I am unable to pass a beggar without wanting to give something… I feel terrible if I do not have any money on me.
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Thank you for asking! Moving from a suburb of NYC to a town of 130 people in SW France, we are still learning. 
A few months ago I saw a beggar with his dog outside the supermarket, both looked a bit sad so I said “Bonjour” and he started to speak to me in English. I decided to buy him a sandwich and a drink and some food for his dog. Gives you a nice warm feeling doesn’t it to feel like you’ve helped someone?!
A few days later I saw the same man (and same dog) furtively getting out of a car that was better than mine, at the far end of the car park, then taking his usual place at the shop entrance. I hope there was an innocent explanation but…
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Hi Ashley…
“a town of 130 people”… sounds more like a village to me… 
I live in a commune with nearly 600 inhabitants (men, women, kids, dogs, goats), while the village itself… that has just 70 full time I suppose… and in high summer… we jump to around 100… yeah… 
Love living in such a close-knit community… 
Is “beggar” still an acceptable term? I haven’t heard anyone use it for many years.
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I too have seen this around where we are. It’s the same person each ‘festive season’, where he is the rest of the year I don’t know, maybe at Nice !
I used to have to go to Limoges quite a lot a few years ago, young people would come up to the car at the lights with signs saying they were homeless, had no food. The police rounded them up because they were being shipped in every morning by a ‘controller’ who fed and lodged the somewhere. He took whatever they had made and apparently it was a lot. I felt so sorry for them but what can you do?
My partner who worked in Paris at the time, took a ‘starving homeless’ man who was begging and asking for money for food, with him to a Café. He ordered the man sandwiches and a coffee, guess what, the moment my partner left the place the man went outside and chucked it into a bin!
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It’s sad isn’t it. I would never do that again. We had so little money as well at the time.
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And that purely and simply is people trafficking…”the controller” guilty of slave trafficking…
To my mind it’s a case of arrest “the controller”…the one gulilty of people trafficking…the one gulilty of enticing young people into entirely unacceptable and dangerous situations…???
Well, the word describes what they are… and in the French press too… the word mendiant appears as and when appropriate.
People who sit/stand with signs or without signs… begging for something… often with an open carton/hat or whatever… they are begging that someone give them something…
At the major car-parks in the cities… beggars will often sit alongside the booths where folk pay for the parking… the beggars will openly ask for “small change”… they are begging…
On the other hand… a street-musician/juggler/mime artist etc etc… yes, they often leave an upturned hat… and if folk wish to they can throw a coin or two… as appreciation for their “act/entertainment”…that is not quite the same thing as begging… hence we do not call them beggars…
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Well, Mat, we all arrive at a point in our lives when the true me insists on asserting his/her true self after years of being hidden at the back of the closet asking to be allowed out 
Yield, man, yield! Most of your nearest and dearest are already familiar, not to say wearily familiar, perhaps, with the true you, and will note with deep relief your blearily rubbing the sleep out of your eyes. Hello? HELLO? 
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Yes, the poor youngsters must have had a terrible life, no doubt they were lured with promises of better things.
Such is the way of the world that the people who are guilty are so often the ones who escape punishment, while the victims are being victimised again! 
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I certainly seem to be getting very close to this time!
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I find that I am not so tolerant as I used to be.
I have now reached a stage in my life where I don’t stand back and accept certain things because I don’t want to upset others.
This morning was an instance, school time in our local town, cars parked haphazardly despite there being a large parking area in the square. There are two spaces designated handicapped, well one cretin had parked their car diagonally across both spaces.
I waited a while so that I could firmly remind whoever had parked there that not only were they being very selfish but that they also risked a fine.
10 minutes passed and the person hadn’t appeared so I left a note on their windowscreen, it was polite, up to a point, but I did use the word égotiste, quite rightly , in the note I left.
I would never have dreamed of doing that years ago, I would have muttered and passed on but not any longer !
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Mat, you will be, you are already magnifico!
Enjoy! 
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I wasn’t keen to admitting to it being a matter of tolerance - but I think you have hit the nail very accurately on the head.
Well if you feel comfortable using it as a word then that’s fine for you. I used to do voluntary work with disadvantaged people, like ex-soldiers with psychiatric problems as a result of what they had been through. Or people who had become homeless for one reason or another. Yes, they needed to ask people for money to survive, but I would not call them beggars as I find it pejorative or patronising. There is much more to them than that, and calling them beggars reduces them even further.
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I do not use any sort of word or language with which I do not feel comfortable. 
never have, never will.
I have no problem using the word Beggar and the word Begging… they both exist and I use them where and when appropriate.
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You seem like a kind person who tries to help people. Perhaps you could just think for a second how you might feel if you had ended up destitute and on the streets for no fault of your own, and someone called you a beggar to your face? Would that make you feel positive, or would it chip away at your fragile sense of self worth and emphasise that you have little value to society.
Of course it’s a word that exists, but it is often used in a pejorative way. I find it sad. The rate of suicide among homeless and destitute people is high. Making them feel worse about themselves won’t help.
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You are making something out of this thread … which does not match the reality of my life.
You have no idea how I speak to … nor how I interact with people in whatever situation I find them.
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