Can I borrow 80p mate?

What the hell is happening to Newbury town centre? It seems that every single day I'm asked to lend crackheads, junkie's and the fucking DREGS of society 80p. He can't even busk for change.. WTF? These people have obviously seen the modus operandi of those other high street inhabiting scumsuckers: the charity mugger - which Newbury is a renowned hotspot for - and decided to emulate with their own twist (i.e. look like a toothless crackhead and ask for 80p instead of looking like a student and asking for £4 a month; to care for disabled kittens or some shit...).
Anyway so I'm wandering down the high street to the shop to purchase myself some nice food, and as i'm walking past the Snooty Fox a young man, reasonably tall with dirty clothes approached me looking a bit apprehensive with the classic line 'can I borrow 80p for the phone, mate?'. I replied with a curt 'No' and strolled onwards whilst the dude went straight to a well to do older couple behind me and asked the same question. I was out of earshot and do not know whether he was succesful in his quest for 80p. I have a feeling tht it was is shift in town and he had probably asked every single person he ad seen walking about and probably earned several 80p's from kindlier members of the public than I.
I have several problems with this practice which I'll try and describe for you. Firstly - Why does this dude need 80p to use a phone? I'm pretty sure there aren't even any coin operated pay phones left in town - so right from the off this stranger has just wandered up and fucking lied to my face. Unaccetable.
Secondly - why 80p? Has he got a specific conversation he plans to have on this phone call, and knows that he's gonna need exactly 80 pence of credit in order to complete it? No - he's clearly a fuckin idiot, even if he had to make a phone call (which I'm certain he doesn't) he would have no idea about how much it costed, we are talking about the sort of person who simply cannot and will not learn.
Thirdly - do I not have a right to walk to the shops unmolested by scumbags? Why should I work everyday and pay income tax, council tax, vat, national insurance only to be hassled for the remaining change in my pocket by these cretins? You could earn 80p in ten minutes of your hourly minimum wage (£4.85 innit?) if you got a job... But therein we have the problem, for the last 12 years the welfare system in this country has been generating a culture of people with no assets of their own, who somehow believe that everyone else is happy to pay out whilst they take, take, take. What a world we live in.