Why do people still think they need to beg in a city like London? I hope that I don’t sound uncompassionate or heartless here,  but this is something I’m genuinely curious, indeed concerned, about. Whenever I go to somewhere like Woolwich or Stratford, in the pedestrian areas there are frequently one or two people begging for money. They either kneel on the street, hands outstretched in a pitiful pose; or, more troubling for me, limp up to people, cap in hand, as though they have some kind of disability. If they were disabled, I would very much hope they would be entitled to the same benefits I am. As a modern, twenty first century state, the UK has support structures in place to ensure that those who need help get it. I live as comfortably as I do thanks largely to such support. 

I thus genuinely don’t get why there are still disabled people who feel they need to beg for money in the street. Do they not know about the support they are probably entitled to? Or is it all an act, and they just pretend to be disabled to get pity? To be honest as abhorrent and cynical as that idea is, and as loathe as I am to accuse anyone of faking their disability, I think it’s a distinct possibility. They don’t seem to have any conventional disabilities that I recognise, but walk around with heavily emphasised limps which could probably be easily put on. Yet that would imply that disabled people are still objects of pity, and that being disabled is still seen as something to be looked down upon and helped. I find that deeply, deeply troubling, both in that it implies that I might still be pitied, and by the fact that people might be exploiting the idea of being disabled to scrounge money which they have not earned. As a disabled man, I am proud of who I am and what I have achieved. The notion that someone might imitate me in order to attract pity or charity is, frankly, highly insulting.