Only homeless in penny lanes

Normally around this time of year, I’ve become sick of walking past shops and pubs in my home city of Liverpool to be greeted by kids propping up a football attached to rags begging with menaces for a penny for their Guy.

But I haven’t seen any this year and I can’t remember seeing any last year. Probably because there’s nowhere left for them to beg due to a new breed of slightly older kids on the block, called the homeless.

They now populate our city centre doorways looking like properly dishevelled Guys trying to scrape together pennies for a meal.

And it’s mainly down to brutal decisions in the name of austerity taken over the past seven years in Parliament.

Maybe Guy Fawkes had the right idea all along.