[Dan]

I was walking through london today and you obviously see many homeless people around, begging for money.

Normally i turn a blind eye to them - i know many beggers are after money for a drug addiction and i disagree with this funding. however, today i felt different - there was a guy who seemed genuine enough, playing the sweetest song on his recorder. a very talented individual from what i heard. now i walked straight past, but then felt slightly bad at not stopping and giving him some change.

Being homeless must be quite hard, very lonely and depressing; i know i would never want to be in there shoes. it makes me wonder whether i really needed that extra coffee at starbucks, or whether i could've walked somewhere, rather than spending �1.20 to a bus driver which could've gone to someone who'd be more grateful to receive it.

Your views please - do you give money to the homeless?

[DM]

No and I have no plans to. Guilt is a great reason to make a lot of people do a lot of things but it's entirely impractical. So you say £1.50 for example... that MAY feed one homeless person for a day. Possibly. There are obviously many many homeless people. So even if you plan on giving them all £1.50 every single day even then you're doing nothing but sustaining the problem.

I don't know but I suspect that MOST homeless people are in such a position through their own doing and, either way, I can tell you that I am not responsible for it. As such, whilst it may sound somewhat callous, I therefore don't see why I should do anything to help them.

I see nothing wrong with some kind of a program available to help homeless people to NOT become homeless but nobody has to do anything about it at all. And I don't intend to. Sorry!

[shudder]

I have a more open view, having been made homeless myself previously (thru no fault of my own) I have a lot more compassion.

There are quite a few homeless people in the town where I live and I have a habit (usually when on way back from clubs pissed) of talkin to these random strangers and even going home making coffee/soup/noodles and taking it back to them. I have even gone to the extreme of cooking a roast dinner at 3 o'clock in the morning and taking disposable barbeques/meat to them bottles of soft drinks etc on a few occasions in the winter; much to my GF's distaste.

I do agree however with the comments about not giving them money for drugs/alcohol as this doesn't hep there situation at all.