DHSF
Les Ferdinand
Im a good looking chap - the best you can get on Baker Street. Baker St is lucky to have me. Infact you got London, Milan, New York, Paris - add Baker st to that
-
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Big Issue..
- Thread starter Roy1983
- Start date
Im a good looking chap - the best you can get on Baker Street. Baker St is lucky to have me. Infact you got London, Milan, New York, Paris - add Baker st to that
thfcsteff
Garth Crooks
Now I know you are officially a male munter!
thfcsteff
Garth Crooks
...but fudging goodie sunshine! Think Terrance Stamp and jog on munter-boy! (more like think Jaz Coleman on a good day LOL, oops!)
Fixed
I
indianspur
Guest
this is a problem.....
One-third of Big Issue sellers now Romanian: Job once reserved for Britain's homeless has been swamped by Eastern European immigrants. And many of them have homes AND claim benefits
Over the past 20 years, they have become a familiar fixture on Britain’s high streets: bedraggled, wrapped up against the elements and far from freshly washed – but often with an engaging line in patter.
Through their determination to work themselves out of poverty, Big Issue sellers have won the hearts of the more fortunate, who happily buy the magazine in the knowledge they are helping those in genuine difficulty.
But over the past year or two, there has been a noticeable change in the appearance of the typical Big Issue seller, with women from the poorer parts of Eastern Europe, in their long skirts and headscarves, increasingly replacing the male, native British homeless people.
The situation was brought into focus last week when Romanian Firuta Vasile, a mother of four who sold the magazine in Bristol, was given the legal right to claim housing benefit on top of the other aid she already receives.
A court ruled that because she paid for the magazines using her own money and sold them at a profit or a loss, she was classed as self-employed. The landmark decision means that she – and other immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania, the nations that are not yet full members of the EU – can claim the housing benefit they were not previously entitled to
The Mail on Sunday launched an investigation to determine the full ramifications of this decision, and we have established that almost one in three Big Issue sellers – 700 out of a nationwide force of 2,250 registered vendors according to the magazine – come from Romania.
British Big Issue vendors have also alleged that some Roma ‘gipsies’ organise gangs selling the magazines on a large-scale basis – even turning up to distribution points in luxury cars – and intimidate other sellers on their pitches.
The newly opened benefits loophole has faced widespread condemnation. Particularly vociferous was the founder of The Big Issue, John Bird, who now advises the Government on its Big Society project.
Vowing that the organisation would root out sellers who were not genuinely in need, he said: ‘We did not start The Big Issue as a means for people to top up benefits. I am not going to stand by and watch this organisation have a namby-pamby attitude to the poor. It would be like throwing away the last 20 years. If we find anyone going near the benefits system, we will expose them. It is appalling.’
There are a range of nationalities selling The Big Issue – including Eastern Europeans from Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania – but Mr Bird said the Romanians presented a particular challenge.
He said: ‘In the past Jews and Indians were given the opportunity to come here and work their way out of poverty – and they did.
‘But we can’t even get Romanian groups in the UK to work with the Roma people. We ring them up and say, “Look, we’re working with a lot of Romanians now. Can you help?”
‘They tell us, “These people aren’t Romanians. They’re gipsies.” That’s the real problem – no one wants to know them.’
The Mail on Sunday last week spoke to Big Issue sellers in several British cities. In Glasgow, five of the seven vendors we found were Romanian.
The sole British seller claimed that luxury cars arrived at the city’s distribution depot at 6am each Monday to pick up copies.
The man, who did not want to be named, said: ‘Large, flash cars, like Mercedes and BMWs, pull up and load up in bulk with the magazines before driving off to have them distributed.
‘What are people driving cars like that doing buying loads of copies of The Big Issue to sell on?
‘There are too many copies for one or two people to sell, so they must have a gang working for them. And they’re doing it because there’s lots of money in it for them. It’s organised crime. People who are clearly wealthy enough to drive cars like that have no business getting involved in selling The Big Issue.
‘There are hardly any Brits now and that’s because we are being muscled out. The intimidation can be terrible sometimes but you just have to stand up to them. I know of one guy who got beaten up. It’s a scandal.’
In Nottingham, a British vendor claimed that a third of all the pitches used by Big Issue vendors were occupied by Romanians, often in outlying areas of the city or in other East Midlands towns such as Derby, Loughborough and Leicester. They also travel to small towns on the days when there are street markets.
He said: ‘They have a greater ability to travel. They are being driven around.There are men driving the cars but it is the women who do the selling. They drop them off near where their pitch is. Some of them seem to operate like a team in that they will buy 100 copies and then go off and distribute them to the women to sell.’
Another British seller, James, 37, also complained that Romanians had more money to purchase the magazines in bulk. ‘I go down there with my few pounds to buy what I can and they arrive with rolls of notes,’ he said. Outside Nottingham’s Broadmarsh shopping centre, Florina Novice, 26, said she and her family had come to Britain in 2008 from Arad in Western Romania.
‘The job I had in a shoe factory in Romania paid only ?ú100 per month,’ she said. ‘We thought Britain would be better.’
The mother of three, whose husband is a painter and decorator, said she had been selling The Big Issue for two years and was able to claim benefits for her children.
She worked from 10am to 3pm each weekday, between doing the school run, typically selling four or five copies. Buying them at ?ú1.25 and selling them for ?ú2.50 means this is hardly a lucrative day’s work in itself – until the benefits it potentially unlocks are considered
In Bristol, where 27-year-old Miss Vasile won her landmark case, there was no sign of the usual half-dozen Roma regulars. One British seller told us: ‘They’re lying low until the publicity dies down.’
Miss Vasile had already managed to obtain ?ú25,500 a year in benefits, but she took the city council to a tribunal last year after it refused to pay her housing benefit. Her victory, upheld last week by a senior tribunal in London, will now give her at least ?ú2,600 in additional payments each year.
Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said use of The Big Issue to obtain self-employed status had revealed a ‘totally unacceptable loophole’ which he was attempting to close.
He said: ‘The British people will understandably wonder how on earth it can be fair for people to come here with no job, but enjoy the right to access our benefits system.’
Conservative MP David Davies said: ‘The Big Issue was set up to help the homeless, not as a racket to allow people to migrate over here so they can play on people’s generosity and claim benefits. This is going to undermine trust in the magazine among the public who want to help those in genuine need.’
But Fay Selvan, chief executive of The Big Issue In The North, said: ‘They have a legal right to be in this country and a legal right to sell The Big Issue. No one is being denied a pitch.’
Founded in 1991, the magazine is written by professional journalists and sells about 120,000 copies a week. Although originally set up to help the homeless, last year it broadened its criteria for vendors to include those facing financial crisis.
A spokeswoman said: ‘Over the past 20 years the nature of homelessness has changed – there are far fewer rough sleepers.’
One-third of Big Issue sellers now Romanian: Job once reserved for Britain's homeless has been swamped by Eastern European immigrants. And many of them have homes AND claim benefits
Over the past 20 years, they have become a familiar fixture on Britain’s high streets: bedraggled, wrapped up against the elements and far from freshly washed – but often with an engaging line in patter.
Through their determination to work themselves out of poverty, Big Issue sellers have won the hearts of the more fortunate, who happily buy the magazine in the knowledge they are helping those in genuine difficulty.
But over the past year or two, there has been a noticeable change in the appearance of the typical Big Issue seller, with women from the poorer parts of Eastern Europe, in their long skirts and headscarves, increasingly replacing the male, native British homeless people.
The situation was brought into focus last week when Romanian Firuta Vasile, a mother of four who sold the magazine in Bristol, was given the legal right to claim housing benefit on top of the other aid she already receives.
A court ruled that because she paid for the magazines using her own money and sold them at a profit or a loss, she was classed as self-employed. The landmark decision means that she – and other immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania, the nations that are not yet full members of the EU – can claim the housing benefit they were not previously entitled to
The Mail on Sunday launched an investigation to determine the full ramifications of this decision, and we have established that almost one in three Big Issue sellers – 700 out of a nationwide force of 2,250 registered vendors according to the magazine – come from Romania.
British Big Issue vendors have also alleged that some Roma ‘gipsies’ organise gangs selling the magazines on a large-scale basis – even turning up to distribution points in luxury cars – and intimidate other sellers on their pitches.
The newly opened benefits loophole has faced widespread condemnation. Particularly vociferous was the founder of The Big Issue, John Bird, who now advises the Government on its Big Society project.
Vowing that the organisation would root out sellers who were not genuinely in need, he said: ‘We did not start The Big Issue as a means for people to top up benefits. I am not going to stand by and watch this organisation have a namby-pamby attitude to the poor. It would be like throwing away the last 20 years. If we find anyone going near the benefits system, we will expose them. It is appalling.’
There are a range of nationalities selling The Big Issue – including Eastern Europeans from Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania – but Mr Bird said the Romanians presented a particular challenge.
He said: ‘In the past Jews and Indians were given the opportunity to come here and work their way out of poverty – and they did.
‘But we can’t even get Romanian groups in the UK to work with the Roma people. We ring them up and say, “Look, we’re working with a lot of Romanians now. Can you help?”
‘They tell us, “These people aren’t Romanians. They’re gipsies.” That’s the real problem – no one wants to know them.’
The Mail on Sunday last week spoke to Big Issue sellers in several British cities. In Glasgow, five of the seven vendors we found were Romanian.
The sole British seller claimed that luxury cars arrived at the city’s distribution depot at 6am each Monday to pick up copies.
The man, who did not want to be named, said: ‘Large, flash cars, like Mercedes and BMWs, pull up and load up in bulk with the magazines before driving off to have them distributed.
‘What are people driving cars like that doing buying loads of copies of The Big Issue to sell on?
‘There are too many copies for one or two people to sell, so they must have a gang working for them. And they’re doing it because there’s lots of money in it for them. It’s organised crime. People who are clearly wealthy enough to drive cars like that have no business getting involved in selling The Big Issue.
‘There are hardly any Brits now and that’s because we are being muscled out. The intimidation can be terrible sometimes but you just have to stand up to them. I know of one guy who got beaten up. It’s a scandal.’
In Nottingham, a British vendor claimed that a third of all the pitches used by Big Issue vendors were occupied by Romanians, often in outlying areas of the city or in other East Midlands towns such as Derby, Loughborough and Leicester. They also travel to small towns on the days when there are street markets.
He said: ‘They have a greater ability to travel. They are being driven around.There are men driving the cars but it is the women who do the selling. They drop them off near where their pitch is. Some of them seem to operate like a team in that they will buy 100 copies and then go off and distribute them to the women to sell.’
Another British seller, James, 37, also complained that Romanians had more money to purchase the magazines in bulk. ‘I go down there with my few pounds to buy what I can and they arrive with rolls of notes,’ he said. Outside Nottingham’s Broadmarsh shopping centre, Florina Novice, 26, said she and her family had come to Britain in 2008 from Arad in Western Romania.
‘The job I had in a shoe factory in Romania paid only ?ú100 per month,’ she said. ‘We thought Britain would be better.’
The mother of three, whose husband is a painter and decorator, said she had been selling The Big Issue for two years and was able to claim benefits for her children.
She worked from 10am to 3pm each weekday, between doing the school run, typically selling four or five copies. Buying them at ?ú1.25 and selling them for ?ú2.50 means this is hardly a lucrative day’s work in itself – until the benefits it potentially unlocks are considered
In Bristol, where 27-year-old Miss Vasile won her landmark case, there was no sign of the usual half-dozen Roma regulars. One British seller told us: ‘They’re lying low until the publicity dies down.’
Miss Vasile had already managed to obtain ?ú25,500 a year in benefits, but she took the city council to a tribunal last year after it refused to pay her housing benefit. Her victory, upheld last week by a senior tribunal in London, will now give her at least ?ú2,600 in additional payments each year.
Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said use of The Big Issue to obtain self-employed status had revealed a ‘totally unacceptable loophole’ which he was attempting to close.
He said: ‘The British people will understandably wonder how on earth it can be fair for people to come here with no job, but enjoy the right to access our benefits system.’
Conservative MP David Davies said: ‘The Big Issue was set up to help the homeless, not as a racket to allow people to migrate over here so they can play on people’s generosity and claim benefits. This is going to undermine trust in the magazine among the public who want to help those in genuine need.’
But Fay Selvan, chief executive of The Big Issue In The North, said: ‘They have a legal right to be in this country and a legal right to sell The Big Issue. No one is being denied a pitch.’
Founded in 1991, the magazine is written by professional journalists and sells about 120,000 copies a week. Although originally set up to help the homeless, last year it broadened its criteria for vendors to include those facing financial crisis.
A spokeswoman said: ‘Over the past 20 years the nature of homelessness has changed – there are far fewer rough sleepers.’
Last edited by a moderator:
Kingdawson
Banned
Where's that from Daily Mail?
I
indianspur
Guest
yep from the Daily Fail. The fact that the original founder of the Big Issue, John Bird, is pi$$ed off with what is happening and is quoted in the article shows that something is definitely wrong
WookieD
Didier Zokora
I can speak from experience that there's a Romanian woman selling in Watford and has been for a while... She hasn't seen penny one from me. Call me prejudiced but you can spot them a mile off. When I was in Norway a couple weeks ago they were literally on every corner in Oslo and Bergen begging. All with the same cup and same blanket and same look their face, it was a bloody uniform. Then they're all picked up in a minivan at the end of the day to count the money theyve mugged from tourists. You'd be a mug to give them your money.
Kingdawson
Banned
Sadly i agree.
Has anyone had the misfortune to walk across Westminster Bridge? theres usually around 20 or so Romanian Gamblers literally blocking the damn walkway. Pick pockets all over the place too.
I
indianspur
Guest
although they come from Romania, most involved in this racket are the Roma gypsies.
there are many hard working decent romanians who also appalled by what these gypsies get up to, here in the uk and back in Romania. The gypsies are beggars by trade.
Sarkosy paid for them to return back to Romania as he wanted to clear French streets of these 'foreign' beggars. I think all over europe these Roma gypsies are a menace, just like Wookie said there are numbers of them in Norway
there are many hard working decent romanians who also appalled by what these gypsies get up to, here in the uk and back in Romania. The gypsies are beggars by trade.
Sarkosy paid for them to return back to Romania as he wanted to clear French streets of these 'foreign' beggars. I think all over europe these Roma gypsies are a menace, just like Wookie said there are numbers of them in Norway
Rock Strongo
dodgy Dave Goosegog
We're looking into banning it, but that might hurt some real beggars feelings, so it's probably not happening. You know what, I'd rather have the real homeless go broke than a 10 year old girl being stolen from her family to beg in a foreign country. Homeless in Norway is a choice of life, anyone who wants to live indoors and eat food can do so if they want to.
The are a problem throughout Europe, here in Vienna they are either begging with mutilated limbs or selling the equivalents of the Big Issue. There have even been cases of people forging copies of the newspapers and seller id cards over the border in Slovakia, this wasn??t reported in the equivalent of the Daily Mail but in the paper in question itself.
RunTMC
Stephen Clemence
Top, top post. =D>
Bullet
Colin Calderwood
I always thought a better thing to give a beggar was food, instead of money
But when I was in France last year there were women fitting the stereotype Romany gypsy description begging on the streets- I saw someone go into a bakery and buy them a bag of sandwiches and cakes.
They took the package and looked into it... Shrugged and threw it in the bin
I hate waste at any time, but that seemed really perverse
Hell, I'd have eaten the stuff fresh from the bakery rather than just throw it away
You wouldn't throw it away if you were struggling
But when I was in France last year there were women fitting the stereotype Romany gypsy description begging on the streets- I saw someone go into a bakery and buy them a bag of sandwiches and cakes.
They took the package and looked into it... Shrugged and threw it in the bin
I hate waste at any time, but that seemed really perverse
Hell, I'd have eaten the stuff fresh from the bakery rather than just throw it away
You wouldn't throw it away if you were struggling
southstand1882
Mitchell Thomas
I gave a homeless person ?ú5 last night
(it was a Scottish note so I didn't want it anyway)
But I did check to make sure he was English
(it was a Scottish note so I didn't want it anyway)
But I did check to make sure he was English
Park Lane James
Andy Sinton
Geaat post Roy. It takes a real man to see where he's gone wrong, face the music and apologise! It may not make a difference to the bloke with regards to the WH recruitment, but it could change his life!
Well done fella.
nayimfromthehalfwayline
Andy Thompson
It seems to me that the term immigrant has been rebranded, the meaning changed.
Of course, literally, you are (were?) an immigrant. From a time where it wasnt such an issue in this country and people would accept anyone who works hard to make a place for themselves.
In 2012 however, it seems to me "immigrant" no longer means you (or someone of your situation) - rather the eastern european scroungers how come to *struggle cuddle* the country and leave its natural inhabitants at a loss.
A little dramatic I know, but its the easy and ignorant view many have taken (sometimes rightly so).
I think this came up before, and the conclusion was that we needed sub categories of the term immigrant - "good" or "bad" in a way.
Immigration itself is not a bad thing. Introducing skills, cultures and acceptance is surely not something to complain about. However, the cost of letting hundreds of thousands in without control or consideration is clearly not good and is what has happened to excess over the last decade and a half.
I think, based soley on your post, your friends have a very different definition of immigrant to you, and certainly mean no offence to yourself in their use of the term. I would also imagine they forget you werent born here, having been in the country from a young age and growing through the English system to manhood.
The Roma gypsies are definately a big problem here too. I know one group that beg really aggressively outside churches and shops. They are around at 8am to go through rubbish bins and always make a big mess and walk off. If you try to talk to them, they just so no english, no english. This group has on a few occasions taken bags of clothes left outside charity shops. And of course selling the big issues here aswell. I know someone working in Social Welfare, oddly across the street from where they are begging and says they come in and try to claim for every possible too and usually get it too.
My point is you have people like this who will never work or integrate in to society here in a positive way and will just look for handouts. Like Mick has said, and I am Irish, so as a country we are even more fudged and cant afford this situation. So how do you deal with this situation in a way fair to everyone?
My point is you have people like this who will never work or integrate in to society here in a positive way and will just look for handouts. Like Mick has said, and I am Irish, so as a country we are even more fudged and cant afford this situation. So how do you deal with this situation in a way fair to everyone?
thfcsteff
Garth Crooks
I think in situations where it's obvious that there are groups who are absolutely not going to integrate into society/are hellbent on simply squeezing and intimidating people, then arrest and deportation is absolutely acceptable. I think it's about making sure the definition of Social Welfare is that it helps people who, for whatever reason, are in hard times/have found themselves in hard times, and who need society's help and support to remain afloat. There will always be a few who are too weak to find the strength to rise up for whatever reason, and there will always be some who are simply unfortunate and cannot rise up, but I agree, if there are malevolent groups of immigrants who are cynically sucking the system without offering anything in return, they must be addressed.