a genuine homeless person but is actually instead a pan handling fraudster? Which are the topic of this discussion after all?

I know genuine homeless people when I see them. And I’ve done work to help them too. Which is why I detest the fraudsters so much. So spare me your sanctimonious self righteous bollocks.

Next time you get outraged at someone for not addressing the whole story, it would probably be a bit less laughable if you actually tell them the whole story first, because what you actually said amounted to "she was fat and had nice trainers and a phone, so cannot be homeless", and so that nonsense is what I addressed.

And yes, I enjoyed it very much.

But you know, I think in future I'm just not going to bother putting any effort into my posts, because even when I specifically make a point of using nonspecific language - you know, to distinguish the remarks addressed directly at someone from more general remarks about society and the attitudes people generally display - nobody bothers to read it properly. Nor, apparently, do they bother to read any of the other posts in the thread, or they'd have noticed the bit about me working with homeless charities in the past before making numpties of themselves with the "nyeee, bleeding heart lefties demanding we spend other people's money, nyeeeh" schtick.

I live in a city with a relatively high homeless population. There are panhandlers everywhere.

There is one guy I see most days outside my usual Timmies. He's either a fantastic actor or he is genuinely a perpetually happy sort. If I have change I give it to him because his cheerful greeting is the high point of my walk to work.

This sort of thing has been going on forever. I read a book on crime in Victorian London which described how those who genuinely couldn’t work because of lost and broken limbs (common enough through industry and war) were pushed out of lucrative spots and lost charitable handouts to fraudsters who faked a lot of their injuries with acting and makeup to get more money. You have to remember that there was no state support, being unfit to work could be a death sentence and vagrancy was a criminal offence. The genuinely disabled then had to employ the same tactics as the able bodied to compete on an even footing.