WITH them having previously doled out hundreds of thousands of pounds to projects involving homosexuals and prostitutes, not to mention millions for toffs' opera, it can hardly be a great surprise that the National Lottery Charities Board considers that organised begging is also a worthy cause - and so bungs almost £800,000 at a school for buskers.

A child could draw up a better list of needy and worthwhile causes than this lot.

For set against the miscellany of medical charities, animal welfare organisations and voluntary organisations doing really significant and crucial vital work in the community - and which have not seen a penny of the lottery bonanza - helping more unicyclists, mime artists and jugglers to solicit for money in the streets can hardly be called vital.

It is time that the lottery hand-outs were revised as, plainly, the charities board have the priorities of the suede-booted middle-class arty-crafty and politically-correct movement when, in the real world, sensible people can see much worthier causes like hard-up hospitals, slum schools and the like going begging for funds.

Crazy.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.