The Big Issue

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

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 Alastair ReidCu
The Big Issue3 min read
Editor’s Letter
Clearly there is one universal talking point. If you thought it was the weather or the health service or even the diminishing size of Mars bars, think again. It’s potholes. The great modern curse. They are everywhere. Literally. To support this thesi
The Big Issue3 min readInternational Relations
UK Aid Should Be Targeting The Root Causes Of Displacement, Instead It’s Failing The Marginalised
At the end of last month, government figures revealed that UK aid to both Afghanistan and Pakistan is to be cut by 53 per cent, from £304.4 million to £141.9m, alongside major cuts to all regions, including East Africa which is in the midst of a four
The Big Issue9 min read
The Dispatch
A council has pledged to support the innovative BillyChip scheme to help people experiencing homelessness after The Big Issue revealed a councillor had quit the Conservative Party in protest over their refusal to help. Gloucester city councillor Bren
The Big Issue4 min read
Bird’s Words
If I have learned something since I went into Parliament and spent more time reflecting on the nature of government it is the abject waste there is, and the muddle of things. In some strange way I have concluded that I have never really left behind t
The Big Issue3 min readPoverty & Homelessness
Letters
The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Many years ago, Financial Times journalists published a series of articles highlighting how the owners of Thames Wa
The Big Issue6 min read
Jon Richardson
I was a very, very anxious 16-year-old. About school, my body, getting thrown out of pubs, everything really. Sixteen is the age that your peers are starting to go out and I was delaying that as much as possible. My mum did quite a lot to try to get
The Big Issue8 min read
‘It’s Important To Remind People Of Positive Refugee Stories. Music Is A Great Way To Turn People On’
One revolutionised dance music while Britpop – even Britain itself – was taking on the world at the end of the last century; the other is a record-breaking global superstar. They have both come a long, long way, but now Norman ‘Fatboy Slim’ Cook, 59,
The Big Issue6 min read
Books
Max Porter, writer-cum-saint of the experimental novella, has crafted a spectacular fourth novel, Shy. The narrative constellates around an evening in the life of Shy, a white British teen, deposited at Last Chance, a home for young men deemed too di
The Big Issue1 min read
Grim Tale
This was once considered a fairy tale forest. Spa towns dot the region, where tourists could ride on the scenic narrow gauge railway. Maybe the Harz forest, in the highlands of central Germany, still is a place of fairy tales, but the dark, twisted k
The Big Issue1 min read
Street Art
Featuring work by a stellar line-up of approximately 100 artists from around the world including Loie Hollowell, Lorna Robertson and Mahesh Baliga, Art on a Postcard is holding a special guest auction to raise money for War Child UK. Bidding starts a
The Big Issue3 min read
Film
At the height of the pandemic, it felt like screens were the only way to reach out beyond our bubbles. Hunched over a glowing tablet or phone was where many of us worked, shopped and tried – with varying degrees of success – to distract ourselves. Fo
The Big Issue3 min read
The New Big 5 Project ‘Shooting With A Camera, Not A Gun’
The ‘Big 5’ is an old term used by colonial-era hunters in Africa for the most prized and dangerous animals to kill: elephant, rhino, leopard, Cape buffalo and lion. The idea of killing animals for fun has always seemed outdated and cruel to me. Wild
The Big Issue3 min read
On Loss
How do you explain death to a dog? Coming back from the hospital without my dad, there was something achingly sad at seeing his dog’s expectation that he would be with us too. She slept next to my dad’s bed and always stayed by his side. This morning
The Big Issue3 min read
Music
About halfway through his new memoir, Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances, Eddie Piller recalls a report card he received from his headmaster at age 13. “If he continues like this, I fear Edward will waste his not inconsiderable talents…” it r
The Big Issue2 min read
Puzzles
1. Where our burden might be placed? (4)4. Maturer sort of mistake (7)8. Dangerous opponent may not be attractive to serve (4,8)9. Unqualified sailor therefore has a musical instrument (8)10. Plant doctor next to steamship (4)12. Counter work by mode
The Big Issue3 min read
My Pitch
NEIL STOUT, 59 I started selling The Big Issue in Tavistock about five years ago and the people here are really nice, very kind and very supportive. That’s my only kind of hook in society at the moment, I’ve kind of been displaced from everything el
The Big Issue5 min read
Earth Day 2023 Special Edition
Earth Day, April 22, has been marked globally for over 50 years. Born initially out of a desire by activists in the US to make environmental awareness a political issue, it has grown to become a key date worldwide. Such is its importance that it was
The Big Issue3 min read
Climate Policy
With a fanfare of publicity, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero, Grant Shapps, unveiled the government’s revised strategy for tackling climate change on March 30. The raft of policies and thousands of pages of documents set out g
The Big Issue3 min read
Energy
According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2020, renewables accounted for 43.8 per cent of the electricity generation mix in the UK, a significant increase from 5.8 per cent in 2005. Still, the UK lags behind. In 2020, renewable
The Big Issue4 min read
Climate Refugees
Halima fled Somalia to a refugee camp in Kenya after years of drought killed her livestock. A single mother of seven children, she felt that she and her family had to leave to survive when there was no more food or water. Halima and her children are
The Big Issue2 min read
Are We Doomed?
A December 2021 report in The Lancet found more than half of the 10,000 people surveyed aged between 16 and 25 globally agree that “humanity is doomed”. Yet Dr Chris Brierley, a climate scientist at UCL, says it isn’t true. “We’re not doomed,” he tol
The Big Issue3 min read
Water Pollution
New data shows water companies released sewage into the environment more than 300,000 times in 2022, averaging more than 824 times a day. While the total is a decrease on 2021, the volume recorded by “event duration monitoring” (EDM) systems is still
The Big Issue4 min read
Food
On Christmas Eve 1968, William Anders took what has been described as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”. Anders was aboard Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to leave the Earth’s orbit. He and his crewmen had spent several
The Big Issue4 min read
Fashion And Shopping
Shoppers are ravenous for more: more clothes, more shoes, more bags, more things. Sensing their weakness and hungry for profits, the fast fashion industry will stop at nothing to keep up. And so, underpaid and often exploited workers churn out billio
The Big Issue1 min read
Fast Fashion Facts
Since the year 2000 clothing production has doubled – from 100 billion to 200 billion items per year. Over that same period, the number of times an item is worn has decreased by 36% On average, we wear 20% of the clothes we own 80% of the time Th
The Big Issue4 min read
Human Composting
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But what’s the most efficient way to return to that state after our demise? While three quarters of people in the UK who face the final curtain get cremated, the environmental impact is immense. Some are now considering

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