Table of contents for 2/17/2025 in The Big Issue

Big Issue first reported on Cracking Good Food (CGF) at the start of 2024. Our story highlighted the issue not just of food poverty, but a lack of much-needed kitchen equipment. This led to more people being able to access help. CGF was founded in 2010 and supports people in Manchester to cook affordable, nutritious food from scratch. They also started holding Kitchen Kit Call Outs to distribute cutlery, plates and appliances to who need them. Because food poverty is not just about food. Give a person a fish and it’s not even going to feed them for a day if they have no equipment to cook it with. But despite being a vital service, it was not certain whether CGF could host them on an ongoing basis. “After the…

I think the biggest mistake made by the British government was made with the best of intentions. It was the postwar Clem Attlee government that had swept to power at war’s end, the electorate having turned their backs on Churchill, not wishing to return to the Tory-dominated depression of the 1930s. That had been a time when unemployment and need ran hand in hand, and if you were without work and receiving a paltry state benefit it was means tested. Meaning that if you had a clock in your house you had to sell that before you could get benefit. You had to be abject and so needy that even the small amount handed out was a blessing. William Beveridge was commissioned in 1940 to write a report about what…

“I love all the culture that’s going on around here, I like all the history,” says Mark Nygate as he takes Big Issue around the estate he has lived on since 1998. When he moved in, he could not have envisioned the geopolitical row that would take place just yards from his front door. The residents of St Mary Graces Court in London’s Tower Hamlets have found themselves at the heart of a row between Beijing and Westminster over plans to build a new Chinese Embassy on their estate. The Chinese have been eyeing the 20,000sqm of land to create a “super-fortress” embassy on the site of the Royal Mint Court, right in the heart of London, just across the road from the Tower of London. The Chinese government purchased…

Football is the most popular pastime in the world. When a big game is on telly, it’s viewed by millions of people. Stadiums take up vast areas in most cities and during the 2021/22 season, the Premier League and its clubs contributed £8 billion to the UK economy. And yet, there is such little great art out there about football. When was the last time you watched a really great film about football? Who is the great football director? The great football painter? The great football novelist? There has always been a bizarre chasm between the world of football and the world of art, so much so that when I see a new novel on the horizon that is not only based around football but also introduces a queer element…

Daniel LaRusso won the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament with what would become the most iconic kick in history. “It was a lot easier to throw it back then,” says Ralph Macchio. “It’s a piece of cinema magic, it really is. “It should be in the Smithsonian. It’ll never die. That stance, that pose, it’s known around the world. So it’s amazing I’ll always be connected to that.” Macchio was a youthful looking 22 when he played plucky LaRusso in The Karate Kid and two sequels, taking on the school bullies with the help of bonsai-pruning karate master Mr Miyagi. Today, he still looks almost as youthful at 63. The last year has been “one hell of a blessed ride”. In November, Macchio was awarded a star on the Hollywood…

CONSTRUCTION The uncomfortable answer to the UK’s growth and homebuilding problem might just be immigration Liam GeraghtyBig Issue Deputy Digital Editor Labour’s grand plans to trigger growth include big infrastructure projects and building 1.5 million homes. But they come with a small snag – who is going to do the building? Last year Big Issue reported that as many as 300,000 construction workers have been lost to the industry in the last five years. It’s hardly solid foundations to ramp up housebuilding. Labour has taken a tough approach to immigration and last week boasted of a record-breaking January, with immigration enforcement teams descending on 828 premises and making 609 arrests of people deemed to be working in the UK illegally. But the uncomfortable truth for a government that has vowed…

Trying to explain AI to me is like trying to explain God to a horse. Words will be spoken and there might appear what seems, on the surface, some signals of sentience. But ultimately, I just want to eat something and jump over a hedge. However, that doesn’t stop a desire to learn and understand. Not just to understand what it is, but, more broadly, why so many of the richest, most influential people in the world are losing their minds and betting the house on it. It can’t all be because they want to create a script for a fictionalised Willy Wonka event in Glasgow (still, to date, the most amusing and ill-delivered use of AI). Just over a week ago, Elon Musk offered around $100 billion (£80bn) to…

Even those people who rarely watch EastEnders – or, gasp, prefer Corrie – will be familiar with the show’s opening credits, the blue ribbon of the Thames swirling as the camera pans over a map of London. Today’s title card shows the end result of 40 years of building and gentrification: denser buildings, open spaces hemmed in. Somewhere in the title card for the first episode, then with areas of the East End showing simply as black smudges, lies the true heart of EastEnders. My job is to find that heart: past, present and future – which means following the trail from postcode to postcode. The present: E17 Walthamstow, if you choose to believe one strand of EastEnders folklore, gave Walford the first part of its name. They just got…

Assad was born in Somalia and now lives in London. Both places influence his mysterious and visceral sculptures, which he submits via London homeless charity the 240Project. This piece he describes as a self portrait. “I work with whatever’s at hand,” he says. “Found objects, clay, plaster, wood, forcing them together, making them into a single cohesive entity. I’m not trained just determined. “The figures I make can be quite ugly, brutal. It’s not intentional, but does reflect my past. Maybe they’ll get prettier over time.” 240project.org.uk The work on this page is created by people who are marginalised. Contact street.lights@bigissue.com to see your art here. To see more and buy prints: bigissueshop.com. At least half of the profit goes to the artist.…

I went to my final parents’ evening last week. School is almost out forever! No more getting lost in the lower corridor trying to find Room 5B and almost missing my 4.17pm appointment. No more emails and texts and forms and parent portals that require 15 levels of password authentication. No more ironing grey/white school shirts with crusty armpits! Whooop! Well, I should have felt relieved, but I had to go alone, which brought all the wounded inner child feelings to the surface. Even if I’m with someone, though, every year it’s a socially awkward emotional roller coaster. It starts at about 9am with a vague sense of dread and ends with me legging it down the corridor to the nearest pub, afraid I’ll bump into someone who bullied me…

Sistah Stella Headley first had the idea for a food hub when she was facing homelessness in 2017. She had reached a level of poverty where she was counting the number of cookies in her fridge and calculating when she could have another piece so she would have enough food for the day. Eight years later, she is changing the lives of people experiencing homelessness and food poverty, having launched a groundbreaking food and wellbeing hub in Downham, in Lewisham, South London, which will combat injustice, poverty and health inequalities. “For me it’s about food, but it’s also about wellbeing and caring for each other. We deliver what we deliver with love and kindness. I know what it’s like to be homeless. “I know what it’s like to be hungry.…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Systemic failure I’m autistic and I have plenty of experience of being turned down for jobs I could have done blindfolded [Issue 1653, 10-16 February], even after very positive interviews, because employers were nervous about their ability to support me. I’m currently working for Citizens Advice, a genuinely equal opportunities employer, and every day I deal with clients who are unable to meet their obligations and desperate to be in work and off benefits but can’t find employment. The system isn’t a system now, if it ever was, and penalising the desperate is vindictive. We’re all missing out when people are written off on the grounds of a label. Abiy Orr,…

When he created Coronation Street, Tony Warren was determined to bring the authentic voices and lives of working-class people into the nation’s living rooms. The language, stories, humour and characters he’d first heard sitting beneath his grandmother’s kitchen table became the bedrock of the show’s style. More than 60 years later, British soaps remain at the vanguard of working-class representation on screen, telling stories of everyday life in all its extraordinary, ordinary glory. And they are still written, run and acted by people from working-class backgrounds. Earlier this month, one long-term soap fan, Russell T Davies, took to Instagram to praise that evening’s EastEnders. “As fine a piece of writing and acting as you’ll ever see,” began the Doctor Who showrunner. “Phil (Steve McFadden) ends up stuck with a complete…

At 16, I was very much involved with school. I wasn’t bright. But I was a hard worker. At 16 I actually, ironically, auditioned for Neighbours, and I got the part for a character called Danny Ramsay. I was then in the position where I had this full-time job opportunity which required me to leave school. I asked all the teachers what they thought and they all said, this is an opportunity, you should leave. I asked my dad, who has always been in my life, and a massive part of my world. He said, don’t take the job, it’ll come around again. He said, finish your school. And I took his advice. When Neighbours was first launched it was a flop. It got axed at Channel Seven in Australia.…

Lately I’ve been worried about my ears. As a legacy of stupidly going to many very loud concerts with no hearing protection whatsoever in my youth, I’ve suffered from tinnitus for about as long as I can remember. A faint but shrill whine, ever-present day and night around the fringes of my auditory perception. For the most part it’s low enough to ignore, and it hasn’t gotten persistently worse in a long while (mainly on account of me finally getting a decent pair of earplugs). And yet, it’s still prone to occasional, unexpected flare-ups. I don’t go to as many gigs as I once did, partly on account of the above, so I can only put the latest bout down to overuse of earbuds, and listening to podcasts about cool…

It’s Random Acts of Kindness Day on 17 February, but our man Stuart and his customers are already looking out for each other every day. Here’s a few examples of the kindness that Stuart sees on his pitch STUART DRUCKER, 51 My customers are awesome, they are. I love chatting, that’s a problem. That’s probably why I don’t sell so much. A lot of my customers are older people and we talk. “Do you want a coffee Stuart?” Yeah! I’m like Spider-Man crawling up the walls because I have so many coffees and food. The community is brilliant where I sell. They really are. They are so nice. I got this old woman going, “Right. What are you going to do this week?” And I go, “Well I’m going to…