A brief defence of 'chuggers'

Nearly all of us have the ability and capacity to say "no", to refuse to talk to someone in the street, to shut our door to the caller and to keep personal information to ourselves. "Chuggers" - those swarms of young men and women littering our high streets - are just doing that very basic charity thing. Asking for money.

Yet these people have become the latest target for those fans of bans, controls and restrictions. It seems that insistence and persistence - admirable qualities it seems to me - are to be condemned because too many of us lack the ability to say "no" to a fundraiser.

And here's the reality:

"Fundraisers are hard-working individuals, spending 6 hours if not more on the street getting rejected for most of the day. I have being doing this for a year now and have been spat at more than one, reduced to tears, had things thrown at me and hit once, mostly by grown men. Like a lot of fundraisers I am only 18! We are just human beings trying to raise money for a good cause, we're not all doing it for easy money." 

To tell people they're not welcome, to stop one form of activity on the street because we dislike it, is quite simply wrong.

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