Table of contents for 02/09/2026 in The Big Issue

→ Lalith Ekanayake was in for a surprise spot of monkey business in India. The Sri Lankan wildlife photographer was exploring the city of Valparai, Western Ghats, when he came face-to face with a lion-tailed macaque and her offspring racing along a path. They are one of the most endangered species of macaques in the world. The picture, called Bond in Motion, has Ekanayake shortlisted for the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year Nuveen People’s Choice Award 2026. Votes are open until 18 March at 2pm. nhm.ac.uk…

GET IN TOUCH The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissueuk @bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK thebigissue ISSUE 1703 Vertical dramas are about as much as our current attention spans can… oh, cats and squirrels! @canuckdogdad.bsky.social MY WORLD AS I FIND IT Send us your image, or photo you’ve captured, of Britain today with a brief description. On socials or email letters@bigissue.com RESPONSES TO Sewage in London’s River Roding [Issue 1702, 26 January–01 February 2026] ↓ Local hero that is Paul Powlesland! Such an inspirational man and great advocate for the River Roding! Sarah_reid_garden_design, Instagram Absolutely disgraceful. I also can’t help but see sanitary products in sewage and wish people were better educated and more careful with their waste too. Thank you for your excellent journalism. Babbittybabbitt,…

→ Among the fine presents I was given for my 80th birthday were a great notebook of lightweight blue paper that fitted in my pocket, a book of the works of Constable from the retiring editor of this illustrious publication, a set of handkerchiefs with my initials sewn on from the first person I approached when I was given the go-ahead to start Big Issue, a large cup from my middle daughter with the words “The world’s greatest dad”, etc, etc. I was also given the 1942 Beveridge Report from the man who turned Big Issue Invest from idea into reality. You could say I was spoiled rotten with affection, wine, kisses and embraces, which for an 80-year-old was greatly appreciated. Fortunately no item of clothing was offered, although I…

→ Poverty? What poverty? That’s just woke nonsense. Have another drink! Last week Reform came up with one of their most remarkable ideas yet. Fund the cutting of the price of a pint by reinstating the two-child benefits cap. What’s wrong with you? Why wouldn’t you want that! You’ll get 5p off the price of a pint if landlords pass on the duty saving. 5p! And by the way, Reform are also planning to scrap Labour plans to tighten the amount of alcohol you can consume before driving. And why wouldn’t they? Pints are cheaper! Drive on. The opposition to it was clear. Voices in the public policy sphere, like those in the IPPR and Joseph Rowntree Foundation, talked about dragging children into poverty, and about how the idea was…

At 16, I was just obsessed with engines and motorbikes. That’s all. I used to have an AR50 Kawasaki moped when I was 16. It’s knackered, but I’ve still got it and I’m going to do it up. My whole life revolved around making that motorbike go faster. And it wasn’t 50cc, which was all we were allowed at 16. I made it 80cc then I got a big bore kit for it and made it 101cc. I just wanted to understand how a two-stroke engine worked and make it go faster. The way I was brought up was work, work, work. My mum and my dad just worked all the time. It was never forced on us that you will work, work, work, but that’s all we had ever…

Within the mundane and the functional lies a powerful and profound beauty. Due to their ubiquity, we view road signs as little more than a form of unremarkable shorthand telling us something, but not thinking of how it tells us this. Road works ahead. Reduce speed now. No entry. Yet like Harry Beck’s elegant designs for the London Underground – which when they first appeared, astonishingly, were seen as too radical – road signage compresses a great deal of information into tightly structured symbols that we take for granted. Such is their subconscious power that we do not treat them as anything more than instructional, yet they deserve greater scrutiny and applause as exceptional pieces of design and draftsmanship. Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir are arguably two of the most-seen…

During his downtime while recording episodes of Play School, Johnny Ball would sometimes cheerfully drop-kick Humpty through the round window. That’s just one of the many vivid details contained within Richard Marson’s Box of Delights: The Story of BBC Children’s Television 1967-1997, which serves as both a celebration of and elegy for a lost epoch of creativity pioneered by a colourful gang of mavericks, eccentrics and ideologically dedicated professionals. A former editor-in-chief of Blue Peter, Marson has authored several excellent books about the ‘golden age’ of British TV, but this may be his magnum opus. It isn’t a nostalgic list-based reference tome – not that there’s anything wrong with those – it’s a meticulously researched, narrative-led piece of history examining the politics and culture of the BBC at a time…

We know Donald Trump thinks of himself as a cinéaste. His method of repeatedly consuming Jean-Claude Van Damme’s gaudy 1988 thump-’em-up Bloodsport by fast-forwarding through the non-fighting scenes – first reported in a 1997 New Yorker profile – has long been viewed as a key to unlocking his scattershot pathology. The current US president also capped off the turbulent year of 2025 by demanding that the Rush Hour franchise be rebooted. Did fellow controversial head of state Saddam Hussein have a strong opinion on Jackie Chan chalk-and-cheese buddy comedies? We’ll never know. But one unexpected cultural footnote in the late Iraqi president’s bloodthirsty history is that in the early 1980s he viewed cinema as a potentially useful propaganda tool. Oliver Reed was hired to star in Clash of Loyalties, an…

I assume that, at 18, my daughter sees me as she might see a cracked iPhone that needs updating: occasionally useful, a bit scruffy looking, prone to making weird noises, and always interrupting her with unnecessary notifications. Not slick or exciting or anything you’d show off to your friends. Just there. To be clear, my daughter is very kind to me. We get on well. She hardly ever rolls her eyes when I walk into a room. The sense that I might be a slightly ridiculous pity-figure exists almost entirely in my own head. She’s got a busy and interesting life: I just want to be likeable enough for her to put the odd hour aside sometimes. I don’t want to become one of those dads who answers the phone…

The government is right to want teachers to tackle misogyny before it turns into violence. Training staff to spot harmful attitudes, challenge online radicalisation and teach consent – outlined in its recently published Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy – is necessary and overdue. But prevention in classrooms will fail if it is not matched by serious investment in mental health support for the women and girls already living with the consequences of abuse. Because domestic abuse in Britain today is not only widespread, it is a leading driver of psychological trauma and a direct pathway into poverty, housing insecurity and homelessness for countless women. Much of this homelessness is hidden. Survivors are not always sleeping on the streets; they are sofa surfing, trapped in unsafe temporary accommodation, returning…

→ Mark Blamire was working for design agency Stylorouge in 1995. Then 26, he had never made a film poster before. There was a film coming out the next year based on a book. Left to right: Robert Carlyle as Begbie, two fingers up and cig in mouth; Kelly Macdonald as Diane, teeth bared; Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy, gun fingers to the camera; Ewen Bremner as Spud, bent over and light bright in the sunglasses; Ewan McGregor as Renton, buzzcut, tight T-shirt and soaking wet. With three colours – black, white and bright orange – and the Helvetica typeface, Trainspotting was announced to the world. “It was the first film poster I’d ever designed, so I wasn’t bogged down with cliches or visual metaphors. I think that’s why…

Make peace! Our popular Kids Cover Competition is back! If you’re a talented young artist – or know of any schools or youth groups who’d like to be involved, spread the word! This year’s theme is PEACE. So it’s time to make peace. What does it mean to you? It could be spreading a little love, or some happy animals playing together instead of preying on each other. The world looking harmonious; something funny about peace, love and understanding. Surprise us! The winning cover will be on sale across Britain from Monday 30 March, in time for Easter. How to enter: To get involved, look out your pens, pencils, paints or graphic design apps and create a picture that will catch everyone’s attention, help our vendors sell more copies, and…

1 Maurice by EM Forster Forster wrote Maurice, a sensitive tale of the relationship between an upper-class, Oxbridgeeducated man and a young gamekeeper, in 1913-14, but it wasn’t published until 1971, after his death. 2 The Price of Salt by Claire Morgan Patricia Highsmith – author of The Talented Mr Ripley – published this lesbian romance in 1952, against the backdrop of a mini boom of lesbian pulp fiction in that period. It was later republished as Carol, under Highsmith’s own name. 3 Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson It is 41 years since Winterson published this wry and moving semi-autobiographical story of the young Jeanette navigating the evangelical world of her Accrington childhood and her newly discovered lesbianism. 4 The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst…

A vinyl reissue arriving this spring will bring renewed attention to a rare and unusual sound work by Brion Gysin, which I’m unsure how to categorise, in terms of genre, style or classification; perhaps that’s why I feel compelled to share the news with you here. Long treated as a peripheral Beat figure, Gysin was a restless experimenter whose work incorporated writing, painting, performance and invention. His Dreamachine sound piece, recorded in the 1980s and pressed on vinyl for the first time by the brilliant Wewantsounds label to coincide with a new exhibition opening in Paris in April, will offer a distinct insight into how he thought art should function as a social tool for shifting perspectives. Born in England, Gysin lived for long periods in Tangier, Paris and New…