https://www.eviebreese.comRSS Feed for Evie BreeseenThu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0100https://eviebreese.substack.com/p/it-took-away-everything-i-loved-aboutTom’s first job in journalism didn’t begin with a notebook and a door-knock, or an awkward challenge to vox-pop eight high street shoppers by 10am. It began with a copy and paste into Newsquest’s bespoke AI-powered writing tool. Zero human interaction, minimal writing. But at least he was getting hundreds of bylines a month.Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0100https://eviebreese.substack.com/p/it-took-away-everything-i-loved-abouthttps://www.context.news/socioeconomic-inclusion/opinion/callous-uk-asylum-plan-puts-refugees-at-risk-of-labour-abuse‘British compassion has gone too far’. Or so we have recently been told. For many Brits, the UK has a proud tradition of providing sanctuary to people fleeing war, torture and persecution. But as part of the Labour government’s new plans to upend the refugee system, this journey to permanent sanctuary will have to be earned...Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.context.news/socioeconomic-inclusion/opinion/callous-uk-asylum-plan-puts-refugees-at-risk-of-labour-abusehttps://www.context.news/money-power-people/opinion/britains-work-visa-system-is-enabling-modern-day-slaveryImagine you had spent your life savings moving to a new job abroad, but were then forced to work punishing hours for a fraction of the promised pay. Would you feel free to speak up? Probably not if it meant you risked being sacked and deported. Yet this is the power imbalance at the heart of the UK’s sponsorship system. It...Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0100https://www.context.news/money-power-people/opinion/britains-work-visa-system-is-enabling-modern-day-slaveryhttps://observer.co.uk/news/business/article/brain-training-firm-struggles-to-remember-who-it-has-worked-withLovebrain claimed a dazzling array of global brands as clients. It wasn't all trye - and the booming brain fitness industry is built on shaky scienceWed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0100https://observer.co.uk/news/business/article/brain-training-firm-struggles-to-remember-who-it-has-worked-withhttps://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/visa-reform-is-the-minimum-owed-to-exploited-care-workers/A contradiction sits at the heart of the problems currently facing the UK care sector. On the one hand, there remains an acute shortage of workers to bathe, feed, dress, converse with and comfort the UK’s aging population. There was a 6.8% vacancy rate in England’s care sector in March 2025, according to data from Skills for Care. For domiciliary care roles it was 9.4%. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of migrant care workers in the UK who, due to a recent government crackdown, are...Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0100https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/visa-reform-is-the-minimum-owed-to-exploited-care-workers/https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2024-03-15/migrant-care-workers-how-to-stand-up-to-exploitationAt the Work Rights Centre, we are supporting an increasing number of migrant care workers who have been scammed out of thousands of pounds by bogus recruiters, left without work and indebted, or facing exploitation in their jobs. At first there...Fri, 15 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2024-03-15/migrant-care-workers-how-to-stand-up-to-exploitationhttps://www.bigissue.com/culture/theatre/scene-heard-theatre-project-kids-write-plays/There’s only one rule at Scene & Heard; you can’t create human characters. “This allows the children to really liberate their imaginations, free up their creativity and explore themes that otherwise might feel more difficult to explore,” explains Roz Paul MBE, artistic director and CEO. In the charity’s 24 years of creating plays about objects, animals, aspects of nature and even chemical elements, there has never been a character too zany, too bizarre to be brought to life. “We do not edit or c...Sat, 09 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bigissue.com/culture/theatre/scene-heard-theatre-project-kids-write-plays/https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/tower-hamlets-free-school-meals-london-primary-secondary-pupils/“We see the child poverty, we see the cost of living crisis, we see the need,” he told The Big Issue on a visit to Swanlea school, his stomach full from a roast chicken dinner.  Your support changes lives. Find out how you can help us help more people by signing up for a subscription Rahman was kicked out of office in 2015 after an electoral commission investigation found him guilty of voter fraud. Staging a comeback after his five-year ban from politics, during which Labour politician...Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/tower-hamlets-free-school-meals-london-primary-secondary-pupils/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/two-years-after-fleeing-the-taliban-these-afghan-evacuees-are-rebuilding-their-careers/The job readiness course also teaches new arrivals to figure out how the UK education system works, how to access the NHS, how to navigate the transport network, and how to access childcare for parents who want to work. Because securing a job interview is only one step in the process of securing stable employment. Saghar Khalid is a 27-year-old Afghan woman who was recognised as a promising young journalist before she was evacuated to the UK with her husband in August 2021. She has been tryin...Fri, 18 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/two-years-after-fleeing-the-taliban-these-afghan-evacuees-are-rebuilding-their-careers/https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/afghan-refugees-i-built-homes-for-the-uk-government-now-im-facing-homelessness-in-britain/Cabinet Office minister Johnny Mercer announced in March that Afghans would be moved out of hotel accommodation, arguing the financial cost to the UK taxpayer stood at £1 million a day. He announced £35 million in new funding to enable local councils to transfer Afghans from hotels into settled accommodation across England. One in five Afghan refugees who have since been evicted from hotel accommodation in England have presented as homeless to their local council, the Local Government Associa...Tue, 15 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/afghan-refugees-i-built-homes-for-the-uk-government-now-im-facing-homelessness-in-britain/https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/housing-crisis-i-lived-in-a-hostel-for-15-months-because-of-londons-extortionate-rents/At first I moved into a three-bed room, sharing with one other girl, then moved up the waiting list to bag a private room. On each floor there were a couple of showers and bathrooms shared by everyone. Cooking dinner was the most difficult thing to navigate. Across the two kitchens, there were three sinks, two toasters, a single oven and another smaller electric oven that wouldn’t work, and that was for 70 girls and women to feed themselves. So there was a lot of queuing, a lot of waiting, an...Mon, 17 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/housing-crisis-i-lived-in-a-hostel-for-15-months-because-of-londons-extortionate-rents/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/these-high-street-shops-have-been-caught-paying-below-minimum-wage/“Our minimum hourly pay has never been below the national minimum wage, it is currently above it and no colleagues were ever underpaid because of this,” they said. Argos also said that the underpayments were due to a technical payroll error, identified in 2018, that has been rectified.  The 202 companies listed face penalties of nearly £7 million, according to the Department for Business and Trade. “Whilst not all minimum wage underpayments are intentional, there is no excuse for underp...Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/these-high-street-shops-have-been-caught-paying-below-minimum-wage/https://www.bigissue.com/news/environment/heres-why-british-lgbt-awards-has-dropped-ties-with-fossil-fuel-giants-shell-and-bp/The annual awards ceremony is supposed to recognise those who have helped advance the fight for LGBTQ rights, but with sponsorship from some of world’s largest fossil fuel companies and funders producers, campaigners are imploring people to boycott the event.  Lycett was nominated for his protest of “shredding” £10,000 in an attempt to persuade David Beckham to withdraw his ambassadorship for the Qatar World Cup, but has confirmed to the Guardian that he will not participate in the event....Wed, 21 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/environment/heres-why-british-lgbt-awards-has-dropped-ties-with-fossil-fuel-giants-shell-and-bp/https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/kieran-yates-all-the-houses-ive-ever-lived-in-20-different-houses-by-the-age-of-25/And the sad reality is that experiences like hers (and mine and quite probably yours) are becoming increasingly normalised. This is because “we don’t have good long-term solutions to think about how we live today,” says Yates.   “When I was in my 20s going through housemate auditions and learning close up how the internet plays such a role in the optimised idea of what a housemate is, I felt that was completely normal,” she explains.  “And when I lived in a mouldy room, I thought that was...Thu, 27 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/kieran-yates-all-the-houses-ive-ever-lived-in-20-different-houses-by-the-age-of-25/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/harry-specters-inside-the-chocolate-factory-run-by-young-autistic-people/Around 700,000 people in the UK have been diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum, however this is a largely misunderstood and undiagnosed neurodiversity. Autistic people are the least likely to be in work of any other disabled group, according to research from the Office for National Statistics. Just one in five are in employment, compared to around half of people with disabilities overall. So the Shahs decided they would need to create their own workplace where A...Fri, 14 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/harry-specters-inside-the-chocolate-factory-run-by-young-autistic-people/https://www.bigissue.com/culture/music/paris-palomas-labour-the-story-behind-the-viral-soundtrack-to-female-rage/Paloma sat down exclusively with The Big Issue to explain what inspired her viral hit. “Women are just doing more and more, and men are not doing any more than they’ve ever done,” she says.Fri, 24 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bigissue.com/culture/music/paris-palomas-labour-the-story-behind-the-viral-soundtrack-to-female-rage/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/5-reasons-the-four-day-working-week-is-the-future/Calling the trial a “major breakthrough moment”, Joe Ryle, the director of the 4 Day Week Campaign, said: “Across a wide variety of sectors, wellbeing has improved dramatically for staff; and business productivity has either been maintained or improved in nearly every case.” “Surely the time has now come to begin rolling it out across the country”, he added. Is the four-day week a solution to some of the problems gripping Britain today? Here’s some of the findings from the biggest ever fo...Tue, 21 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/5-reasons-the-four-day-working-week-is-the-future/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/britain-on-uk-strike-have-we-reached-boiling-point/The last ten days have seen hundreds of thousands of people walk out of workplaces across Britain. On Wednesday February 1, an estimated 500,000 people took a stand demanding better pay and conditions. At what could be the most northerly strike in Britain, search and rescue coastguards on Shetland staged a windswept two-person picket. The award for the longest picket-line, if someone was measuring, might go to staff at the University of Cambridge, lined up outside the Department of Earth Sciences with a four-metre banner reading “the longer the picket… the shorter the strike”.Sat, 11 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/britain-on-uk-strike-have-we-reached-boiling-point/https://www.bigissue.com/news/politics/what-the-mini-budget-the-growth-plan-means-for-you/Liz Truss’ new government has announced an emergency mini-budget to tackle the rising cost of living crisis. Presented as part of new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s “The Growth Plan”, the duo are aiming to boost the economy by cutting taxes. This is an ideological shift in how the government runs the country’s economy, one that Kwarteng was keen to highlight, from the spending of the Johnson years, towards a model of cutting taxes and boosting the rich that many have said is akin to the Thatcher and Reagan years of so-called trickle-down economics.Fri, 23 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/politics/what-the-mini-budget-the-growth-plan-means-for-you/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/amazon-unofficial-wildcat-strikes-enter-second-week-as-uk-workers-protest-over-pay/The union has this week submitted a formal pay claim to Amazon seeking a £15 an hour minimum wage for all employees at its UK warehouses, though the company is not legally obligated to respond. A sit-in at the Bristol warehouse restarted again on Wednesday when around 150 employees went to the canteen instead of their posts. The sit-in continued into Thursday.  Speaking to the Big Issue, one employee said: “We got paid for the protests last week, but we were told we...Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/amazon-unofficial-wildcat-strikes-enter-second-week-as-uk-workers-protest-over-pay/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/dwp-staff-forced-to-claim-benefits-themselves-universal-credit/“How is someone working full time, a single person with no dependents, having to claim universal credit? Their income should suffice.” “A lot of people claiming universal credit won’t think that people on the other end of the phone might be claiming it. They added: “There’s an irony in that I’m dishing out the benefit that I’m claiming.” Civil servants’ pay rises were capped at 3 per cent this year, with most receiving a 2 per cent raise, despite surging inflatio...Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/dwp-staff-forced-to-claim-benefits-themselves-universal-credit/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/hundreds-of-amazon-warehouse-workers-stage-wildcat-strikes-over-pathetic-pay-rise/Workers at Amazon warehouses across the UK have downed tools over a “pathetic” pay rise. The ‘wildcat’ or unofficial strikes were started by workers at the Tilbury warehouse on Wednesday night, and have now spread across the UK to Amazon distribution warehouses in Bristol, Staffordshire and Coventry.  Some 300 staff at the warehouse in Avonmouth, near Bristol, stopped work for a second time on Friday in response to the 3 per cent pay rise, equating to an extra 35p an hour....Fri, 05 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/hundreds-of-amazon-warehouse-workers-stage-wildcat-strikes-over-pathetic-pay-rise/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/amazon-warehouse-workers-down-tools-protest-pay-rise/A union representative has estimated around 800 workers over two shifts “downed tools in the depot” on Wednesday evening. The Big Issue has been told that the majority returned to their posts in the afternoon with around 150 continuing the protest. An employee at the Amazon Tilbury warehouse told the Big Issue that management “told them if they don’t go back to work, they’re not going to be paid”.Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/amazon-warehouse-workers-down-tools-protest-pay-rise/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/bt-workers-label-ceo-philip-jansen-food-bank-phil/Ward confirmed the union would be prepared to take further strike action if BT fails to offer a better deal. He also emphasised the financial toll strike action had on workers, saying the CWU will “come up with other ways to pile on the pressure on BT.” BT has put its broadband and telecoms prices up by around 13 per cent, adding £53 a year to the cost of a BT Fibre Essential deal.  Labour MP Kate Osborne joined the picket line in central London to “stand shoulder to shoulder with workers...Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/bt-workers-label-ceo-philip-jansen-food-bank-phil/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/what-its-like-to-be-an-ice-cream-man-on-the-hottest-day-ever-recorded/Even the card machine is flashing a yellow warning sign, a plea that it’s getting too hot.  There are usually four or five ice cream vans in what’s known as The People’s Park but many have stayed at home either for their own health or because the lack of customers means there’s little incentive to the less industrious ice cream seller.   Eddie’s father, patriarch of the Softee Bros, emigrated from Cyprus in the early 1960s to set up an ice cream push cart in Trafalgar Square, so the story...Wed, 20 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/what-its-like-to-be-an-ice-cream-man-on-the-hottest-day-ever-recorded/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/bt-food-bank-community-pantry-own-staff/BT imposed a flat rate pay rise of £1,500 for every employee in April, which the company says was an 8 per cent pay rise for those on the lowest pay.  The minimum wage went up on April 1, meaning that for those on the lowest pay, “minimum wage was catching up with them,” said the employee. Inflation has hit 9.1 per cent, with prices rising at the fastest rate in 40 years, and wages are struggling to keep up.   Speaking at the cost of living rally in London attended by trade unions from...Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/bt-food-bank-community-pantry-own-staff/https://www.bigissue.com/news/politics/sue-gray-report-cleaners-security-staff-boris-johnson/“To the custodians and staff, it now turns out, who were wrongly and badly treated, I think it’s repugnant that that happened,” he said. Tuesday’s BBC Panorama with Laura Kuenssberg also found that a Downing Street security guard was mocked for attempting to break up one of the gatherings. An insider said: “I remember when a custodian tried to stop it all and he was just shaking his head in this party, being like, ‘This shouldn’t be happening.’ “People made fun o...Wed, 25 May 2022 00:00:00 +0100https://www.bigissue.com/news/politics/sue-gray-report-cleaners-security-staff-boris-johnson/https://www.bigissue.com/news/the-government-knew-of-po-ferries-mass-sackings-the-day-before-but-didnt-tell-anyone/The government knew of P&O Ferries’ plan to fire its entire 800 person crew with no notice and replace them with contractors but “didn’t tell anyone”, a union boss has revealed. The company sacked the crew via a pre-recorded video message on Thursday, with staff told their contracts would be terminated with immediate effect. Staff say they did not receive anything in writing. Union RMT is holding a series of protests in the ports of Dover, Hull and Liverpool on Friday. It has called the mo...Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bigissue.com/news/the-government-knew-of-po-ferries-mass-sackings-the-day-before-but-didnt-tell-anyone/https://www.bigissue.com/news/activism/the-twitter-bot-creators-who-called-out-the-hypocrisy-of-companies-international-womens-day-posts/These tweeks took it from “spam-bot” to “valuable resource” and to say it was welcomed would be modest. Mid-morning retweets from Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr and writer Caitlin Moran helped to bolster momentum, and by the end of the day over 200,000 followers were eagerly awaiting which company would be next.  Yet, for companies so eager to show their commitment to female empowerment, the sharing of this publicly available information wasn’t always gladly received.  “We’ve had a...Fri, 11 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bigissue.com/news/activism/the-twitter-bot-creators-who-called-out-the-hypocrisy-of-companies-international-womens-day-posts/https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/the-truth-about-the-great-resignation/Whether it’s ill health or the sight of retirement on the horizon, more and more people are dropping out of work without the intention of returning. It’s hard to tell how many of these people felt that retiring early was their only option – faced with more youthful competition or having to retrain – or whether it was in pursuit of a more sedate pace of life, but a seismic change in our attitudes to work has occurred.Fri, 21 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/the-truth-about-the-great-resignation/