Let's remember that most beggars can actually be choosers

To find out if a beggar is genuinely desperate, try buying them a cup of coffee or a sandwich: nine times out of 10, they will be outraged

The 1824 Vagrancy Act defines begging as a person “placing himself or herself in any public place, street, highway, court, or passage, to beg or gather alms” (Alamy)

What do you do when confronted with an outstretched hand, proffered by a grubby soul clutching a filthy sleeping bag? Shuffle past, averting your gaze, or reach in your pocket for some coins?

Misplaced guilt makes sensible people do stupid things. Most of my liberal pals – possibly feeling guilty about their nice clothes or any sign of middle-class wealth, such as a bulging carrier bag – always cough up. These misplaced acts of kindness are incredibly foolish: instead of helping, do-gooders are feeding a modern plague.

Beggars have become a major pest, an inescapable irritant on public transport, a hurdle to negotiate when visiting a supermarket or a cash machine in a city centre. There’s a big difference between beggars and homeless people.

People who find themselves sleeping rough against their will need our support, through donations to the many excellent charities that work in this field – Centrepoint and the Salvation Army, for example. Cuts to benefits and social services have resulted in a huge rise in the number of people sleeping rough, many of whom need support for addiction or mental health issues.

But few beggars are homeless. Most have a roof over their head, so why should ordinary workers who pay their taxes have to subsidise them? The sums of money involved can be very large. Last week, one man in the news was allegedly pocketing £500 a day in Wolverhampton; another in Weston-super-Mare, who falsely claimed to be an ex-serviceman, had collected about £5,000 before he was rumbled. Many beggars rent the lucrative pitches by the hour from other professionals. They regard it as a job, a way of getting a wage which will often fund drink and drug addiction.

On one level, I regard some professional beggars as performance artists, part of the rich tradition of street entertainment in Britain. In recent years, buskers, carol singers and morris dancers have been joined by windscreen washers wielding filthy rags, silver- and gold-painted living statues, illegal hot dog and burger vans selling dubious food, performing animals and a new breed of highly aggressive beggars – many of whom come from Eastern Europe. On the Underground, resourceful conmen place packets of tissues on empty seats, and if you are dumb enough to pick one up they’ll demand money. Women poke sedated babies in commuters’ faces as they try to read.

Begging is illegal, but as fast as police round offenders up and get them into court, they return. The number of prosecutions for begging has soared by 70 per cent – it has doubled in Manchester alone, and risen by more than 400 per cent on Merseyside. All this costs a fortune in public funds, and is totally ineffective. More than half of court fines will never be paid.

Last year, the leader of Manchester City Council claimed that the city was being targeted by beggars who commuted from London and 80 per cent were not homeless. To find out if a beggar is genuinely desperate, try buying them a cup of coffee or a sandwich: nine times out of 10, they will be outraged.

I don’t want sanitised streets, but beggars will continue to make our lives a misery unless we learn to say no and keep our hands in our pockets.

As the superior sex, women don’t need menstrual leave

Menstrual leave is being offered by a company in Bristol, which claims that women will be more “creative” if they tap into their biological rhythms.

The pain and discomfort caused by periods are a bit of a taboo subject. Most women don’t want to make a fuss, considering it a sign of weakness, something that might hinder their chances of promotion. It’s tricky: legally, all workers, male and female, should be treated equally, and yet the fact remains that men don’t have a quarter of their lives blighted by excessive bleeding and horrible cramps, and they don’t give birth. You can’t ignore that biological fact.

For decades I had heavy periods and worked through appalling pain, dealing with some embarrassing moments, too. But I still wouldn’t want periods to be classified like an illness. Surely it’s better to try to desensitise men, so women don’t feel embarrassed to talk about menstruation and how they feel in public.

Too often, periods are treated like a dirty secret, but they are as normal as spots or cellulite. Coexist, the company offering “menstrual leave”, claims women are more productive after their cycle has finished. In parts of South-east Asia, menstrual leave is regularly offered to female staff.

Sadly, most work isn’t about being creative – it’s about being a reliable member of a team, and offering menstrual leave cuts right across that. Yes, life’s unfair, but in my book women are the superior sex anyway.

The unedifying saga of Madonna and child

Teenagers rarely do what their parents want, so resorting to legal action to enforce your will is unlikely to produce a happy ending. Madonna gets her way in most matters, but now she has encountered a formidable adversary: her own son.

Under the terms of Madonna’s divorce from Guy Ritchie in 2009, Rocco is supposed to live with his mother in New York and regularly visit his father, but the teenager spent Christmas in the UK and now refuses to return home. The singer claims that 15-year-old Rocco is being illegally kept by his father, citing international law relating to child abduction.

On tour in New Zealand, she’s posting pictures and messages on social media, turning this into a very public dispute. Judges in New York and London have commented that this case should never have reached court and should be settled in private, but further hearings are set for this week in London, and in June in New York.

What about Rocco? In a few months’ time he will be 16 and can choose to live wherever he likes. As for a home life in New York, Madonna has been on her Rebel Heart tour through Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand from November until the end of this month. Does she expect her son to travel with her?

The one thing teenage boys desperately want is privacy. Through her obsession with control, Madonna denies Rocco the basic human right to a private life. After all, the boy didn’t ask to be born famous.

Highbrow jostling to get hands on the nation’s art

The bosses of our leading public galleries are increasingly behaving like Premier League football managers. Until now, art after 1900 was shown at Tate Britain – but now the National Gallery wants to extend its remit into the 20th century.

I can see exactly why Gabriele Finaldi, the new director of the National, wants to get his hands on a few Picassos, because they will generate far more visitors – and more revenue – than rooms of pasty-faced Renaissance virgins holding babies.

Of course, Finaldi will claim it’s all in the name of culture, but commerce will be the real reason.