When I met Bella in Manchester yesterday, I took my camera with me 'cos t'old man wanted to see a photo of her wearing the fairly expensive 'sale' coat that she had bought with the money he gave her for xmas. I decided not to bother as he would have been disappointed to see that the lovely. warm winter coat he thought she'd bought was in reality a skimpy albeit well made jerkin affair.
What I did take a photo of however, while I was waiting for Bella in Piccadilly gardens was this rather badly positioned photograph of an East European woman begging(almost wailing) profusely.

I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I was photographing her, hence you can't see her right arm where she had ripped off her sleeve right up to her shoulder to expose a slightly deformed arm and club hand. She also had one bare foot although I couldn't see any obvious signs of deformity there.
Am I naive or uninformed? I know we have our share of homeless beggars and new-agers occupying our city pavements but I had only seen deformity being exploited for alms in India, Istanbul, Prague and outside the Cathedrals in Seville and Granada.
The whys and wherefores of the sad plight of this hapless figure are not for me to judge ( I try to keep to the strict code of never discussing religion and politics) but I thought that by opening the floodgates into Britain from the East European countries it was supposed to improve and enhance the lives of these people NOT to make Britain border on the near third world country they left behind.

I fear that this is only the beginning of the horror. I read that there are literally hundreds of thousands of burglars, pickpockets and car thieves checking out the availability of Ryanair flights from Plovdiv to Stansted, criminality and corruption are part of the culture in these countries and alas I fear it is fast becoming ours.