There is a hardwood pier stretching out into the protected harbour where I live, styled to resemble a vintage port. Most days, there’s a tall ship moored at the end, squeaking and groaning as it bobs around under the weight of parents and kids going on historic tours. It’s surrounded by elderly fishermen who perch over the rougher edges beside the pylons. These are in the process of being eaten away, wrapped in jackets of oysters and assorted shellfish chomping at the soggy wood as the tide pulls in and out until the whole thing breaks apart.

The fishing is good. There is no indication that the world beneath the water is bothered by the progress of trendy bars popping up along the foreshore, the controversial bike path, the statue of a now ‘socially inappropriate’ founder of the town, or the million-dollar cruisers leaking a near imperceptible veneer of petrol as they pull out from the docks.

They are a relic, the fishermen, out of sync with the swift passage of time. Despite the Woke council putting up huge notice boards telling them what they can and can’t catch, none of these frail-looking social botherers have found the courage to challenge an 80-year-old man with a gutting knife about the contents of his bait bucket.

Frequenting this microcosm of society is a one-legged seagull. His little orange stump is barely visible beneath windswept feathers. Maybe it was tugged off by an over-excited fish? It doesn’t seem to bother him much as he hops about around the bait bucket, squawking and prodding the white plastic edges of the lid.

There are thousands of seagulls cluttering the rocks and parks that lay around the edge of the harbour. Sometimes they are joined by pelicans – an arrival which scares the living heck out of tourists who panic and rescue their small children from dinosaur-sized beggars. Plenty of signs warn people not to feed these flocks of scavengers and most of the time, people follow the advice.

The fishermen are the meanest. They’ve seen every bird-trick in the book and they know perfectly well that there’s plenty of food about for those lazy-arse gulls. All they have to do is duck under the water a few times and drag up one of the fingerlings swarming in the shallows under the shade of the pier.

But that pesky little injured seagull leaving scratch marks on the bait bucket lid?

There’s something about the ‘battler spirit’ which calls to the fishermen. They usually give in, snap open the lid, and toss the bird a few guts or bits of bloodworm – maybe a soldier crab, nipper, or unused fishtail. It’s a form of inter-species charity offered voluntarily.

Birds are smart.

Denied ‘charity’ by the waves of locals and tourists, several of the seagulls noticed their one-legged friend getting perks on the pier.

Some of them took their leg and folded it up, hiding the limb almost perfectly in their plumage. For those not paying attention, it is the perfect ruse. Maybe there’s a very specific seagull-leg-slicing epidemic going on? Without questioning the one-legged seagull phenomena, everyone started tossing chips and prawn tails to the hoppy-gulls.

This isn’t charity, it’s a con. At first, the gulls put their leg back down as soon as the first chip hit their beak. But that food supply stopped immediately whenever they did this. A few months later, after perfecting the trick, healthy seagulls spent the majority of their day on one leg, snaffling up offerings from sympathetic crowds.

They were getting fat and lazy – and their exploitative habits were wearing off on other birds. One slightly awkward pelican tried it out, balanced on one leg with its other in full view – suspended at a strange angle. Someone fed it to reward the sheer novelty.

By this point, it was laughably obvious what was going on. Even the least observant tourist was keeping their chips to themselves.

The poor one-legged bird, the real one, was indistinguishable from these victim impostors. He had to abandon the odd, easy meal and return to the water to try his luck with the fish.

Meanwhile, the pretenders had become dependent on the trick. They didn’t want to go back to working for their food and so their efforts to deceive and scam became ever more persistent until they frightened away some of the tourists with their violent accosting.

Victimhood had turned into intimidation and theft – anything to keep the easy chips coming.

In the end, there were no ‘free’ meals on offer. No handouts, and no sympathetic eyes. The abuse of charity by predatory faux victims is a problem we can easily identify in nature, but struggle to identify when it is wrapped up in layers of bureaucracy and politics.

Just as the one-legged gull appreciated the charity and suffered when his mates took what they didn’t need, so too do the most vulnerable human beings in society suffer when the ‘cult of victimhhood’ takes hold.

If an entire society of able-bodied individuals make their living out of state-sanctioned charity – the cornerstone of a collectivist regimes – what’s going to happen to the genuine victims, and when will the patience of the working class run thin? Because it will.

Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.