I am told I write well. This is no accident. I have practised hard for many years. As a slight example I dwelt on the word ‘for’ in the previous sentence, replaced it with over’, spoke the sentence aloud and then reinstated ‘for’. I am also a minimalist with punctuation. I accept Lynn Truss’ criteria in Eats Shoots & Leaves but add my own question. Is a particular item of punctuation essential? Is there misunderstanding or ambiguity without it? No. Then leave it out.

I have studied my craft. I delight in getting beneath the surface of words. I insist on knowing why a sentence works. It gives me great satisfaction to take 1000 words and reduce them to 600. To reduce the previous paragraph in this manner I would delete ‘in the previous sentence’ from the fourth sentence. Reducing to 300 is quite different. P.G. Wodehouse interested me when he refused me a 10-6 reduction and insisted I employ my 10-3 tricks of précis and synopsis…which runs off the tongue better than ‘synopsis and précis’. Span and spick jars. Spick and span is fine.

So I was all astonishment when reading Persuasion…Jane Austen’s last completed novel written in 1815 twenty years after Pride and Prejudice first saw the light of day as First Impressions. Austen had invented the literary trick of free indirect speech with its power to embody dramatic elements within the flow of the narrative...something Ernest Hemingway was much skilled at. The trick is to use actual phrases but indirectly so the narration combines the voice and moral perspective of the original speaker with those of the reporting or narrating agents.

In The Language of Jane Austen (Oxford 1972) Norman Page illustrates the point. ‘How Anne’s more rigid requisitions might have been taken is of little consequence. Lady Russell’s had no success at all – could not be put up with-were not to be borne. ‘What! Every comfort of life knocked off! Journeys, London, servants, horses, table,-contractions and restrictions every where. To live no longer with the decencies even of a private gentleman! No, he would sooner quit Kellynch-hall at once than remain in it on such disgraceful terms.’

Here is an example of Jane Austen’s subtlety in Mrs. Clay’s remarks to my son’s namesake John Shepherd… Estate Agent to Gentlemen of Fine Breeding & Delicate Sensibilities. ‘Certainly sailors do grow old betimes; I have often observed it; they soon lose the look of youth. But then is not it the same with many other professions, perhaps most other? Soldiers in active service are not at all better off; and even in the quieter professions there is a toil and a labour of the mind, if not of the body, which seldom leaves a man’s looks to the natural effect of time. The lawyer plods, quite care-worn; the physician is up at all hours, and travelling in all weather; and even the clergyman -‘she stopt a moment to consider what might do for the clergyman;- ‘and even the clergyman, you know, is obliged to go into infected rooms, and expose his health to all the injury of a poisonous atmosphere.’ Jane Austen has her continue.

‘In fact, as I have long been convinced, though every profession is necessary and honourable in its turn, it is only the lot of those who are not obliged to follow any, who can live in a regular way, in the country, choosing their own hours, following their own pursuits, and living on their own property, without the torment of trying for more; it is only their lot, I say, to hold the blessings of health and a good appearance to the utmost: I know of no other set of men but what lose something of their personableness when they cease to be quite young.’

This passage has little immediate bearing on the plot. A 10-3 reduction would have it deleted. It could be removed for an abridged version. But the sentiments expressed are as radical as anything from Wordsworth and the Romantic Poets. Indeed we have here echoes of John Keats’ Ode to Indolence. Three hundred years on we have made little progress towards the society implied. Mrs. Clay spoke on for two reasons…and only one was relevant to the plot.

Jane Austen was acutely a-tuned to the Establishment of her age…and realised its relevance to all establishments at all times. Establishments dislike nothing more than those who blurt out loud what everybody knows but prefer to leave unsaid. It embarrasses people. Parvenues who think to join the Establishment while elbowing aside the delicate web of hypocrisies, deferences and understandings that support it infuriate the Establishment’s old guard.

This is Tony Blair’s real crime in the Cash for Peerages Scandal creeping ever closer to 10 Downing Street. Matthew Parris made the point in his column in The Times last Saturday. ‘Imagining that all he needed to do was cloak an outright gift in the garb of a soft loan was slapdash to the point of arrogance. If this was camouflage, it was cursory.’

For the past nine months Rye has had a Big Issue Seller in residence on the pavement in the High Street…and on occasions setting up his stall outside our local supermarket. He has two dogs, himself and a large rucksack. This constitutes stall dimensions…and outside Grammar School Records it monopolises one of the two benches.

One fine woman of my acquaintance…bless her…with practical experience of homelessness from devoting part of her life to setting up and running a Battered Woman’s Hostel in Central London has tried to get behind the Big Issue Seller’s situation…quizzing me about the intricacies of Working Tax Credit along the way. I don’t do guilt trips but I know someone who does…bless her…each time she walks along the High Street unsure of which side of the street to pass him by.

The Vicar of St Mary’s…bless him…wrings his hands and discusses with one of his more generously minded parishioners…bless him…the idea of putting the Big Issue Seller into a caravan for the winter. Caravans can be acquired. But a landowner willing and able to accept a caravan, two dogs and a Big Issue Seller is another matter. I suspect there are dozens of similar stories around town. Does one person have the right to generate so much unease?

There are two big issues here with half the proceeds of one going to the seller…a decent percentage by charitable standards. But the other is of interest too. John Stuart Mill argued that people can do as they wish…provided they do not stop others doing as they wish. The philosophy of the Modern Welfare State…throughout Europe…believes Welfare Recipients participate in a Social Contract with mutual rights and duties. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The Queen’s Pence is yours but in return you must make yourself available for Work. No work - no benefits.

Since 1997 Parenting and Caring have been viewed as Work and a Roof Over Your Head has become equivalent to a basic right. The moral case for pensions has also shifted. Thirty years of Past Work has long been regarded as endowing full Pension Benefit Entitlement. But Present Work is also entering the equation. Many one-, and even two-income families are only kept afloat by grandparents minding the children.

Our Big Issue Seller is entitled to shelter so either he doesn’t know this or he chooses not to avail himself of Rented Accommodation and Housing Benefit from Rother District Council. If he is homeless it is by choice or from ignorance…or by refusal or inability to work. Local people who feel guilty should not fool themselves. Old-style Liberals have no philosophical objection to someone over-nighting on The Salts in summer but in winter there is a problem. Either he will infringe on somebody’s personal property rights…trespassing to stay warm…or end up in a National Health hospital at tax payers expense. So it is time to take issue with John Bird the founder of The Big Issue.

The Big Issue was a clever entrepreneurial idea in Thatcher’s Britain. But it is past its sell-by date. There will always be a case for a Campaigning Journal on Homes, Shelter and Housing…immigrants, second homes and pre-empting residential property for commercial use are topical issues. But in the New Labour Welfare State where housing is an entitlement Big Issue Selling should be seen as Charitable Collection. The collector should not be seen as a Homeless Person but as a Charitable Object. From the Public Policy point of view the Big Issue Seller is a Stallholder. If he does not have the requisite Planning Permission or Trading Licence he should be moved on by the police.

Selling Big Issues is not a job. It is not gainful employment in any meaningful sense but a form of begging. Ayn Rand viewed Society as made up of Producers, Looters and Moochers. Producers create wealth for Society. Looters use laws to destroy the wealth of Society while Moochers use guilt. In The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand shows the degrading effects this has on the souls of the Second-Raters who live by the Looters' and Moochers' codes.

Getting the Big Issue Seller off the street yields immediate benefits to everybody. But what of the Big Issue Seller? Ayn Rand sidesteps the question of redemption…of how to turn Moochers into Producers. Virginia Woolf wrote a book entitled A Room of Your Own that considers the question. But the title is misleading. The room is just the first step…and without Money of Your Own it is of little worth.

Virginia Woolf understood Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Rooms and money are just the first steps towards Self-Esteem and Self-Actualisation. An enlightened society’s policy for its Big Issue Sellers would not seek to enforce the contractual terms of the Social Contract for the Queen’s Pence but would recognise the need for a Period of Convalescence. One week of benefit without a duty to work for each week on the streets is one form such a policy might take. Local people could even chip in a bob of two.