Table of contents for 2/3/2025 in The Big Issue

Aneysha Minocha Quantaco It’s an honour to have been chosen as one of the Big Issue’s Top 100 Changemakers for the work of my team at Quantaco – including Hugo Seixas, Edison Konesha and Ankita Patil AMEI – on accelerating and simplifying the decarbonising of commercial and public sector property portfolios. Our climate emergency is real and we need to hurry up with reducing our carbon emissions. Mikkel Juel Iversen Under One Sky A beyond Big thank you for making me part of your Top 10 Changemakers within Housing and Homelessness. This morning I went to get a copy from friend, collaborator and Big Issue seller André Rostant and was lucky Big Issue sales co-ordinator Allan was there too. Jack Murley LGBT Sport Podcast This is one of those things…

Only by the creation of truly public housing are we going to end the tyranny of people living in private rented accommodation. Private rented accommodation suits the interests of either the landlord or the tenant. We have just been through – and with the new Renters’ Rights Bill maybe now can get out of – a landlord-favouring period. It would seem that parliament is now about to decide whether we move into a tenant-favouring period. And yes, the signs are it’s now the turn of the tenants. When landlords are in favour then many more landlords rent. When landlords feel threatened, whether the threats are perceived or real, they have in the past cashed in their chips and sold. And moved out of landlordism. The vulnerability of the tenant, with…

Originally from Malaysia, Sohanpal left a post-9/11 United States for the UK and built a successful career. But nearly 20 years later, he found himself at the heart of the Home Office’s “hostile environment” tactics against asylum seekers and was pushed into homelessness. His artworks and writings reflect some of his experiences. They have featured in books including The Book of Homelessness – the first graphic novel created by homeless people. He is a regular contributor to Big Issue Street Art. Sohanpal’s latest artwork is a colourful, tactile abstract oil painting created during a workshop at the recent One Roof Festival of homeless art in London. “I was trying out different styles,” says Sohanpal. See more of Dave’s artwork at: instagram.com/davesohanpal1 The work on this page is created by people…

When you break down the logistics of Saturday Night Live – the US comedy showcase that recently began its record-breaking 50th season – it is a miracle that it gets made at all. Each week a celebrity host mucks in for a range of hastily written topical skits and parodies, interspersed with regular segments, pre-filmed sketches and performances from a musical guest. The resulting 90-minute jamboree is then broadcast late and live from NBC’s studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza with the occasional script flubs and technical snafus all part of the package. It is apparently a hoot for everyone involved, although viewed from the UK in the cold light of day the garishly lit clips suggest that you probably have to be there to fully appreciate the experience. Are…

HOUSING One million homes are lying empty. Here’s how we can fill them By Liam Geraghty Big Issue Deputy Digital Editor Labour has been urged to bring empty properties back into use as part of the government’s bid to build 1.5 million homes while in power. Statistics show a million homes are lying empty in England. Action on Empty Homes analysed government council tax data released towards the end of 2024 and found the total number of empty and second homes lying vacant was 998,784. That’s around one in every 25 properties across a country in the grip of a housing crisis. Rebecca Moore, director of Action on Empty Homes, said: “Every year we see more homeless families and more homes standing empty; this is why a new government needs…

All of our Changemakers were nominated by Big Issue readers – including new Big Issue Ambassador, actor Rose Williams. When the 2025 cohort was announced, Williams went to visit her nominee and invited us along. Francklin Evagle, founder of Katakata in Brixton, and his team offered us the warmest of welcomes. “I’m here to introduce Big Issue in person to the amazing Francklin Evagle, who is the founder of this amazing, beautiful space, Katakata – which is a cafe, a community hub, and becomes a food bank once a week,” Williams said. “There’s open mic nights, poetry nights, music nights. It’s a very non-judgmental, inclusive space which serves healthy, gluten-free crepes, juices, teas. I love it.” It’s easy to see why. Katakata is a place of calmness, beauty and incredible…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Job guarantee John Bird writes [Issue 1645, 9-15 December]: “The biggest problem is the lack of central coordination of government, public and charity coming together to kick a hole in preventing homelessness and the poverty it comes from. It’s still all scattergun and will remain so until the government abandons its inherited responses to poverty that have yet to work.” That’s a true statement but leaves open the question of what to do after abandoning inherited responses. What to do is to establish a job guarantee. Countries like England, which issue currencies not tied to gold and with floating exchange rates can create as much of that money as they want,…

Before he was 30, artist Stuart Semple was a millionaire, hailed as “the Basquiat of the Noughties” by the FT and collected by the likes of Lady Gaga and Debbie Harry. In 2007, a solo exhibition saw sales of $1 million within five minutes of opening, but a year later due to the financial crash Semple lost his studio and his home. He would sneak into an empty building to sleep on a sofa with his partner and three-month-old child. This dark place inspired HappyCloud – hundreds of smiling faces made of soap and helium, released from the Tate Modern to float across the Thames towards the financial district. The work revitalised his passion for art. He now trains art school graduates in his current studio and realised that his…

Many of us spend our online lives striving for perfection, or at least the illusion of it. For over a decade now social media has allowed us to curate the way we are perceived online. We can present a perfect meal, outfit, book stack and even declare our political ideals. However, in the world of literature few dare to thoroughly integrate technology into the novel, leaving glimpses of the modern world as inserted text messages or the rapidly growing cliche of the scrolling blue-lit zombie. Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico manages do the unthinkable: transport that bittersweet addiction from the screen to the page. Latronico’s prose is detached from the European couple at the centre of Perfection in a way that evokes the dead-eyed curiosity we reserve for the strangers whose…

James O'Brien is adamant he has never felt compelled to track down his birth mother. “Listen, if you’re sceptical you’re in good company,” the broadcaster says, batting off my questions about whether he ever wanted to find the Irish woman who gave him up for adoption as a teenager in 1972. “My therapist spent ages not believing that I didn’t have any impulses whatsoever to discover my biological family.” O’Brien, who is best known for his takedowns of politicians on his LBC radio show, was adopted at 28 days old by his mother Joan and father Jim, whom he calls the “best mum and dad in the world”. He and his sister always knew they were adopted, so they never had a “moment of revelation” experienced by others who find…

As a TV producer and podcast host, I’ve been working on topical news formats for the last 15 years. Looking back, it can be hard to comprehend how much the headlines and the way we absorb them have changed. “He’s put a tax on pasties, he’s crazy.” It’s March 2012 and for a millisecond there’s silence in the office of the topical news show we’re making; the nano-lull before the storm after which gleeful hell breaks loose on one of the most unlikely political stories of the year. For the next few heady weeks George Osborne’s Pasty Tax dominates the news cycle. To add to our glee, the next day, leader of the opposition Ed Miliband walks into a Greggs and buys eight sausage rolls to make a point. What…

PAULA LANGA, 21 Things are going all right on my pitch. Christmas went a lot better this year, selling more magazines. But now is OK for me and I make good money for me and my kids. When Christmas time has gone, it gets a little bit quiet but it’s all right. I have some regular customers I would say, and some people just come up to me and ask to buy the magazine too. I like to speak with people while I am selling the magazine. And it is better for me because I have two young children. Sometimes when I need to go home if they are sick I can leave to go home, I can stay as much time as I want or need. Obviously, if it…

In 2015, then-chancellor George Osborne boasted that inflation had fallen to zero for the first time on record in Britain. Prices had stayed the same on average in a year, giving people the perception that they would feel richer. “Prices are frozen and as the recovery from Labour’s Great Recession strengthens, their economic argument has literally come to nought,” he tweeted, mocking the opposition party for suggesting that the UK was facing a cost of living crisis. You would be forgiven for scoffing after a few years of a cost of living crisis which saw prices rise at speeds not seen in decades. But the reality is such low inflation is “actually quite a bad thing,” economists have told Big Issue. A 0% inflation rate tends to be a “sign…

Thousands of people queued in Australia last week to smell a flower. The corpse flower, which blooms once every few years, but for only around 24 hours, opened at Sydney Botanic Gardens. There have been similar flowering events in the UK. Kew has a corpse flower, but it rarely commands the same volume of interest. The Amorphophallus titanum, (which means giant misshapen penis – everyone’s a critic, I suppose) hooked in over 15,000 curious punters. The horticulturists in Sydney compared the volume of focus to the 2000 Olympics in the city. The Australians, with a typical Aussie love of keeping it punchy, called the flower Putricia (putrid Patricia – not clear why they named it Patricia initially). It can grow to around 10 feet, and smells, among other things, like…

Dwayne Fields has a new job, but he’s not feeling any pressure. The explorer was appointed UK Chief Scout in September 2024, succeeding TV adventurer Bear Grylls, who calls him “an inspiration”. Most people would find becoming a mentor to nearly half a million young people – Scouts is the biggest youth organisation in the UK – daunting, but not Fields, who has experienced more than his fair share of testing times. “I don’t feel the pressure,” he says. “I have trust and I have a lot of support. I will do absolutely everything I can to live up to all that the role requires, in terms of being a role model.” Role models are vitally important for young people. Austerity-driven cuts to local authority budgets have left youth clubs…

At 16 I was a ska boy and the music and style have stayed in my blood. I loved The Specials, The Selecter, Bad Manners, Madness. I had my Docs, sta-press trousers, a waffle cardigan and a Fred Perry. This was the time I felt I had an identity as a young man – ska created this big national gang. It also allowed fellas to really dance. If you went down the disco, you weren’t cool as a ska boy if you didn’t know how to dance. We moved around a lot when I was a kid. But music and culture always surrounded us. In Peckham, West Indian culture was everywhere – we would always have rice and peas with our neighbours. There is so much soul in south-east London.…

I am pretty much always on tour. It’s not the kind of tour with a big poster and a load of dates from Penzance to Arbroath, it is far more chaotic than that. It is made up of saying yes to almost anyone who gets in contact with me and says, “Hey, fancy a gig in my town?” Some places are confused as to why you are there. This was the reaction when I said I would be performing in Llanelli with the musician Rachel Taylor-Beales. Some people even said, “I wouldn’t bother, no one will come.” Llanelli is struggling. The main increase in sales is in plywood to board up the shop windows. There is breathable sadness and anger in the atmosphere. It is one of those towns that…