Thought for the Day -

Street scams are like internet scams – we know about them in theory and then it’s usually too late when we find out about them in practice.

Tourists are particularly susceptible to street scamS, but even on home soil some of them are almost believable. A young girl in her early twenties approached me in the street today with a clipboard and a sponsorship form on disabled children which she had obviously photocopied. There were a few names already on the list as she presented it to me with her thumb over the donations column. There was no ID badge. She was obviously a fraud and I told her so and moved on with my day. I then got to thinking how I would turn myself into a credible street scam money machine, and just at that point a nun walks past me. Rather, it was a woman wearing a nun’s habit that I automatically assumed to be a nun, and herein rests the tools for simple emotional manipulation.

Who would question the sincerity of one wearing the holy garments? I wouldn’t, and I certainly wouldn’t ignore a nun, a priest or an arch-bishop who stopped me in the street in the same way I would a ‘chugger’ (charity mugger) shaking a tin. Any cause will do – after all, I am not giving to the cause I am giving to God’s servant.

I’m sure it would be far easier to make a dog-collar from a cereal box than an Arch-bishop’s mitre from a baseball glove, but either way this is a scam that I will never use for fear of being struck down by a thunderbolt … and  because I am a morally transparent member of society, of course.

DT