Table of contents for 10/13/2025 in The Big Issue

EMPLOYMENT Access to Work grants are being quietly slashed, leaving disabled people in fear for their jobs → Last year, Labour pledged to “get Britain working” – helping disabled people to find and stay in employment. “We will make sure everyone… can benefit from the dignity and purpose work can bring,” said then-secretary of state for work and pensions Liz Kendall. Labour’s Get Britain Working white paper outlined plans to improve Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) employment support to four million people claiming disability benefits. Its provisions – including more mental health staff and NHS appointments, and a voluntary employment scheme for disabled job seekers – were broadly welcomed by disability advocates. But for the past 18 months, secret cuts to a different DWP scheme have been forcing disabled…

→ The sad news is that 1,611 homeless people died last year in the UK, a 9% increase on last year. The deaths were mainly linked to drugs. Ninety per cent were living in hostels or temporary accommodation. So 10% were rough sleepers. Some took their own lives but the majority were people left to face the terrors of dependence on alcohol mixed with drugs largely on their own. What is encouraging, if there is a such thing in such tragic circumstances, is that Wales and Scotland saw a fall in the numbers over the last year. With Scotland seriously addressing the issues by giving the physical and mental health support necessary to reduce chances of death or serious harm. Alas Northern Ireland and England are where the increase has…

“Margaret Thatcher made home ownership a reality for millions of people with the Right to Buy in the 1980s,” Tory bigwig James Cleverly told the crowd at the Conservative Party conference. He paused, but no reaction came. “You can applaud that if you want”, he said. If Thatcher’s ghost no longer holds the rousing power it once did, somebody should tell the merch-makers. The conference’s main hall was covered in pictures of the former prime minister, while a Thatcher museum showcased the Iron Lady’s signature outfits. In an affront to Thatcher’s legacy, things weren’t even being sold off on the cheap. A mug with Thatcher’s face on it set punters back £15, while a “limited edition” Toby jug of the late leader was seemingly sold out despite its £47.50 price…

In Rochdale Town Hall, the mayor invites me into her parlour. These are the perks of showbusiness. On the wall, the coats of arms of all the previous mayors. They start simple, but as the 20th century progresses, each individual design tells more of a story, gives us a greater glimpse into the life of that mayor. Perhaps the most important story is told not by the shield but by the lack of a name above it. This was Cyril Smith’s. Smith was seemingly an avuncular figure, close to his mother, shaped like a seaside cartoon, and known for advertising cream buns. The slogan at the time was “naughty but nice”, but Smith was neither of those: he was criminal and cruel. In 1979, the Rochdale Alternative Press reported on…

I am not a person to stay locked inside. I like to have conversations I’m doing alright at the moment. I’ve been on my pitch here for seven years. Waitrose forever ha ha! I have been selling the magazine for more than 11 years: I started in Edinburgh city centre, did four years in Livingston and seven years outside Waitrose. Sometimes it’s OK selling the magazine on my pitch but sometimes it’s a nightmare because of the beggars here. I had one person there for a couple of weeks and he was pushing me off my pitch saying that it was his place to beg. I said that he was wrong to push me because it’s not his place, it’s free for everybody. I do think that begging has got…

GET IN TOUCH The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissueuk @bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK thebigissue White flag There are a number of people in my Norfolk village who have flagpoles, all ex-servicemen and who normally fly a Union or St George’s Day flag. On Norfolk Day they fly the county flag, and many fly the ensign of their service also. They don’t fly them now. They are good, decent people who were prepared to write this nation a blank cheque with their lives. But they don’t want to scare or intimidate people, they just want to live in peace. So until this flag-shagging nonsense dies a death the ensigns will stay down. @Neilhayz, Instagram Ready or not Humanity loves convenience, be it food you don’t…

→ Feathers, jewels and sequins twinkle under the spotlights. She smiles widely and performs a perfectly planned routine as an adoring audience goes wild. This is the life of a showgirl, but when she exits backstage and takes off the costume, is it really so glamorous? When pop legend Taylor Swift announced her new album The Life of a Showgirl, she said she wanted to “glamorise” how it felt to be on the Eras Tour (the highest-grossing tour of all time). The star poses in beaded costumes reminiscent of Las Vegas showgirls in album artwork, but the songs are about life off stage, the moments away from the spotlight. “Oftentimes it doesn’t feel so glamorous to be me,” she sings. Swift is one of the biggest pop stars of all…

→ London is facing a homelessness crisis. The city’s councils are spending £4 million a day on providing hotel and bedsit accommodation to – at the last count – 73,320 households and a sum total of 94,760 children. These are staggering, unprecedented figures. The journey to this crisis has been a long one. In 1977, local authorities were given a legal duty to house those who came to them in priority need. The idea, back then, was that they would ultimately be given priority for a social home. But just two years later, Margaret Thatcher took power and instituted a mass sell off of social housing and froze subsidies to build more. As London’s population grew, its stock of social rented housing would shrink. Her plan was for councils to…

If Thomas Pynchon, the reclusive, revered American novelist, were to have a moment, this, as he nudges 90, could be it. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, an adaptation of Pynchon’s novel Vineland, is already a hot Oscar favourite. (Anderson has been down the Pynchon road before with his earlier take on Inherent Vice.) And now out of the blue, as Pynchon’s novels often are, comes this hilarious and intelligent book, his first in 12 years. Shadow Ticket is also a frustrating piece of fiction: just as the author gives us accurate glimmers of recognisable characters, cliches and comedy, so he takes them away. But you just have to buy into the unhinged and vaudevillian world Pynchon is conjuring up for you. Our main character is the private detective…

Over 50 years into Martin Scorsese’s career, a picture is emerging from the mosaic of movies he has made. “His larger project is a portrait of America,” says fellow filmmaker Rebecca Miller. “It is one of the greatest portraits of America there has ever been – and from so many different points of view.” So what does his portrait of America over the last half century tell us about the America of today? “How has it changed is maybe not the question. It’s how has it not changed. Some of his observations of truths – I would say he’s primarily a very truthful artist – has to do with power, the forming and protection of groups, friendship and betrayal – these are elements which hold true still now, because they’re…

→ You wouldn’t expect to see praise being heaped on merchant bankers in the pages of Big Issue. More likely you might see them paired with some unflattering Cockney rhyming slang. But spare me a moment and I’ll explain with a short history lesson to show how they fit into the wider Big Issue mission. For the 16th century Italian trading banks in Venice, it was all “for the merchants by the merchants” – it was led by the merchants and that was the most important thing. But substitute merchants for social entrepreneurs, then think how it was all about joint ventures and innovative products, and you arrive at Big Issue Invest (BII), the investment funds arm of Big Issue. BII brings together money from private sources, such as pension…

‘I fell in love with the idea of wanting to give back’Peter MerrifieldFounder, SWIM → Peter Merrifield had a career as a property surveyor. He had a front-row seat as Right to Buy started to tear housing away from the public. “I witnessed the loss of social housing way back in the ’80s and ’90s. I also witnessed the gentrification of areas like my home, Hackney, and the housing booms that created more division,” he recalls. Merrifield had grown up the child of Windrush generation Caribbean migrants who came to the UK in the ’50s. There was, he says, nothing in his background to suggest what would happen to him next. “Like a lot of people, I started to dabble in substance use in my early 20s,” he says. Unlike…

→ My aunt Bridie was a nun. Coming from a poor, rural background in 1950s Ireland, opportunities were limited. It was not uncommon for the bright young men and women of that time, who were not going to inherit anything, who couldn’t be supported by hardscrabble farming, and who may simply have fancied a life away, to go into the church. A couple of Bridie’s sisters emigrated to Philadelphia. Bridie took holy orders, moved to England and, becoming Sister Martina, committed her life to Christ. She worked in an orphanage in Leeds for a time before training as a teacher. My views of nuns are slightly coloured by attending a convent school. The nuns teaching us there were not bad, but they had a rather unique way about them –…

By 16, I had started to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. This was the best time for me, because I had a very regular high school kid schedule every day. So I was trying to get into that high school culture in America, rather than always being with other classical musicians. It was a lot of fun being with some regular kids and American high school was much more relaxed than in China. So I had time to chill. It was a difficult time because my English was not that good yet – but I was becoming more independent. I would tell my younger self to just enjoy being a teenager. Because although I was enjoying school, I was worried that I would not be able…

The shape of Britain will be forever marked by Margaret Thatcher, from the skyscraper-jagged skyline of our cities to the sparse social housing she left behind. But it is perhaps the changes that are not carved into our land, but rather the ones that have shaped our view of ourselves, our country and our relationships, that have had the most profound effect. In an interview with The Sunday Times in 1981, Mrs Thatcher announced that the object was not just to change the economy, but to change the heart and soul of the British people. It was this endeavour that would prove the most successful for her campaign. It was one that would indeed alter our souls, our hearts, our relationships, our institutions and our politics ruthlessly, leaving no stone,…

1 The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder On an island where, one by one, bells, birds and perfume systematically disappear, the memory police maintain order by destroying evidence of their presence until they can be said never to have existed. 2 The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus A book that must have been conceived of three weeks into a school summer holiday. Children’s voices have become toxic, poisoning their parents and hastening a collapse of societal order. Fascinating and terrifying. 3 The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro Literalising the dystopia as anxiety dream, pianist Ryder arrives in an unnamed city fallen into moral crisis and convinced its salvation lies in recalibrating its relationship with classical music. The funniest book in the English language. 4 Vehicle by Jen…

Nigel Kershaw, OBE Founding member of Big Issue Invest “My hope is in 20 years’ time all businesses, whether social enterprises or not, make a positive societal impact on people and our planet.” Kim McGuinness Mayor of the North East “We should no longer be talking about ‘alternatives’ to finance, but building a mainstream where investment decisions are judged by lives improved, carbon saved and opportunities created.” Sharon Lowrie CEO of Be Caring “Without the social investment in Be Caring and the support of Big Issue Invest we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to rethink social care and how it can be delivered.” Peter Merrifield CEO of SWIM, offering support for black and ethnic minority communities in London “This isn’t just about funding – it’s about creating space for leadership,…