I had a lady get her boob out on the street the other day and squeeze milk at me
Bit of back story; was walking back from Tesco, find a lady at a bus stop crying her eyes out in apparent distress, ask if she is ok, too upset to talk initially.
Then she tells me that she was trying to buy baby milk but got made redundant and is flat broke. Doesn't ask me for cash but just some powder milk and gives me this story about having twins, one dying and the other being ill. To prove it, out of nowhere she just whips a boob out, starts squeezing it and shitloads of milk oozes out.
I genuinely don't know what to do and have never seen a con artist do this before, and having worked in Camden for 2 years I know every con artist trick in the book. She was also so convincing, properly sobbing and with snot everywhere.
Eventually I felt so sorry for her I gave her some money, which I now realise was stupid as the local community forum says she's a recovering drug addict and well known to the police, though the stories she told me about her kids and job may well be true.
ANYHOW, I remembered all this because of today's Fiver, where it seems someone else has been confronted too:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/04/the-fiver-arsenal-manchester-city
Not sure what else to do with this thread. Erm... what's the best way someone has got money out of you? Has a stranger ever shown you their private parts on the street? How much of a dick was I?
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loads of tramp penus in vienna
If she was able to express milk
then she's clearly still feeding children
posted too soon....
when you switch to formula, your milk dries up quite quickly, so if she's able to squirt milk at you, then she's either feeding or expressing to keep her milk up, which suggests she doesn't need money for baby milk.
Still, I don't have a problem giving people money that I suspect they're going to spend on booze or drugs. It's a bit of a shame that we live in a socety where people can't say' i'm on the street begging because i have substance abuse problems and I really need some money so I can have a fix and not have to go and rob coffee out of costcutter.'
Poor woman :(
If you're homeless as well, it must be pretty fucking hard
and I'm happy to give them money to get them through a cold night whether thats a hot meal or a few cans of beer or whatever.
exactly
<3
Well said.
From another angle, I like Steve Hughes' take on it personally...
`They say: "Don't give money to the homeless, no. They'll only spend it on drink and drugs...".
Well? What did you think *I* was going to spend it on?`
Is it good to help people in that situation though?
I give to Red cross & Shelter and know that as charities they spend lots of cash on salaries, staff, annual reports etc, but surely it's better to give to a network of people who can help get to the route of the issue than just prolonging the agony?
God, this is all a bit serious. Was supposed to be about a woman showing me her boob...
But that doesn't help the person RIGHT NOW
its easy to give to homeless charities, most of us do, but the charities can't get to everyone especially whilst that person is walking the streets trying to keep warm.
I agree with meow^
THere are some grassroots charities where the cash given on a saturday to them virtually goes straight towards getting people into hostel beds that Saturday night. But v few charities have that efficient a trickle down effect, and only really the smaller local ones.
It's a tricky problem
And homelessness is my number one most hated problem in this country and an issue that always tugs on my heart.
I work in Camden and we get a lot of people trying their luck on a nightly basis. There are loads of hostels here but in reality, if you are going to get into the Camden ones you have a place by early evening. Most of the people who actually ask are just con artists. One guy does the old 'it's my last Big Issue trick' (1 left, offer to buy it, actually can I keep it to read on the way home..., pockets cash) and it's 2 years old now. The other day someone from work said to him, 'if you just want a pint ask me and spare me the story' and he took them up on it. Proceeded to tell us he made £300+ a day on average and lived in a very nice place a few roads away.
But if someone is in a door or sleeping rough, THEY'RE the people to give money to.
I heard about No Second Night Out last December
and I've wondered since then how effective they actually are in their work - the concept certainly appeals, but I'm wary that they're a new charity and on the face of it they appear to be geared more towards being able to help newly homeless sleepers rather than those who've been on the streets for a long time.
The whole helping the homeless thing can turn into a complete moral minefield.
it sure is
I think so long as you're giving something it's better than nothign. ANybody who is asking me for money is, de facto, going ot be in a worse-off positoin than me and unless they look oike the the worst ocn artist of all itme, I'll usually give something. I don't think we're under a moral obligation to ensure optimum distribution of our charity donations.
Hmm.
The Red Cross and Shelter don't sound to me to be that effective as homelessness charities per se. Good charities, sure, but if homelessness is your real beef you'd be better off giving your funds elsewhere if you ask me.
er, Shelter *is* a homelessness charity
Wait, I misread your post.
So, to take a different approach - why don't you think Shelter is an effective charity?
Well I think we're ending up in semantics territory here (which is largely my fault)...
...but it depends what vamos is saying about `networks` and `getting to the root of the issue`.
Take a look here: http://england.shelter.org.uk/about_us/how_we_make_a_difference
This is Shelter's own summary of their work. How much of their work involves direct interventions with homeless people on the street? Pretty much none. For me, Shelter's value comes from them being a body who campaign for, and provide services around, housing in this country. They aren't an out and out homelessness charity, but I think we might be at semantic cross-purposes here rather than anything else.
This is what I'd define as a homelessness charity http://www.mungos.org/about personally.
For the record, I think Shelter is a brilliant charity doing effective work. But I think more organisations are more direct as homelessness charities, is what I was saying. I guess I was just trying to gauge how much vamos has engaged with the work the Red Cross and Shelter do, because it is a bit of a common misconception about what Shelter do (not helped by their misrepresentative marketing). One thing Shelter is good at is trying to PREVENT people from becoming homeless, so maybe vamos was referring to that.
Right.
I can't really be arsed with a semantic argument either, but some homelessness charities work directly with people on the street and some of them work to address the wider systemic problems that lead to homelessness in the first place. I wouldn't say one of those approaches was inherently more worthwhile than the other, and certainly neither approach would be *effective* on its own. They complement each other.
Can't argue with any of that.
Well said.
It was more the Red Cross reference that alerted me to vamos' post than Shelter (I don't think they do a lot with homelessness in earnest) but, sure, you're right.
I agree with this
Also, to touch on marckee's point- in an ideal world, people wouldn't have to beg because the charities would efficiently meet their requirements on a proper needs-tested basis. If people gave to teh registered chairites instead of the homeless directly then arguably the homeless wouldn't have to beg. I don't know how we get to that point though, especially when many of the people on the street live a life that isn't really focussed around dbeing told what to do (or indeed doing it.)
^this
They also advise that you don't give money direct to homeless people.
should have bought her some milk
hmm
My favourite experience of this sort was a guy who asked me for money for a bus to get to my town as he had lost his wallet and phone. I was just walking to get my bus home so cheerfully said “sure, no problem mate, I live there and am on my way home now. I’ll pay for your single”.
As I live in a relatively obscure place, I don’t think the guy was expecting to meet someone from there. Cue the guy awkwardly shuffling and murmering “uh, well I have to stay in town for a bit to meet my mate”. My cheerful answer: “oh well that’s great, he can help you get home!”
congratulations
you made the man who had sunk to the degradation of making up stories to strangers for money feel even lower. you're a real big shot.
wuh
Forgive me, but I wasn't taking the piss, and I was more than happy to help him. I didn't make it clear, but he lied to me so well (that coupled with the way he was dressed etc) that I thought he did actually need to get home to where I lived. My answer was borne more out of surprise than anything.
I have no problems giving money to people who are hard-up, and am will give up change to someone who is honest and says they need a fix- better to be gifted a few pennies from me than anything else. I’m not, however, going to give my money to someone who lies to me like that.
that's your choice and not for me to argue with
(although personally I would just feel sorry for them that they'd sunk to that), it was more the triumphal tone of your post that I didn't like, like you'd got one over on the man or something.
yeah, you're probably right in terms of the tone now i've read it back,
and probably should of spent a bit more time writing the post, but I want to clarify that my only feelings were one of bemusement and confusion not feeling "one up" on that man.
cool, let's hug it out
i'd like that
aww
should have bought some of her milk
When me and my mates went to a gig in Brixton we got told some cock and bull story about being mugged my a very small and skinny junky girl.
She was quite dirty.
Being 12 we had no money to give her, but I was doubly pissed off at my friends because:
1) They fell for her scam
2) Having no money they resorted to trying to help her some other way - I was all, like, shit, she wants your money not your chat leave her alone so she can get on with scamming someone else.
I'm a bad person.
Someone approached us in Prague saying he had aids
I asked him why that meant he needed money. My mates fell for it. I walked away and the bloke swore at me. Dick.
You can't just squeeze milk out of your boob
unless you have recently had children that need feeding.
I probably would have given her some money / took her into the supermarket and got her what she needed. But then I don't really have a problem with giving homeless/in need people money regardless of what they're going to spend it on.
although
if you express enough you can still have a milk supply years and years afterwards. BITTY!
(she might have been using this trick for years. tat would be quite a lot fo expressing tohugh. I think in this whole scenario I'm more concerned about the harmful effects of what might be in her breastmilk being passed on to her children... This always makes me so sad.)
Yeah some people breastfeed until their kid is about 10.
But it would be a bit weird of her to ask for you to buy milk for her kids if she actually just wanted money for drugs so I probably would have just bought her some baby milk, bread etc.
I offered to do that
She said she needed money though for the meter and changed her story. Should have twigged at that point it was a scam really
You offered to breastfeed her kids until it was 10?
She's been doing this on the streets of SE London now
for over 5 years apparently.
There's a lady on Brixton Rd who does almost the exact same thing
by the Tube station (less getting her boobs out). Always talking about feeding her babies, milk, crying. Proper scary eyes as well.
There's a bloke in Shoreditch who asks for £2 to get to hospital
then rolls up his sleeve to reveal a half-inch deep, moist and open wound. It's a headrush the first time you see it - it looks more like something constructed on a horror movie set than anything you'd encounter in daily life. I've seen the same guy do the same thing at least half a dozen times since, more than a year apart. So it's either fake, or more terrifyingly, he's deliberately keeping it festering. Either answer is very sad.
Yeah I know him...
...once I told him very eloquent instructions of how Homerton Hospital was only a 40 minute walk from where he'd collared me and how to get there. Unsurprisingly, he got quite agitated.
I suppose when you're desperate, that kind of impact is what you need. I certainly gave him a couple of quid the first time I saw him.
Yeah I've seen this guy
Fucking awful
so so awful
and indicative of the kind of mental health problems that tend to put these people on the streets in the first place.
Hmmmm.
Maybe true for lots of cases, but then not for others.
We're probably not allowed to say it on here, but lots of people end up homeless or hooked on drugs through their own selfish behaviour or choices.
Course, it's often hard to differentiate, but i don't necessarily think sympathising with anyone at all who's less fortunate than yourself makes a great deal of sense or is at all necessaary.
I've had dealings with a few of these people. Some are where they are through little fault of their own. Some are proper deceitful, nasty bastards. I try to see the good in people as much as possible, but in some people there just isn't any, and it's largely their own fault.
Some are where they are through little fault of their own. Some are proper deceitful, nasty bastards
Funny how you can apply this to virtually every walk in life, huh.
Absoulutely.
In fact, i was going to say just that, bro.
great minds.
I had a women do this to me at Waterloo railway station
It had never even occurred to me before that it could be a con
Mad Pat in Walkley was always good value
No surreal tricks or anything, just some polite, demure chat and then a random threat to kill you.
i live in walkley
never met mad pat. Maybe he's dead.
He probably is to be honest
Now I just want to talk about Walkley. Is the landlord of The Freedom still an absolute cunt? I remember when he had a heart attack and the pub was rammed for as long as he was in hospital.
Where exactly was this?
meths just PM'd me asking me to ask you.
My missus is breastfeeding at the moment...
sometimes the wee man stops feeding abruptly and gets a face full of milk as the boob just keeps on giving. We laugh.
:D
Thank god somebody finally got the thread back on the track vamos had intended for it :D
I love beeboes
Milk or no milk, they're alright
what type of bra did she have?
did she have nice tits?
nice username
thanks
I have been here for more than 3 years though.
great extra info
nice username.
nobody loves me :'(
you've been here for three years and have 356 posts
Nobody nkows who you are mate.
Nice username.
yeah?
that's a delicious average of 1 post every 3 days. Playing the slow game.
Take it to the BOOB thread
(sex competition sub-thread).
yeah but the thing is - you're not a dick you're a human
it's better that one person 'cons' you (and actually her situation sounds pretty desperate and her getting to that situation may also involve hardship beyond any bad decisions she made) than one person you deem deserving of need goes without