No Favour Goes Unpunished Press enter or click to view image in full size Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash Some forty-plus years ago, I learned how ill-advised it can be to help people. I was walking down Oxford Road in Manchester, on my way to a lecture at the University. Just as I was about to go into the building where the lectures were held, I saw a very shabbily dressed, down-on-his-luck old man begging from passersby. I made what turned out to be a very bad move by giving him the loose change in my pocket. From then on, I was a marked man. “You are the tap that opened and gave him water, so of course, from now on, he will not leave you alone,” said a colleague. The thing was, not only would he not leave me alone, but a refusal to give him any more money resulted in some very unwelcome, aggressive and abusive behaviour towards me. In the end, I had to go to university lectures down a different street. Much later on in life, the stakes were raised, and my job was on the line.…