4/1/2024

The Big Issue

The Big Issue - A Hand Up, Not a Hand Out

The Big Issue10 min readPoverty & Homelessness
The Dispatch
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has the capacity to do a “fantastic job” under a Labour government, according to the chair of the work and pensions select committee. Sir Stephen Timms, Labour MP for East Ham, said: “I don’t think we should
The Big Issue3 min read
Winners With Plenty To Smile About
Olivia Colman has bagged another award. This time, though, it’s not for playing a promiscuous monarch or a dogged detective. Her voice can be heard while watching Change the Ending, a heart-rending animation for Alzheimer’s Research UK that’s just ta
The Big Issue1 min read
The Big Issue
FOUNDERS John Bird and Gordon Roddick GROUP CHAIR Nigel Kershaw GROUP CEO Paul Cheal MANAGING DIRECTOR Russell Blackman EDITORIAL & PRODUCTIONEditor Paul McNameeArt director Mark NeilDeputy editor Steven MacKenzieDigital editor Ryan ButcherDeputy dig
The Big Issue3 min read
Editor’s Letter
There is a quiet absurd nobility to the Sanday Easter egg story. To recap, there are 500 people living on Sanday. It’s up there in the Orkney islands, minding its own business, full of beaches and bronze age remnants and Norse names, as close to Norw
The Big Issue4 min read
Bird’s Words
The impact of loneliness on health is supposedly equivalent to 13 cigarettes a day. It’s certainly one of the most pernicious destroyers of life, and it’s apparently on the increase. Yet often it is not about not having people around you, but about w
The Big Issue4 min read
Letters
The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue I am writing to you on behalf of the residents of Clarion shared ownership, The Courtyard, Circus Street, Brighton
The Big Issue7 min read
‘A Town Or A City Without Art And Culture Is Like A Room Without Windows. No Light Gets In’
This Town is the ambitious new drama from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. It features social unrest, gangs, violence, conflict, and a whole lot of music. The BBC One series is set in Coventry and Birmingham in the early 1980s – but it is not ha
The Big Issue2 min readDiscrimination & Race Relations
Arts Funding Cuts Make Us All Poorer
Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Manchester The arts are in crisis. Every week, sometimes every day, we see a new story of cuts or closures. The crisis threatens the long-term health of the creative industries. It al
The Big Issue9 min read
Mhairi Black talks to Big Issue
The last decade of Mhairi Black’s life tells a story of the last decade of UK politics. The activist in her was awakened during campaigning for the independence referendum in 2014; the SNP may have lost the vote but they went on to win 56 out of 59 S
The Big Issue2 min readPolitical Ideologies
The Parliament Of Change
However Britain votes, the next parliament is going to look very different. Some 98 MPs – including more than 60 Conservatives – already intend to stand down at the next general election. Former prime minister Theresa May, ex-deputy prime minister Do
The Big Issue3 min read
‘With Poor Sight You Can Feel Intensely Vulnerable’
“This is my happy place,” says Big Issue vendor Jack Osborne-Richardson, sitting on a bench looking out over Bristol’s Berkeley Square, a small Georgian park that overlooks the city. Jack sells The Big Issue on nearby Park Street and returns to his f
The Big Issue6 min read
Nish Kumar
If you met me at 16, you’d be able to pretty quickly work out what I’d be like at 38. I had started being involved in the school debating society. James Acaster says I should always tell people that a lot of what I did back then was make funny debati
The Big Issue1 min read
Tulips
A colourful vision of spring tulips in bloom to denote the turning of the season, this painting by Algerian-French artist Oubaiche was submitted via the 240Project, an activity centre in London supporting vulnerable adults. “I have been drawing since
The Big Issue3 min read
Books
The best fiction can immerse you in places, times and mindsets that you never thought you would be interested in. This week’s two books do that wonderfully in completely different ways. First up is Clear by Carys Davies. At only 150 pages long, it’s
The Big Issue3 min read
Where Are All The Rural Voices Of English Fiction?
In the early days of the novel, English writers were known for their tales of the countryside. Brontë’s moors, Hardy’s chalk downs, the rolling fields of DH Lawrence’s Norfolk, and Austen’s great estates. Even today, American films use an establishin
The Big Issue3 min read
Film
Last year was the deadliest ever for migrants, with almost 8,600 people dying worldwide. At least 3,129 people were lost crossing the Mediterranean, according to the United Nations’ International Organisation for Migration. As broken-record Rishi Sun
The Big Issue5 min read
Royal Flushed
When Newsnight suddenly announced they had an exclusive, hour-long interview with Prince Andrew to discuss his relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in November 2019, the country was gripped. An hour of unfiltered television. People
The Big Issue3 min read
Music
A couple of years ago I wrote despairingly in this column about out-of-control gig ticket pricing in the post-Brexit/Covid-19/sky-high inflation era. One of the saddest things about it, I surmised, is that over time it will shut out large sections of
The Big Issue2 min read
Puzzles
1.Father puts worker in charge when desperate (7)8. Girl has a long drink, one hears (7)9. Tries an alternative that is not as nice (7)10. It may be for each new hasp (7)11. 17 Down’s prepared a pasta dish (7)12. Stations through which no trains go (
The Big Issue3 min read
My Pitch International
Last summer, Californian street paper Street Spirit ceased production. For 28 years it had printed a monthly publication sold by between 60 and 100 vendors in the Berkeley and Oakland area, using a similar model to Big Issue. Vendors would buy copies

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