Nothing is more emblematic of the inadequacy of Glasgow city council’s ruling Labour group than its failure to address the running sore of begging in the streets.
No visit to the centre of Scotland’s most important city, it seems, is complete without being accosted by a Burberry-clad jaikie with a nasal whine or a prone immigrant in a doorway attempting to part you from your hard-earned poppy. It’s time for Glasgow to rid itself of these scourges by deploying the anti-begging spikes now to be found in the shop doorways of several of England’s most affluent cities.
There was nothing wrong with begging in the Victorian era, a stouter and more stalwart age when the nation’s assets weren’t being routinely squandered on handouts for the workshy and permanently ill. In the absence of benefits, begging sorted the wheat from the chaff and rewarded only the hardiest of souls, as well as being an honest way for crippled soldiers to pay for their medical bills without being a burden in the state.
Begging was a rebuke to an economy where everyone felt they were entitled to take a clip from the state. At the end of a good, old-fashioned Victorian winter, thousands of beggars woke up deid. There was a lesson to be learned in this: what would have been the point in wasting benefits on these people if most of them were just a few weeks away from croaking anyway?
In 21st-century Britain, where we are never more than a few blocks away from a well-resourced food bank, there is no justification for nuisance begging. I’m sure the feeling of some cold steel up his jacksie would make an unruly mendicant think twice about bedding down for the night in a shop doorway.
The Labour party in Scotland should think about this carefully. In the last decade or so, they have tried to appear more right wing than the Tories and it’s thus far got them nowhere. I feel, though, that they need to put their backs into it a bit more. And what better way than endorsing anti-begging measures? Indeed, I can furnish them with a number of proposals to combat the misplaced generosity of the compassionate society. If adopted, these would send out a clear message that the age of state-funded loitering, delinquency and aimlessness is finally over. Here are a few measures that would show our citizens that the country is no longer prepared to tolerate indolence:
Anti-loitering sensors
There are few things worse than standing at a checkout for ages behind queues of very obviously poor people who have spent hours roaming the aisles before purchasing goods that amount to less than a tenner. These sensors would use a simple time-and-motion algorithm to measure money spent against time in shop. They would emit a klaxon-like sound once a miscreant had been identified and he would be given a chance to spend more money or be summarily ejected.
Suspicious luxury wardens
The plan would be to persuade Ruth Davidson to launch a citizens’ army of volunteers trained to be vigilant of any signs of inappropriate excess. How galling it used to be, growing up and seeing children of notoriously poor parents, whom everyone knew were on benefits, walking into school with shoes on their feet and coats in the winter. Worse, some of them returned after the holidays with tales of having sojourned in exotic, overseas locations, while your own hard-working parents could only afford a caravan in Saltcoats. At any sign of excess – a jar of mayonnaise rather than salad cream, perhaps – a citizen’s arrest would be made and the maelfactor forced to justify their expense at a local holding pen.
Child pawn shops
On benefits and thinking of having another child? Well, think again. What could be more irresponsible than bringing a child into the world who is wanted and loved but unable to be afforded? Some liberal types think that poor people should be able to have children, too, but I don’t agree. By deploying an easy-to-use child affordability matrix, every family would be given a limit on the number of children they could have. If you have just lost your job and try to hide a child in the loft, you risk jail. In these circumstances, extraneous children can be exchanged at a child pawn shop for cash and redeemed at a future date once a chap is back on his feet.
Organ donation
Let’s face it, although there are loads of crack addicts and alcoholics among the poor, there are many who are fit and healthy and whose vital organs are all in fine, working order. This is a shameful waste when healthy livers, hearts or lungs are trapped in a body belonging to an idle, workshy benefit bandit. With so many rich people requiring organ transplants, I’d suggest a scheme whereby unemployed people lose vital organs according to how long they have been out of work. I’d suggest a liver for six months, a lung for a year and… oh, I don’t know, perhaps a heart for more than two years out of work. This would be the ultimate way of chivvying poor people back into work and ensuring that the nation’s vital organs are working at maximum capacity.
Logan’s run
One of my favourite sci-fi films was Logan’s Run, starring Michael York. Set in a future of eternal youth, human beings who reached the age of 30 were killed off. I always thought that this was a bit harsh. But what if we deleted people who, by the age of 30, had received a higher than average annual handout? Indeed, we could even make a gameshow out of it, where, let’s say, a dozen poor people approaching the big 3-0 have a chance to save their life by impressing a panel of celebrity judges by singing an Adele song or baking a chocolate cake. Regional heats would take place and the final would be held on Christmas Day.
Thus a truly compassionate, but realistic, nation would hand a poor person his life back on the day that a saviour was born for all (hard-working and solvent) mankind.
