Beggars Belief
The BBC reports that the Scottish Government has turned down a proposed by-law to ban street begging in Aberdeen which strikes me as wrong on two counts:
1 Whatever happened to local democracy?
2 Street begging is completely unnecessary in this day and age, and ought to be banned.
A friend of mine observed a young man begin in Glasgow the other day while talking on his iPhone which speaks to the fact that the majority of these street beggars are from organised gangs who often use teenage children to increase their 'appeal'.
Now that to me is child abuse and the authorities should step in to put an end to this kind of exploitative behaviour, so I hope Aberdeen doesn't take this decision lying down.
Scottish ministers have rejected a proposed by-law to ban street begging in some parts of Aberdeen.
The city council had applied for the controversial law because it said the area had a particular problem.
It would have made begging illegal within pre-designated zones, but objectors said existing legislation allowed the police to deal with the problem effectively.
Councillors had voted to pursue the by-law last year.
Street Begging (25 April 2014)
I listened to an interesting debate on Radio Scotland the other day about a proposal from Aberdeen City Council to introduce a local by-law to make begging in the streets unlawful.
The councillor from Aberdeen, whose name I didn't catch, made the sensible point that a local by-law some years ago had been brought in to outlaw the consumption of alcohol in public places, so why not do the same in relation to begging.
The chap also revealed that in a recent police operation 32 persistent beggars were identified in Aberdeen, but that none of them were homeless although clearly they had other problems requiring some kind of support and intervention.
The Highland Hostel for the Homeless also waded into the discussion and expressed its support for getting beggars off the street because whatever problems people were experiencing the worse place to be was sitting alone on a city pavement for several hours a day.
In Glasgow, as in other cities, there are organised groups of beggars who travel hundreds of miles to beg in Scotland, sometimes using young children as part of their activities, and again this is a practice that ought to be discouraged because they are simply trying to inveigle money out of people under false pretences.
So who knows what may happen, but I applaud the initiative being taken in Aberdeen because they appear to be doing something to tackle the underlying problems of persistent begging on our streets which is a much better strategy, if you ask me, than just walking on by or leaving the people involved to their own devices.
