THERE is a homeless man who sits on the pavement outside the shop near my office where I usually buy my lunch and dinner. I don’t think it is actually the same man each time. He would get piles if it were.

In my head I imagine a sort of clocking-on/clocking-off system, as in those Looney Tunes cartoons with Wile E. Coyote and the sheepdog. Perhaps there is some sort of rota, operated and enforced by a homeless tribunal, a bit like the way buskers are sometimes allocated pitches.

The point is, there is always somebody there, asking politely for spare change, and wishing a genuine nice afternoon/evening to those who hand over a few coins, and wishing a sarcastic nice afternoon/evening to those who do not.

I receive the sarcastic wish more often than not. This is because I don’t carry much change around with me. I don’t want you to think I am like the Prince of Wales and do not carry cash for regal motives – I suspect he is tired of being reminded that he is not the King yet, and avoids using stamps for similar reasons.

Nor that I shun shrapnel because it ruins the line of my trousers. Frankly, the line of my trousers is already ruined by my legs.

It is because everything I buy these days costs more than a pound – thanks, Brexinflation – which means that I pay for virtually everything using my card. And any change I have has usually been snaffled by other homeless people I have come across on my way to work.

Besides, if I give money to the same homeless person every day, does that person then become officially a dependent of mine? Will he have a claim on part of my estate if I die intestate? There are so many legal questions. I can’t believe that I have to make a will because of this.

So lack of change has made me hard-hearted. I now walk past homeless people without giving them a glance, ignoring their pleas. I am sure I am not the only one, which is a terrible position to be in. It’s not good for the potential donor and even worse for the homeless person.

So homeless people need to get their act together. Firstly, what they need is some sort of network whereby people who have already given away their change are not later harassed.

Maybe we people with homes should wear electronic tags, or have a hand stamp. Then, when a homeless person sees a person with a roof, they can check before asking for cash. That would cut down the number of pointlessly repeated requests, which merely build up tolerance in the roofed, and in the long term could increase the amount of money people give to the homeless.

Secondly, the homeless need to find a way of taking micropayments from contactless cards. Perhaps they could have a price list, and we could choose whether we want to give the amount of cash for, say, a cup of coffee, or a week’s worth of food for the homeless person’s dog. Then we could tap our card on the device and it would eliminate the need for spare change.

The important thing is that the homeless become much more creative in their attempts to relieve people with roofs of their cash, whether that’s with an app, or some sort of crowdfunding initiative. It’s 2018, the age of the gig economy!

Or, you know, the government could do its job properly. It could stop chucking money away on Brexit – that fact-defying project that makes most people poorer just so that we don’t have to have shops selling Nutella with Polish labels – and spend it on the NHS and social care.

It could spend our cash on fixing the holes in the safety net that these vulnerable people – people that you and I could become after a run of bad luck – have fallen through.

Because the government could virtually eradicate homelessness. It did it before from the late nineties, back in the good old days when we thought homelessness was not a price we would willingly pay for a cut in taxes and public spending.

It could cut drug-related crime overnight by just supporting people until they find work and a home, instead of saving a penny today and spending a pound tomorrow. Or making each of us hand over our spare change. Which we haven’t got.