Tabla de contenidos para 03/30/2026 en The Big Issue

→ Last week my eldest brother Tommy died aged 83. If there had not been a health service he would have died much earlier. If there had not been a decent provision by the local authority he would have possibly died in a poorly maintained flat, but instead lived in sheltered housing. He had worked for most of his life, from 15 until retirement age. He died roughly 41 miles from where he was born, moving from Notting Hill to Southend in Essex. With three children and a wife who died five years before him, he seemed to grow in popularity and contentment with age. A true ‘cradle to grave’ case that showed the welfare state at its best. It was only in old age that he needed the welfare…

→ What did you want to achieve when you first started in 2016 and how has that mission evolved? Three Peas: We simply wanted to help people arriving on the shores of Europe with nothing. We began with food, then by funding housing and a community centre. Our work developed organically through connections we built with other charities, NGOs and local people. At that time many people and organisations were already working locally, doing their best. What was really needed were funds and we decided to fundraise at home to help in Greece. Day-to-day, what does your work involve? We meet regularly with our partners in Greece to discuss the challenges they face and they keep us updated on an ever-changing situation. We then decide together how best to direct…

Donald Trump officially established his ‘Board of Peace’ in January this year. Not long after, the president of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro was captured in a US operation. Then the bombing of Iran and Lebanon began. And don’t forget the threats he volleyed towards Greenland. The Board of Peace was an attempt to sideline the UN as global peacemaker. And with conflicts raging, it’s certainly not having much success in that role. “The Board of Peace needs to be taken seriously because it’s one of the symptoms of a dramatic change under way in world politics,” says Jane Kinninmont, CEO of the UNA-UK, a charity that aims to bolster support for the UN. “The US really wants to walk away from its previous role in the multilateral system. It’s not just…

Dr Jenni Fagan’s latest novel The Delusions is a fiercely tender vision of the administrative world of the dead. The narrator, Edi, is a team member responsible for processing queues of the newly departed. Following protocol, all souls must honestly complete a questionnaire about their life, evacuating any wriggling ‘delusion’ from their beings. This afterlife does not privilege billionaires, or corrupt politicians. Those responsible for genocide face a special hell for their crimes. Foulmouthed and infinitely lovable, Edi acts as an avatar for the dispossessed, fighting to survive. A working-class, queer Scottish woman reflecting on a lifetime of rage, she skewers the absurdity of society’s bureaucracies – unremitting even in death. After an incident at work, Edi is undergoing disciplinary proceedings. She has not seen her son since she died…

At 16, I wanted to be in musical theatre. Up until the age of 16, I was very into dance and drama and singing, and so I left school at 16 with nine O levels and went to musical theatre college. Margot Fonteyn the ballerina was an absolute hero of mine. And I think I was probably obsessed with the musical Cats. I wasn’t into pop music as much as I was into musicals, that’s for sure. My parents used to have quite big parties every so often. It was very ’70s to have a bar in your lounge where you hung the wine glasses up above. There would be decanters on the back and there’d be stools in front. My dad used to stand behind the bar and serve…

Thank you to everyone who put in so much thought and showed so much talent in their entries to the competition. The designs picked out by Axel Scheffler were Suraiya Patel, aged 10, who drew a wave of peace, and Indie Smith, 5, whose picture felt like it should come with accompanying text from Julia Donaldson. There were amazing group entries too. Special mentions go to: The Cathedral School, Cardiff; Tobermory Brownies; Lochgelly South Primary School; Beeston Rylands Junior School, Nottingham; Inchinnan Primary School and New Swannington Primary School, Whitwick. Turn over to see as many entries as we’re able to squeeze onto the page! KIDS COVER COMPETITION GALLERY…

1 Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner I’m so fond of this louche book about a poet who cannot “even imagine imagining” that poetry matters, so then resorts to the far more rewarding craft that is compulsive lying, which will earn him attention, sympathy and a hot Spanish girlfriend. 2 The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt Marguerite discovers that the mother who raised her to have immaculate taste and decorum is in fact not her mother, but someone who kidnapped her as a child. Although the story of her life is revealed to be a lie, her personality remains impressively intact. 3 The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm This fleet-footed dissection of the moral implications and failures of journalism reads like a thriller and is essential…

It is spring equinox. The tide has come in a little higher than my memory of it and the path is ankle-deep and more. Initially, I imagine that I can balance on the sodden tufts that rise out of the water. I hop from one to another and then, remembering the lacklustre nature of my balance, I say to hell with it, and the water soaks into my shoes and socks and jeans, and I don’t care. As I squelch up the high street with all the noise of a BBC sound-effects team drowning Magwitch in a marsh, I am happy. I have been on the Dylan Thomas Birthday Walk in the Welsh village of Laugharne, where the poet wrote Under Milk Wood. The sky is the colour of a…

→ How do you make peace – or at least try to draw it? I wouldn’t know where to start. Neither, I suspect, would many world leaders, going by current crises. But you can never underestimate children’s creativity. Or their hopeful optimism. We received a stack-load of entries for this year’s Spring Kids Cover Competition, from families and entire school years across the country. Alongside doves, rainbows and yes, even aliens reminding us to come in peace, were ideas for making the world a better place – be that to increase the peace on a global scale, or on a more personal level. Our winner, six-year-old April, drew someone sleeping soundly. Whether a person is without a safe and secure home, is caught in a conflict zone or lies awake…

→ Out of hundreds of entries we received for this year’s Spring Kids Cover Competition, six-year-old April Floyer from Northampton has been chosen as our winner. Her message resonates with Big Issue – ensuring people have a safe place to sleep echoes our own core values – but it is also a simple and hopeful message for a world where lives are being disrupted by conflict and chaos. “It must be scary for people who don’t have a safe bed or have to live outside,” April says. “I know I am lucky to have a safe bed to sleep in. When you’re in bed it’s nice and quiet – if your mum and dad are not hoovering.” Choosing the winner of this year’s Spring Kids Cover Competition was a challenge.…

→ As tensions continue between Israel, the United States and Iran, headlines focus on airstrikes, economic consequences and geopolitics. But across the Middle East, children are bracing for something else – the loss of safety, stability and any sense of a predictable future. War Child’s latest analysis estimates that more than 102 million children across the region could now be at risk if the violence continues. That number is almost too large to comprehend. But for us, this is not an abstract figure. It represents the children our teams work with every day; in Lebanon, in the occupied Palestinian territory and in communities across the region already exhausted by years of conflict. I am writing this from Lebanon, where overnight Israeli airstrikes have once again forced families to flee at…

→ William Kamkwamba recalls the pain of the hunger he faced as a boy: his spinning mind, inability to concentrate, weakness, struggling to breathe. He once collapsed while tending to crops in his family’s field. Kamkwamba grew up in Wimbe, a village in Malawi, and his family were among millions who faced acute food insecurity during the famine of 2001 to 2003. It was the worst Malawi had ever seen, estimated to have caused 85,000 deaths. He was forced to drop out of school because his family could not afford the tuition fees.But within the tragedy – and despite the hunger – 14-year-old Kamkwamba had a brilliant idea which would helphis family and eventually bring water to his village. He invented a wind turbine, borrowing books from the small library…

The recent conflict has brought brutal attacks from both sides – but, with the Oscars ceremony under our belts, perhaps we can now declare peace in our time: opera and ballet have finally defeated Timothée Chalamet. Variations on this comedic missive have run amok in writers’ rooms, with US TV host Jon Stewart referencing the fight on The Daily Show and Oscars host Conan O’Brien using his opening speech to joke: “Security is extremely tight tonight – I’m told there are concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities.” Opera and ballet vs Chalamet began after the latter made a comment during a filmed Q&A with Matthew McConaughey at the University of Texas. The actors were talking about keeping cinema current, when Chalamet opined: “I don’t want to…