Nothing much happens in my wee corner of suburbia, other than the odd crazed pensioner driving her car off a bridge in the pedestrian precinct (this happens a lot). But not today. We seem to be having a Big Issue turf war.
Until very recently there was one Big Issue seller in the town centre (which isn’t a very big town centre), and his pitch is just outside Marks & Spencer. He seems to have been replaced with a young girl, though, and an older woman. And another older woman. And a bloke. And another bloke. Depending on the time of day, they’ll be in the main street, outside Tesco, outside Marks & Sparks, at the train station or somewhere else entirely.
One of the blokes tends to favour Tesco, but apparently there was a fist-fight between him and a rival seller in the supermarket car park yesterday. This is according to a Tesco employee, who was telling this to the police. She was calling the police because today, the bloke is hanging around the junction where Tesco traffic joins a dual carriageway. Apparently he’s been perfecting his sales pitch, and today it involves jumping in front of cars and haranguing the occupants.
Needless to say I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. I suspect the new arrivals may be commuters from Glasgow. Is anyone else finding Big Issue sellers jumping in front of cars and punching one another in their previously peaceful town centres?
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0 responses to “Attack of the Big Issue sellers”
Has anyone else noticed that the indigenous Big Issue sellers in Glasgow city centre seem to have all been replaced by shady east european types?
I’m all for helping the homeless, but there seems to me to be an organised begging ring which has outsted the local jakies.
Well, I wouldn’t say all big issue sellers are jakies… but yeah, it does seem as if very recently the familiar faces have been replaced and the number of sellers has increased quite a lot. The optimistic bit of me thinks “hurrah, the disappearance of the old timers means the big issue has worked again, they’ve disappeared because they’re sorted”, but the cynical bit of me suspects otherwise. And I do wonder what possible benefit there can be from saturating the streets with Big Issue sellers: surely it’ll just mean the same limited amount of money split between more people?
I have just watched two Iraqi big issue salesman hassling an elderly lady. I know there ethnic because one of them lives in the next close to me in Riddrie. The Big Issue?? I thought it was about the homeless?
theres a man outside my work called omar who sells the big issue and he is very good at hassiling the customers people feel pressured to buy it becuase he is crazy he stands there shouting at everyone he then goes and buys white lighning cider with the money i doo feel sorry for hijm but he needs to relax more and maybe people will actually buy because of the cause not because they are bullied in to doing so