Belfast’s Wallet Experiment: A lesson in community and honesty - but could residents in Telford or Wolverhampton say the same?
As an experiment in Belfast, a television reporter this week "dropped" his wallet in various places in the city, containing both money and his phone number.
Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
According to the Office for National Statistics, Belfast is the happiest place in the UK. It's reckoned that the cheeriest places are towns and cities where people would return a lost wallet to a stranger. One theory is that it's all to do with the sense of community.
Every single one of the 10 dropped wallets in Belfast were returned. Would the same have happened in, say, Telford or Wolverhampton?
I can shed some light on that thanks to my wife's own wallet "experiment" the other day. She came back home and could not find her purse, which contained all her cards, anywhere.
So muggins was dispatched to retrace her steps. No joy at the local Tesco - she has a worrying habit of leaving her purse (and sometimes car keys, but that's a different story) by the checkout in supermarkets as she packs the stuff - but she had also been to Greggs.
"We've had a purse in the safe overnight. It was handed in," they said. Panic over, although my wife had of course cancelled her cards by then as a precaution.
So thank you to Greggs for the safe keeping and to the person who handed it in.
