Innholdsfortegnelse for 4/28/2025 i The Big Issue

The Boat Race is a curious phenomenon. Two of the most recognisable universities in the world, bywords for a certain establishment elitism, compete in a sport that is closed off to most people. That the BBC still talk it up and run it live says more about the straitened times the broadcaster finds itself in than the broad desire to see the blues give it some welly at Putney Bridge. There are issues around class as the defining element of the event. But that is hardly news. What is more relevant is what happened after the Boat Race this year – or what didn’t happen. Crews were warned not to throw each other into the Thames for a celebratory, or commiseratory, dip. This is because levels of pollution are at…

The Guardian insists that we need truth now more than ever, at a time when we are led to believe that truth has been devalued wholesale. ‘Truth’, what is true, they say, is being destroyed; and that leads to a weakening and potential collapse of our civilisation. I am not so sure that there was much truth being spread about in my childhood slums, or in the political world of the late 1940s and the 1950s. That is, if truth means honesty. Certainly the people who employed my parents and their fellow slum dwellers would have been lying about, or should we say hiding, what they paid, which meant you had to live in the cheapest and therefore poorest housing. You couldn’t live a decent and regular life on those…

What TV show had a big impact on you growing up? The first time I saw Top Boy I was in drama school. I was still a teenager, still growing up. There was also a show called Youngers with Arinzé Kene. They were the first times I thought there might be casting opportunities for me. Skins also had a big impact – but just on how I lived my life as a teenager! Was there a big album for you growing up? Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange was such a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful album. There is a song called Bad Religion where he talks about same-sex attraction – he was an R&B star that no one thought was gay, so this was a coming out for him. It resonated a lot.…

The Nice Co is a GA fundraising platform dedicated to supporting grassroots children’s and homeless charities through art. It will present a star-studded new exhibition in London raising funds for Bow FoodBank and grief support mental health charity The New Normal. Among 20 artists contributing are Chris Levine, best known for his iconic light portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, which went on to be issued as £100 bank notes. His work will feature alongside the likes of Jelly Green, who designed the cover for Ed Sheeran’s 2023 album, and graphic artist Anthony Burrill, whose pieces can be found in the permanent collections of the V&A and the Design Museum. The previous BE NICE exhibition in 2023 raised over £35,000 for six London grassroots charities, positively impacting the lives of 3,000…

Few science-fiction authors consider themselves futurologists. They might admit to warning us of possible dystopias, or tantalising us with dreams of utopia, but not many claim to predict the future. Indeed, Isaac Asimov, one of the ‘Big Three’ SF writers of the mid-20th century, entirely disavowed his own powers of prophecy. He recounted how his short story Everest, which predicted no climber would conquer that mountain, was published seven months after Hillary and Tenzing reached the summit. And yet, on occasion, authors can demonstrate an almost uncanny ability to peer through the fog and extract lucid visions of tomorrow. In a 1964 interview for the BBC’s Horizon program, another of the ‘Big Three’, Arthur C Clarke, said: “I’m perfectly serious when I suggest that one day we may have brain…

I’ve tried my hardest to avoid AI. My wife works in publishing and tells me it will crush creativity and culture, silence human voices and – most worryingly of all – impact our household income. As a ‘content creator’ myself (bleurgh) I am aware I should be afraid of the threat posed to my career by robots. Once, out of curiosity and egotism, I tasked ChatGPT with creating a piece of writing in the style of Sam Delaney. Reading it back made me hate myself even more than usual. It was obnoxious and trite, full of cliche and deeply unwarranted self-satisfaction. I choose to believe that AI was incapable of accurately impersonating the nuance and subtlety of my prose. But perhaps I was just unable to face the stark reality…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissueuk @bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @thebigissue Nerves of steel The straightforward renationalisation of British Steel is an inevitability that is being delayed. The case for nationalisation has always been strategic necessity. That argument continues to apply to water, energy, rail (which is not really being renationalised), the Royal Mail and much else besides. Which of those has been improved by privatisation? We have seen just how quickly the restoration of democratic political control can be achieved. Steel was the one nationalisation to which the Conservatives objected after the war, and they reversed it in 1953. But they did not vote against this latest bill. No one did. Everyone in parliament has now conceded the principle, which,…

Ncuti Gatwa is preparing to unleash his second full series of Doctor Who on the world when he calls Big Issue. It’s the day of the UK premiere in London and he’s got a snazzy outfit by Dries Van Noten lined up for the red carpet. He is, he says, more settled into his lead role in the longest-running sci-fi series on the planet this time around. He’s been reading some books, doing some therapy, learning a lot about himself. “This is a happy moment,” he decides. “It feels exciting to be back.” Although it was filmed more than a year ago, the return of Doctor Who could not have been more perfectly timed. The opening episode featured a script by Russell T Davies in which Doctor Who explored, in…

At 16, I wouldn’t say I liked myself. I don’t think many 16-year-olds do. I was a bit of a class clown. I did the school plays, but I didn’t really get the main roles. I had a really beautiful girlfriend that year for a couple of months, but I was a reasonably beige kid I think. I was pretty harsh on myself. I had bad skin and I definitely didn’t like myself to look at. It’s interesting you ask this because I just recently got sent a photo, I would have been 17, me at a party, sitting next to a really handsome guy. I had a bit of acne on my face and I know how I would have been feeling, I know I would have been feeling…

“I’m all Armstrong, all the time!” is how Ricky Riccardi neatly describes his obsession to me, on a call from his home in New York. Having first discovered Louis Armstrong’s music at age 15, he has gone on to become the director of research collections for the Louis Armstrong House Museum, given lectures worldwide, won Grammys for his album notes and written several books about the man who is widely credited as one of the architects of modern music. The latest of which, Stomp Off, Let’s Go, focuses on his early life. Why, specifically, did he want to write about this period? “In jazz circles, the recordings that Armstrong made in the 1920s represent some of the most influential music ever created,” he tells me. “I wanted to dig deeper…

Venee fled rape and modern slavery, coming to the UK from Africa to seek asylum. She has just learned that her asylum case has been refused, with a decision made on the basis of a statement she wrote on her own, in a second language, without the guidance of a legal aid solicitor. She finds herself one of an increasing number of asylum seekers who are being pushed into the appeals process – a growing problem experts say is being made worse by the chronic underfunding of legal aid. Big Issue has been reporting on the asylum backlog and legal aid crisis for more than a year. And the problem has not gone away. Despite Conservative efforts to clear it, and continued Labour endeavours to get it down, the tens…

“I never relax. I rarely feel the absence of stress and I’m knackered. I feel like this situation is killing me.” This is just one experience, shared with us at Sense, of a parent trying to navigate the children’s social care system. It’s shocking, but far from unique – the children’s social care system is failing disabled children and their families, and it needs to change. Disabled children’s social care exists to help children and their families to live happy, fulfilling lives. It can support with personal care, home adaptations, funding contributions to access hobbies that are inclusive, such as one-to-one swimming lessons and access to day centres. It can be life-changing, helping children to get the best start, and giving parents a well-deserved break and respite. But to get…

By 2022, I had become so overwhelmed by financial stress and shame that I couldn’t see a way forward. There were moments when it felt impossible to keep going. Suicidal thoughts. Weeks lost to deep depressions. But looking back, I can see that those darkest times were the beginning of a profound transformation. This began in 2016 when my thriving business – focused on coaching and securing European grants – was wiped out almost overnight by Brexit. Clients vanished. Income streams dried up. I was left with commitments, expenses, and a life I had carefully built was now hanging by a thread. Like many mothers, I’d invested in my children, stretching myself to fund extracurriculars and experiences. My husband and I had always held different views on spending, and rather…

When Katharina Volckmer’s debut novel, The Appointment, was released by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2020, she didn’t give us any impression that this was merely her first book. The novel was slim but it was as sharp and biting as a vicious chihuahua. Taking place over the course of a therapy session, it tackled everything from the contemporary awkwardness of Germany’s political history to gender trouble. In Calls May be Recorded for Training and Monitoring Purposes, which has just been released by The Indigo Press, Volckmer returns with a sophomore effort that makes you wonder why her name isn’t more widely recognised. In the new novel, Volckmer trades the absurdity of therapy for the monotonous grind of a call centre. In a move that feels typical of her style, the opening…

Femi Kuti learnt early on that his name spelt trouble. “In school, I was on the field fighting every day because the children of the rich would say things against my father,” he tells Big Issue when we meet at his Glasgow hotel. “Then the teachers that didn’t like my father would beat me. I got the beating of my life in school. I can still remember faces. I can never forget.” His father was Fela Kuti, the Nigerian bandleader and activist who popularised Afrobeat, a feverish blend of US funk, blues and jazz with salsa, Ghanian highlife and the percussive traditional music of the Yoruba region. From the early ’70s, Fela and his band Africa 70 hosted all-night jam sessions at The Shrine, his Lagos nightclub, which attracted the…

CLIVE, 63 I’m really loving living in the caravan. There are no neighbours. I can come and go as I please Last year I learned to drive. I started lessons in November 2023 and then I passed my test on 13 May. It was like the next logical step after getting GCSEs (Clive got his English and Maths GCSEs in 2021 at the age of 58) and a level three diploma in acting. I moved out of my flat and I live in a caravan now and I’ve got a van after saving up for eight years. It’s made an incredible difference. I can get to work outside the theatre and I don’t have to struggle in the wind and rain to get there. Whenever there is a show on…