This article is classified "Partly real, partly fictional"
You can't have helped noticing that over the last few years, there has been a large increase in the number of professional beggars on the streets of the Western World. This is not the right place to go into the reasons behind this trend - what I am concerned with here is one of the associated phenomenon. Personal observation has shown that seven in eight of these beggars are accompanied by a thin, scraggly dog. The logic behind this is impeccable: the British (at least) are soft touches for animals, and are much more likely to give money to feed a starving dog than a human - thus the need for the skinny dogs. However, what has always puzzled me is this; these beggars are supposed to be starving, with almost no food, and even less money. How can they afford to keep a pet? Why don't they just eat the damn dog? I imagine that there's enough meat on a Great Dane to feed a good-sized family for a week or so. So after several months of careful research, I came to the only possible conclusion - the beggars do not eat the dogs because the dogs are not the beggars' to eat! I believe that, according to strict Keynesian laws of supply and demand, the has arisen a company which hires these dogs out to beggars each day. Every morning, the mendicants go to collect today's pooch from the Skinny Dog Agency, and go out on to the streets for the day, before returning it in the evening. The fee is, of course, a part of the beggar's (increased) take for the day. The dogs, meanwhile are treated like royalty, no doubt eating prime rump steak, and having the dishevelled look of their fur carefully maintained by teams of dedicated, loving, hairdressers. It has also been conjectured that the Skinny Dog Agency is branching out into other, associated, realms of business - is it merely coincidence that every class at school, every lecture at every University, and each and every Hall of Residence, has one total no-hoper (exactly one, you'll notice; never more, never less). You all know the type, the guy or girl who sits on the front row, asking dumb questions about things that are so obvious that everyone else instantly worked them out... I ask you - are they really as dumb as they look? Can anyone really be that dumb? Are they, perhaps, highly-trained method actors, retained by the Universities to make even the dumbest of regular students feel a warm glow of superiority? So, the next time you pass a beggar in the street, Skinny Dog (TM) by his side, remember that no matter how hungry he gets, he won't be able to eat roast dog - so hand over a few coins, OK?