Begging in the Beautiful, Wonderful city!

Thursday 10:00 p.m.
                               Whilst pissed!
                                There were no beggars in Bellshill. I didn't see anyone begging till I got to Edinburgh in 1969. They weren't beggars. They were tramps. Maybe tramps were there since the Road to Wigan Pier, and way before. I sat beside some tramps in the bit before the McEwan Hall, well before it was designed for skateboards, and was grassy, and asked this tramp how he got to be a tramp. Family breakdown, lost his house, etc.
                                 There were only a few around. Once after I was  panhandled by one in Buccheuch Place, this much scarier joe stopped me and said was he begging? A policeman!
                                  Before I went to Australia in 1989, there were no beggars in the streets here. One or two joes with problems, but no professional beggars. They had appeared in London, I think, due to the changes in social security inflicted on us by the fascist regime of Maggie, and the disappearance of social security for some people of a certain age.
                                  A year later, they were hanging around the art gallery on Princes Street with their disaffection and their dogs. These were our creation of fringe dwellers, not quite in our world and not quite out of it. They went away.
                                   A wee while ago, these youngish women started appearing on the streets. They all sit the same way. They all plead the same with their wee plastic cups, saying change please, give me change.
                                    Once you only saw our home grown beggars on Princes Street. Sometimes I would give them a few pennies, but usually not.
                                     I stopped that  when I was on the dole. The begging basturns were getting the same dole as me. This is a great country to be poor in. We have fought, sorry, not the evil bourgeois, but the working classes, have fought to get the dole in this country just as we fought for pensions and all that. We, or our antecedents, fought to get money when you didn't have work. So I'm on the social security in the 1970s and I don't feel bad about walking past the begging basturns, except there weren't many of them to walk passed in those days.
                                    Once I was in the airport near Amsterdam and this joe starts hustling me for money, and I say that I don't speak English. He says you're funging Scottish. And so I was. And so was he. The Scots have begged everywhere. Anyway, after I admitted this and gave him a few bob, he says you are not allowed to be homeless in the Netherlands. He's outraged by this. He says you have to have an address.
                                     Later on, I think this is a good idea, a brilliant idea. You have to have an address. This isn't so that the government can trace you. This is so you can get benefits. Even if your address is the local cop shop, you should have an address so that you can get some money. So every week you can go to the polis shop and get your money, so you are not left to starve on the streets. In the land of plenty, nobody should have to starve on the streets. This is civilisation.
                                     The apogee! Today, I'm going to the local library to find out about getting a bus pass because I will soon be sixty years old. I love this. Not just because it means that I will save about five hundred pounds a year on bus fares, but because this is communism. You should pay your taxes and all sorts of things should be for free.
                                      On the way there, I pass three youngish women of foreign origin, similarly dressed and poised, begging. I hate blanking beggars. It's an affront to me that there are beggars on the streets of this beautiful, wonderful city.
                                       Where are they from and who put them there? Who drops them and who picks them up, and who takes the money off them?
                                        If there are folk reduced to begging, there should be folk who's job it is to stop then being in that state. The polis should pick them up, the social workers should deal with them. It's a disgrace for this to be happening in a mature social democracy.
                                        Why isn't anyone bothered about this?
                                         Compassion and altruism, loving kindness, bliss and joy, heat and healing. Compassion and altruism is the basis of the path.
                                        I must apologise if anyone out there thinks I'm a buddhist. I'm interested in buddhism, but I'm the sole representative and single member of the Disbelieving Congregation. I am interested in buddhism, but I'm interested in a lot of other things as well. It's just that they are not as interesting as buddhism. Not my kind of buddhism.
                                        There should be no need to be a beggar. It's a failure of community. Of course, if you want to live on the streets, that should be okay. Here's my pitch. I've got my blanket and I can stand on my head and I do this a lot. I have a placard saying: Yogi Joe will meditate for you for ten minutes for a quid! Give me all your money! You evil, stupid basturns! Diogenes, ya bass!