The Big Issue

I had never heard of The Big Issue until arriving here, but once I was here it didn't take long for me to be asked to buy one, as there are people everywhere thoughout the UK selling them.


According to the website...
"The Big Issue is an international organisation that works with homeless people all over the world, from the United Kingdom to South Africa and Japan. At the centre of our work is The Big Issue magazine, an award-winning news, arts and current affairs magazine that is produced by professional journalists and sold on the streets by homeless people. They buy the magazine from us and sell it on at a profit, which they keep. Although financial exclusion is one of the key reasons people remain homeless - and one of the core aims of The Big Issue is to give people a legal way of making a living - there are other benefits of becoming a vendor."

They are only allowed to sell them in certain areas and they aren't very aggressive, but it's still annoying to frequently be asked to buy one when shopping downtown. We've never bought one of their "award winning magazines" but people who have say it's a crap magazine and they'd rather just donate the money.