Innholdsfortegnelse for 2/10/2025 i The Big Issue

On 15 August 1998, at 3.04pm, a red Vauxhall Cavalier exploded in Omagh town centre. It carried a 500lb bomb. Twenty-nine people, including Avril Monaghan, who had been expecting twins, were murdered. Avril Monaghan’s mother Mary and daughter Maura were also killed that day. Maura was 20 months old. In addition, some 220 people were injured. It was the deadliest single attack of the Troubles. In many ways, it was the ending of that time. How could it not be? The Real IRA, a dissident group who did not accept the reality of the recent, hard-won peace agreement, admitted responsibility for planting the bomb. To date, nobody has been criminally convicted of carrying out the atrocity. In the years following, there have been claims of foreknowledge and negligence from the…

Keir Starmer is determined to Get Britain Working. It is a key plank in his growth strategy. Last autumn the government rolled out their plans. There is a focus on overhauling disability benefits and improving mental health support. At heart, they say, it is about tackling inactivity and equipping younger people with new skills. By the latest count, 9.3 million working-age people in the UK are economically inactive, while a further 1.57 million are unemployed; 2.8 million are out of work due to long-term sickness. The drive to slash benefits traces its roots back to this: a desire to get people back into work, and work that pays well. The last time a government made similar noises on this scale, Iain Duncan Smith introduced his universal credit plan in 2010.…

Thousands of migrant workers are left in limbo each year due to delays in processing their visas, figures have shown. Home Office statistics obtained through freedom of information laws laid bare the scale of the wait facing people who move to the UK for work. Big Issue spoke to several migrant workers who have faced difficulties in their professional and personal lives because of the delays – with some urging the Home Office to simplify the process. The figures showed that, between 2017 and 2023, more than 400,000 applications for skilled worker (tier 2) visas took longer to process than the Home Office’s ‘customer service standard’ – which is eight weeks inside the UK and three weeks outside. Of these 129,945 did not meet the target time for unspecified reasons,…

When I was 16, I was in catering college, the number three catering college in France. It was an incredible place where the ethos was on teaching us how to be part of the elite of restaurants and hotels, so that’s all I wanted to do. It was a quest for professional excellence, and I loved everything about it. I was totally immersed in it. I wanted to be a chef. And then I actually changed my mind and became front of house. The idea of working in a dark kitchen, head full of grease all day, rather than completely being free front of house and looking after people, was no good for me. I’ve always been in a rush. I think that the one thing I didn’t understand is…

It feels like everyone in the UK watched Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Nick Park’s heartfelt, hand-crafted Christmas gift to the nation. Cosy, comical but never condescending, this proudly provincial yarn of robot gnomes and narrowboat escapes was always going to be beloved in its home country. But Aardman’s belated sequel has also charmed the rest of the world via Netflix, culminating in an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. Standing in the way of a Wallace win is Pixar’s Inside Out 2, a literal emotional rollercoaster that became the runaway box office success story of 2024. As the 2 March Oscars ceremony looms, the category will likely be framed as British gumption versus Hollywood gloss: a heavyweight slugfest between two former champs (Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the…

Having recently written a book about how to calm down, conquer stress and stop worrying about everything (see below), I’ve started to feel a bit fraudulent. Right now I’m not calm. I am worrying about everything. Stress has conquered me. I have decided to sell our home and move into a rental property with my wife and kids. I forget the precise reasons we made this decision – it all seemed so simple at the time. Not any more. As our sale drags on, stumbling blocks emerge daily and all of my time seems to be taken up by passive-aggressive email exchanges with brokers, agents and solicitors. I have already agreed to a year of renting, financial commitments have been made, small (‘informed’) gambles have been undertaken and, as I…

CLIMATE ACTIVISM The future looks grim under climate change. So why is nobody talking about Just Stop Oil any more? Greg BarradaleBig Issue Senior Reporter Think back 18 months or so ago, and Just Stop Oil were everywhere. Radio hosts argued about growing concrete, roads were blocked and the orange T-shirt became a must-have stag do accessory. At the beginning of 2025, with climate news gloomier than ever, the group remains active. In late January a stunned Sigourney Weaver was escorted off stage at a London theatre after two Just Stop Oil supporters disrupted a performance of The Tempest. The spray-painting of Charles Darwin’s grave generated mild outrage. But it’s hard to escape the feeling: where have all the climate activists gone? Donald Trump’s presidency and the Gaza ceasefire could…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Goose loose On reading your Christmas issue [Issue 1646, 16-26 December 2024], I came across a picture of Big Issue vendor Mark Dransfield, and the two geese who share his pitch. On a trip to Hebden last April, I was accosted by these two, and had to run into the Co-op to escape!! Sounds as if your vendor Mark gets on with them – maybe they were defending his pitch? Clare Compson, Stockport Not rocket science I have been a welfare rights caseworker for the last 25 years and currently work for Norfolk Community Law Service, a charity. Isabella McRae’s excellent article [Disability benefits such as PIP are actually good for…

Around a third of UK vacancies are down to skills shortages and Labour’s bid to ‘Get Britain Working’ will hinge on its ability to give candidates the right tools for the jobs. Across the UK, almost one in 10 roles, equivalent to 2.5 million jobs, are in critical demand, with more than 90% of these gigs requiring periods of work-related training or education to fill. Skills England is the new quango tasked with transforming training to create a workforce that can boost employment and, as ever nowadays, growth. Top of the wishlist will be training people in housebuilding and construction, green jobs, digital technologies and life sciences – all four sectors were identified as key areas in Skills England’s first report back in September. Richard Pennycook, interim chair of Skills…

For neurodivergent people, a career path can be hard to achieve. People with autism have a “far more negative” interview experience than neurotypical candidates, a 2024 report by People Management found. It’s part of a shocking, systemic problem: just 29% of autistic people are in work. The widespread use of personality tests is just one more recruitment barrier that’s locking autistic jobseekers out of employment. In a bid to cut the welfare bill, the Department for Work and Pensions has launched a panel to examine how employers can create more inclusive workplaces to unlock potential. Big Issue spoke to jobseekers who’ve struggled with personality tests, and found that real change can’t come soon enough. Lucy just wants a job. Since leaving college over a year ago, she’s been applying to…

South Korean writer Han Kang has seen her star soar since The Vegetarian, her first novel to be translated into English, won the International Booker Prize in 2016 (the first Korean book to be nominated). Lauded by her peers – Max Porter called her “a writer of extraordinary humanity”, Eimear McBride “one of the greatest living writers” – last year she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her latest novel We Do Not Part starts on a cold harsh December day. After months of a deep depression, during which she only sporadically ate or slept, Kyungha rouses herself and contends with a snowstorm to reach the remote forests of Korea’s Jeju Island. Her hospitalised friend Inseon has asked her to go there to feed Inseon’s beloved pet bird who…

Trying to woo a Tory this Valentine’s Day? Perhaps you should take up athletics. It’s not perfect advice, but it’s the best we’ve got. According to YouGov research, Conservatives are statistically more likely to fantasise about sex with a sports star. Lib Dems, apparently, are into bondage, while Labour voters would like to try sex with someone outdoors. The study is based on polling from 2014 but remains pertinent, says Joe Twyman, who collected the data during his tenure as Head of Political and Social Research for YouGov, and “there are still some interesting conclusions there”. “We wanted to know if you could predict someone’s sexual fantasies from their voting intention, and vice versa,” he tells Big Issue. A lot of the preexisting research, he explained, was “pretty ropey” –…

On the home stretch A new exhibition by the UK’s best-known prison arts charity Koestler Arts showcases artwork, music and writing made in criminal justice settings in the north-east of England. Almost Home has been co-curated by women at HM Prison & Young Offender Institution Low Newton. Whereas previous Koestler Arts exhibitions have been curated by art icons including Grayson Perry RA, Turner Prize-winner Jeremy Deller and acclaimed poet Benjamin Zephaniah, Almost Home saw the role handed to four female prisoners. They selected 70 artworks from among 300 submissions, every one of them made by someone in prison, a young offender institution, secure hospital, or under supervision in the community. One co-curator comments: “What stood out to me was the raw talent of prisoners. The pain and hope expressed through…

I celebrated my 79th birthday over a week ago, leaving 78 to Donald Trump as he tried to see if he could remodel the world exclusively on the interests of the United States. Meanwhile I went about my rather more limited vista of trying to get government to grasp poverty by the scruff of the neck as it eats up 40% of state monies, and build a Ministry of Poverty Prevention. But my sandcastle, in comparison with Trump’s seismic rearranging of the tectonic plates of world trade, will prove equally difficult to achieve. Both us oldsters, it would seem, are biting off more than we can chew. Of course, Trump seems to forget that the US has only become the big and powerful dominating economy over the past 80 years…

Big Issue has a three-decades-long legacy of helping people who face barriers to employment earn a legitimate income and lift themselves out of poverty. Big Issue Recruit builds on this: a specialist recruitment agency supporting people from all walks of life to find and keep work that works for them. At two years old, we’re already making a big impact. The UK has a work problem, and we’re here to be part of the solution. There are over 800,000 vacant jobs in the UK, while more than 1.51 million people were unemployed between September and November 2024. Why? In our madder, faster world, people face more complex barriers to empowering work which could improve their quality of life – and the economy. Big Issue Recruit engages with those who face…

The White Lotus is back with more sun, sea, sex and secrets of the super-rich: with a side order of slaying. By season three, we know the drill. Showrunner Mike White’s excoriating take on how the other half live – and the slowly unfolding mystery around who has killed one of them at a fancy holiday destination – is now one of the most eagerly awaited returning series. As we near the end of a long winter, the prospect of a new group of elites checking in to The White Lotus – this time in Thailand –and gradually revealing the misery behind their megabucks is especially enticing. So, Jason Isaacs, what was it about filming for months at a five-star resort in Thailand that made you want to take on…