When stories like this one make the international media:
Posted by Nicholas at March 3, 2008 09:01 AMFreeloading hippie Mark Boyles, 28, decided to demonstrate his contempt for the modern world, materialism, and a bunch of other really terrific things by walking to Gandhi's birthplace in Porbander, India. Boyles is an acolyte of the "Freeconomy" movement, a method of living that, according to the group, "allows people to make the transition from a money based communityless (sic) society to more of a community based moneyless society." In other words, he's a middle class beggar. On the first day of his trip, according to this BBC report, he scored two free meals in the English town of Glastonbury. Hardly surprising; the town is, after all, listed as one of England's "hippie havens."
Boyles and two friends then managed, in a grubby version of Operation Overlord, to land in Pas-de-Calais, France, where the mission encountered into its first snag. According to the BBC, the wandering Freeconomist was quickly mistaken for an indigent "because he could not speak French [and] people thought he was free-loading or an asylum seeker."
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