Nice one Megan.

What made me stop and think yesterday was talking to a lady at the Women's shelter where I teach crochet and knitting.

This lady was very well educated and, if you met her on the street, would look very respectable and certainly not someone one would want to avoid. About 18 months ago she was 'let go' from her employment of 12 years, with two month's salary. She is over fifty and, as seems to be the case right now, therefore unemployable. She struggled on for a year until her unemployment benefit and then her savings ran out and then was evicted because she couldn't pay the rent. Now she's in the shelter and trying to rebuild her life.

Kendall and I have talked about this before - just how lucky we have been in life, both with work and pensions. So many people are just one paycheck away from disaster and a major illness, without decent insurance, could cause the loss of everything.

Too many people don't seem to understand just how fortunate they have been not to have had to face this sort of disaster in life. Too many people also look down on the homeless as being universally feckless, lazy or addicts. From my experience this is not the case.