Big Issue Sellers

[DBD1975]

Brought a Big Issue today from a nice lady who was so grateful. Went past her again a few hours later and she asked how my day was going. I said good and asked her the same and she said not good as she hadn't sold any more and I had been the only person to buy from her today.
I feel so sorry for her and it is playing on my mind. I know Big Issue Sellers are homeless but I assume she would have somewhere to stay?
Just wondering what other people might think but am I being unreasonable to think it doesn't hurt to lend others less fortunate a hand?
This was in a very affluent market town and I observed people just walking past and ignoring her so I do believe what she said.

Fantastic article.

"Like these economic migrants disguising themselves as refugees, the entry of the Roma into the “Big Issue business” is a rational decision. It does not necessarily imply personal immorality; they are simply taking advantage of the opportunities made legally available to them. The problem lies deeper, in the refusal of many liberal progressives to understand how most of the world really works and to make institutions robust to how it does."

The Big Issue's response is to talk about how lovely it is that they come from these large families.

But can you seriously imagine a conversation in a charity HQ that went any other way? "Hey, maybe these guys are taking the piss, should we start putting other types of people ahead in the queue above yet another Roma woman in a headscarf?" would be met with at best shock and at worst a formal legal complaint under equalities law.

Same Romanian Roma lady in my town for at least 13 years! Told me she is from Romanian , and we would regularly chat.ast time I spoke to her she had 5 kids, and counting. Another Roma lady seems to have joined her lately but in her old place, she has now moved outside a supermarket. I haven’t bought from her for a year, and honestly avoid her now as she can’t be homeless, and still selling all these years later. I mean it could be she has been there even before I noticed!

In what way? Please do tell.

This is a sad thread, but I am also increasingly jaded about the legitimacy of the BI vendor near me. There is a BI seller in the town my parents live in and she has been selling it for more than a decade.

She is very chatty and talks about her husband and children who she lives in a flat with. Every Christmas, she seems to have a big heap of wrapped presents given to her by people she befriends and there was a gofundme which raised almost £200 to put money on her electricity key over the winter.

I've always bought a mag and usually she keeps the change. It is quite an affluent area and I know a few of my mum's friends have often slipped her £20 whenever they pass without taking the magazine (which the vendors aren't technically supposed to accept).

Someone posted on the local Facebook page recently saying "FYI you can check where your nearest Big Issue seller is based here:
https://www.bigissue.com/vendors/ clue: nearest is about 30 miles away!"

The most common scam is that these bogus sellers are buying magazines from a genuine seller and then selling them on, OR they're selling for that badged seller, on their behalf for some reason.

Not everyone can sell the BI, there are some rules and they do HAVE to wear a badge/tabard etc and stick to their agreed pitch. You can report to BI office in your town if they are not doing that, though how much effort BI put into finding who is selling mags on I don't know.

The aren't all street dwellers - some will have supported flats or other reasons that they need the job, its a job for those experiencing financial hardship, not purely for the homeless.

I'd also be wary of judging someone for a nice haircut or nails, there are schemes that provide free hair cuts, nails and clothing so that people can go to interviews, and if you're a BI seller you are a lot more likely to be able to access such a scheme.

As I say with giving money to beggars/homeless people - do it if you want to, don't if you don't, but don't judge, it's not helpful, and don't decide what YOU think will be helpful, you're not in their situation and what you consider to be helpful may not be remotely helpful to them!

That link is only to vendors who can sell yearly subscriptions. The majority cannot. It doesn't mean that your local single issue seller isn't legitimate.

Not the same experience outside the M&S foodhall where a despicable Big Issue seller shouted abuse at me after I politely declined to buy a copy.

I had to make a lot of complaints to M&S before I got anywhere and she has now gone from there.

They aren't homeless and the Big Issue is a Lefty propaganda rag.

That's exactly it. Genuine homeless people whom it was intended to help have been pushed aside and the Romanians have turned it into a racket.

Thanks for sharing that article. It’s very good.

I no longer buy the Big Issue. Its so far from its original mission of helping homeless people.

As others have said, all the sellers are now Roma women. They work in gangs. They get in-work benefits as they count as self employed. There are people who have been securely housed for years and years who sell the Big Issue.

Big Issue should be closed down. Its used by scammers now. It only exists as its become in Institution who wants to continue its own survival.

I used to buy it, but I don't any more. My local seller has been there perhaps 10 years, maybe more, so it obviously hasn't helped her move on with her life, which is what I thought it was supposed to do. And yes, I think she is probably Roma. I hadn't realised this was a thing until I read about it on here.

Plus, it used to be a better read. At some point it stopped being a mix of campaigning articles and general interest (music, culture etc) and dropped much of the stuff I was interested in.

Big issue sellers aren't homeless .it's a job and they sell to pay rent. Chat to your local one. Sadly alot seem to be controlled by someone else now. Or maybe just my town...I don't buy now..chat to your local one

Oh lovely gentle soul. Don’t let the world harden you like it has so many. It doesn’t hurt to lend others a hand. How nice that you thought about her afterwards. Thank goodness there are still some people like you left in the world. You ANBU

@DBD1975 anyone can be a Big Issue vendor, you don't have to be homeless: https://www.bigissue.com/become-a-vendor/

I’ve always given above the price, and nobody has ever refused. I’m talking over approx 20 years!

the entry of the Roma into the “Big Issue business” is a rational decision. It does not necessarily imply personal immorality; they are simply taking advantage of the opportunities made legally available to them.

Whatever anybody claims, it most definitely IS immoral. The whole thing about the Big Issue is that, although it's framed as a dignified business; but the vast, vast majority of people who buy do not do so because they want the magazine, but because they feel sorry for the seller and - based on the historical ethos of the BI - they believe the seller to be homeless or otherwise vulnerable and (dare I say it) something of a charity case.

If the BI were on sale in WH Smith - just there sitting in the rack alongside all the other regular magazines, just waiting for you to pick it up and buy it if you want it or leave it if you don't, with nobody presenting as vulnerable asking you pleadingly to buy it - it would have tanked and folded a very long time ago.

As 'moral' business go, it's the equivalent of a driven group of professional adults hiding in a hedge behind a 7yo on a busy pavement, at a deliberately ramshackle stall - adorned with purposely mis-spelled signs in childlike writing, with heartfelt messages saying that the child is raising money for charity - selling overpriced lemonade.

If I'm wrong, tell me why it is that, of all the thousands of magazine titles available, these groups always happen to choose to re-sell this one minority title?

It isn't "hardened" or "selfish and unkind" to see truth rather than cling to an obviously incorrect "ideal" - you'd have to be blind or willfully ignorant not to see the changes in the sellers of the BI in the last few years - I'm a "lovely gentle soul" but I'm also not stupid - I can see when someone is a con artist. The original founder has more than distanced himself from the current set up.

And the further truth is that if everybody stopped giving these "sellers" any money the current racket would cease and possibly, just possibly, real, legitimate sellers would eventually return. That ship may have sailed completely though.

Unfortunately by having the attitude of the OP - that she would rather be scammed than not give at all this current situation will continue - as long as it pays for these people to do this they will.

OP the idea that giving money to the person you see in your town will in any way help to free them from their situation is just utter rubbish - you are doing the opposite - as long as you give they'll have to be there to take - you are, in fact, perpetuating them being there.

And the further truth is that if everybody stopped giving these "sellers" any money the current racket would cease and possibly, just possibly, real, legitimate sellers would eventually return. That ship may have sailed completely though.

I feel foolish to admit that this point didn't properly register with me before. Along with all of the non-homeless people moving in because they see a business opportunity that could also lead them to benefits loopholes in a foreign country, I hadn't stopped to think about the experiences of the genuine homeless people who should have been there instead.

Presumably, if it's being seen by the Roma gangmasters as a business, then they are going to want as many of the profitable pitches as they can possibly get for themselves and their people; so how many genuine would-be sellers might have been scared off or even threatened not to take a worthwhile pitch for the purposes aligning with both the true original aims of the Big Issue and the public's understanding of it?

It's madness that, at present, buying a copy of the BI may well not just not be helping homeless people but actually working against them - by supporting the imposters who have forced them out to keep on doing it.

NC to reply to this.

25 years ago I sold the Big Issue, in a major UK city. At the time I was sleeping on the streets with my then-boyfriend. I sold it from when I was 17 to 20.

During the years I sold it, the issue of Roma sellers started creeping in. Sellers used to grumble about them because they would fly pitch and that meant genuine sellers lost customers. Then sellers started to get threatened for their pitch. It slowly got to be more of an issue by the time I stopped selling. Its obviously much worse now!

I am and always have been very left leaning and very sympathetic to migrants. But what's happened to the Big Issue is a real shame. It's been utterly abused by a group of people who were not the intended group to be helped.

In my town where I live now, there are 2 Roma women selling the Big Issue. I've seen them get in a shiny car at the end of the day where they are made to spread a plastic bag on the seat before they can sit on it. That's not the car of a loving family member, it's the car of a gang master. I feel sorry for the women but they're not being helped the way that their customers think they are!

"Just wondering what other people might think but am I being unreasonable to think it doesn't hurt to lend others less fortunate a hand?"

You're NOT being unreasonable to think that in itself - of course it doesn't hurt to help out others financially now and then if one can afford to.

However, it would be unreasonable to make it a general expectation of other people (not saying that's what you're doing, just making the point generally.) People are entitled to do what they like with their own money, and giving it away is a personal choice - no moral obligation to do so.

Ive not bought BI in about a decade as I would assume now that buying it risks funding crime & facilitating laundering criminal proceeds, for the various reasons already outlined on here.
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Same here.

there is a Big Issue seller outside my local supermarket too...she has been here since I moved here in 1998! The supermarket staff say she drives a very nice car! So I think she has probably got back on her feet by now!

Are you in Kingston? She's been there for at least 25 years.

I remember some of the more regular folk back in the 90"s, they were real characters. My favourite line I heard 'Buy the Big Issue, next week's toilet tissue '. I feel the class of the sellers have really dropped.

Recently I 'followed' (he was entering M&S same time as me) a seller and noticed he bought a large pack of Cornish Cruncher cheese and I did question myself how hard up these people really are