Banks are required to deny bank accounts to people who are disqualified from banking, and also deny them from being added as signatories on shared accounts.
This is why cashless in the UK would be more harmful than in countries where everyone is allowed banking as a right. In the UK, access to banking is a government-controlled privilege, even though most people take it for granted and think that everyone can have it.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/home-office-...
(I tend to think the home office is terrible and inhumane and that in general immigration policies are terrible and inhumane, but the above is in the context of those)
Regardless, there is no such thing as people "disqualified from banking". The CMA9 banks (who are required to offer basic bank accounts) have fairly limited leeway to decline accounts to someone (though having defrauded that particular bank is one valid reason why)
Just search "open bank account Germany" or similar, and you'll see you need proof of residence.
The checks tend to be done once by the government, rather than 10 times by 10 private businesses.
So, at least in Brazil, card readers are already on the way out for informal workers, and even some SMBs, and Pix with its QR codes and phone numbers are in.
Its interesting how these have started to crop up more and more recently as cash has declined, for instance my local Gurdwara (Sikh temple) which traditionally takes donations in cash has a little card machine you tap on as you go in.
I wonder if when we get to a point where homeless people get them too, if people will trust them enough to do carded donations.
Nevertheless, they really shouldn't exist. There should be enough housing and emergency provision to help people in emergencies, and they need to crack down hard on the foreigners that come and use it as a way of sending money back - e.g. https://metro.co.uk/2017/02/20/gang-of-beggars-pictured-gett...
Having worked with various homeless charities over the years this comment is not just wrong, it's insultingly wrong.
Homelessness is a real problem[0] with various manifestations.
The whole welfare cheat problem is statistically insignificant[1] compared to real problems that cause homelessness like domestic violence.
This attitude that they're faking it and sending money to Romania is just not helpful.
Note: I apologize for the Australian links but most of my experience comes from Australia
[0]: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/homelessn... [1]: https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi421
They were using a rather poor metro.co.uk article as the only justification for that statement.
Homelessness is a real problem everywhere. That most of my experience comes from Australia does not make it less relevant. I've spent enough time in the UK to know if anything Australia is better about homelessness.
My citations spoke to the percentage of people that were abusing the welfare system. Something closely related to the perception that people are bad actors. It happens but it's a tiny percentage.
If you have a study about the number of Romanian gangs that are begging, then by all means share.
As for numbers, the best I can find is a claim by UK police that the group of people arrested for begging was overwhelmingly not homeless. Not the most helpful stat, but it's something.
If that's at all approaching the overall rate of beggars, then even if a ton are legitimate, it would mean "homelessness is a real problem" isn't super relevant. And that if you want to help homeless people there would be better places to put your money.
Your comment was a non-sequitur: the person you were replying to mentioned Romanian beggars in the context of cash in the UK, but you were so pleased to have a chance to be insulted on the behalf of other people, you started talking about homeless people in Australia: something that has nothing to do with the point being made.
The comment doesn't mention metro.co.uk at all, so I don't know where you got that from, but if you think an article is poor you need to explain why.
Dylan16707 has already explained why you're just wrong about this case. The guy whose comment is now flagged and dead is correct about what's happened in the UK, and this is well known there so the fact that you think you know the country well may be wrong: many beggars on the street aren't "normal" beggars who are there for the reasons you'd expect. As he says, the overwhelming majority are not homeless.
The HN community struggles very badly when people post non-progressive facts, this is clearly one of them. If you're someone who flagged and killed the above comment about Romanian beggars, shame on you.
The article was about cashless transition in UK, however many places are now similar and HN is a global forum.
I saw the metro.co.uk comment in one of his other responses. But for the sake of completeness it has a bunch of photos of people with a Romanian number plates car arriving and begging, and 'allegely' not being disabled.
It's not a good citation. For so many reasons. It's anecdotal, none of the people were arrested or even talked to.
I replied with pieces of my experience, which I agreed are only tangentially related, precisely because I have less experience (though not none) in the UK.
There are very similar narratives around begging, immigration, welfare and refugees. Whether it's "they're not real" or "they're not real refugees" or "they're all living the high life and don't really need welfare". It's the same poisonous argument.
In the case of welfare, we know that this is not the case. That only 0.04% (Australia) were actually bad actors.
I will happily provide citations around the other ones, but I'm on mobile at the moment.
Not all beggars are homeless and not all homeless people beg. But suggesting they're all just taking people's money without need (i.e. getting rich) is almost certainly not supported by numbers.
I will happily retract my statement if a valid citation is offered. Dylan16707's citation is better, but as he admits is limited because it is people that were arrested for begging, not the situation of all beggars.
I think you should retract your statement. You've been given multiple forms of evidence here:
1. Evidence from press investigations that includes actual video evidence of it happening, so you can see it with your own eyes.
2. Statistical evidence from government authorities.
The former you reject because, well, I'm not sure actually. You seem to think they actually were disabled but have no evidence. Or that if something is published in the Metro it can't be true, even when the underlying evidence is provided. Not sure.
The latter you're rejecting because, you claim, the set of arrested beggars is not equal to the set of all beggars, but you've given no reason to believe that this would make any difference. It's also an impossible claim to satisfy - literally any source of data about the problem will be based on a sample you could claim theoretically might have bias.
Here's a question: what evidence would you accept that this problem is real and that the UK situation doesn't match your experience in Australia?
1. Is not a good citation because it's anecdotal. I'm actually sure it probably happens, just like I'm sure that people do dodgy things the world over. What matters in this case is the first reply to my top level comment was asserting that I shouldn't give to beggars AT ALL because it encourages them, and asserting they're all Romanian, etc, etc.
2. Dylan16807 said he found things but didn't actually cite/link them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Here are some actual UK citations for you:
> "Homeless charity, Crisis, estimates that over 80 per cent of beggars are homeless."[0]
> “Firstly, Thames Reach’s outreach teams including its London Street Rescue service, who are out and about on the streets of the capital working with London’s homeless 365 days of the year. They estimate that 80 per cent of people begging do so to support a drug habit. [1]
> “Secondly, when the Metropolitan Police did some drug testing of people arrested for begging, the figures indicated that between 70 and 80 per cent tested positive for Class A drugs. [1]
> “In a police crackdown in Birmingham on begging in autumn 2013, every single one of the 40 people arrested failed a drug test.”[1]
Whether you want to take this as evidence you shouldn't give to beggars is up to you, however it directly contradicts the "It's all the Romanians".
Now there absolutely are migrants that come to the UK and then end up in financial trouble (homeless, etc). This study[2] has a few interesting points about legal migrants from Eastern Europe.
> The Fitzpatrick study investigated the specific experiences of MEH service users who had migrated to the UK as adults, including ‘A10’ migrants from Central and Eastern Europe, refugees and asylum seekers and irregular migrants. Migrants were more likely than other MEH service users to have slept rough but were less likely to have stayed in hostels or other temporary homeless accommodation, or to have applied to a council as homeless (these findings are likely to relate to the ineligibility of many migrants for housing or welfare assistance in the UK).
That they are more likely to be properly homeless because of they're not eligible for some of the services. They lack access to a support network -- something that is associated with a risk of homelessness in most western countries.
> 51% of migrants reported some form of substance misuse, compared with 82% of non-migrants;
> 51% of migrants had engaged in street culture activities of some kind, compared with 74% of non-migrants; and
> 32% of migrants reported at least one form of institutional care experience, compared with 72% of non-migrants.
They're less likely to abuse substances (but not none). Less likely to do 'street culture' things like begging and prostitution. Less likely to have mental illnesses.
The homelessness monitor: England 2017[3] suggests that the number of migrant to non-migrant rough sleepers is about 50% (it's on page 55ish). But this is still very different from the "they're coming in their cars and sending the money home", as opposed to legal migration and then ending up in trouble (something that has no doubt changed with brexit, but there isn't a more up-to-date version).
[0]: https://www.politics.co.uk/reference/begging/
[1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/is-begging-just-a-s...
[2]: https://www.homeless.org.uk/sites/default/files/site-attachm...
[3]: https://www.crisis.org.uk/media/237088/homelessness-monitor-...
At least they didn't bury who was paying for the study.
Going completely cashless is troubling for many reasons. I almost never have cash that I can give to beggers and buskers now (the later sometimes have little tap to pay machines).
Given that there are plenty of people that are unbanked, it's going to be problematic to be 100%.
These are not insurmountable problems, but you have to bake in solutions. Rights to have accounts even if you don't have a fixed address (etc).