He was just hungry

With thousands of job cuts and phrases such as ‘recession’ ‘banking crisis’ and ‘credit crunch’ in our media every day the UK is struggling.

This Christmas shops recorded their lowest spending yet and have bought the sales forward. However I am still seeing people take their two holidays a year, in the shops in my area people are shopping their bags are full. Yes the housing market has slowed down but still with all the government benefits being cut I just expected real visible hardship for people. There has been talk of many loosing their homes or being made homeless but I never saw any evidence of individual suffering until today.

Let me start by saying that I’ve lived in London about 13 years and being honest in all my time living in London I probably have only really ever seen a maximum 10 beggars on the tube. A couple have had music, a couple have been women with babies and then the rest have been single homeless men, I have only ever seen them in the afternoons or evenings and they have all requested money.

Today’s beggar was different first of all he was on the tube at 8.45 in the morning.  He stood up and explained how he was struggling generally in his life and told us how hungry he was and asked if we had any food.

WOW

Beggars in London always want cash, in the past I have heard tales of people offering them food and them turning it down. We have had hard hitting advertisements telling us not to give them money because they spend it on drugs so we are in effect killing them, but today this guy was just hungry.

It was my first wake up call, if people are starting to beg for food instead of cash, times are really changing and things are really getting hard for people.