letters
The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue
False profits
The report by Big Issue into private providers of fostering services [Issue 1602, 12 February] raises further questions about the role of profit in children’s social care. We need a proper discussion on how the system is working and we absolutely cannot allow children to be seen as commodities.
@KatharineSJ
Cycle of poverty
Brexit seemed to be the start to a new UK order. An absolutely diabolical and chaotic order. Covid hit; a several-year lockdown; recession; cost of living crisis; extortionate energy bills; strikes; and the worst is forced migration to a broken, unfit for purpose, benefits system – universal credit.
According to Big Issue, “All claimants will be moved over to universal credit by the end of 2024, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) announced this week.
The plans mean 2.6 million people still on so-called ‘legacy benefits’ will be transferred onto the newer, universal payment, and the DWP admits that up to 900,000 of them will be worse off long term.”
So, the ultimate plan must be to lock poor people into a cycle of poverty with absolutely no way out?
Universal credit and the legacy benefits system does not allow the poor to advance in education to earn a liveable wage and get out of the cycle of poverty — without financial penalties.
Christie
Losing Faith
I am a regular buyer of The Big Issue but was appalled to read in Issue 1602 that Paloma Faith is desperate to get rid of the Tories. Who cares what she thinks? She should stick to singing!
I will however continue to buy the magazine as the seller in Watford is always charming.
Margaret Lambert
Inspiration information
It was heartwarming to read the uplifting cover story of Lorna Tucker [Issue 1601, 5 February]. Here was someone’s daughter who had gone missing in the late 1990s, and appeared in The Big Issue advert for missing people.
Today, Lorna is a filmmaker whose latest film, Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son, is screening around the UK over the next couple of months. She has clearly turned her life around and is now focused on a theme that’s close to her heart and her life experience – homelessness.
Lorna remembers the attraction, the excitement, of being part of a gan
