“I don’t know what we’re going to see tonight,” Raj Singh says as he briefs his team of volunteers for the night. “No idea. There are different moods and different levels of mental health that we’re going to encounter.” It is 7pm and five of us gather in central London, just across the road from Euston railway station, alongside a trolley stacked with piping hot beef lasagne, vegetable curry, rice pudding and homemade jam, all freshly made by professional chef Dean Collins. The pair walk the streets of the capital at night with a few volunteers and offer hot meals to homeless people who are ..read more

Change can often be slow. As we’ve seen with the abolition of no-fault evictions and leasehold reform, the glacial pace of government-led transformation leads to frustration from those affected by injustice. In its place, campaigners and activists can fill the gap. Named after the housing campaigner Sheila McKechnie, who was at the launch of the Big Issue back in 1991, the Sheila McKechnie National Campaigner Awards celebrate the movements changing the UK. This year’s shortlist is a window into years of organising and cajoling, with results ranging from changes to the ULEZ to increased prote ..read more

British workers must reject Tory “politics of envy”, union boss Mick Whelan has urged, as a long-running dispute over train drivers’ pay continues to cripple the UK’s transport network. Just a month after their last bout of industrial action, members of Aslef – the union representing 96% of Britain’s train drivers – are set to walk out again.  Train drivers will conduct rolling strikes at 16 different train companies between Tuesday (7 May) and Thursday (9 May), alongside an overtime ban between 6 May and 11 May. Aslef has been embroiled in this current dispute for 22 months. Negotiatio ..read more

James Timpson wears Doc Martens all the time, he says – although not right now. Neither am I. The sole of my well-worn pair has split. After hearing stories of similar woes from friends, it felt silly not to ask the man in charge of the country’s most famous shoe repair chain whether the brand is all it once was. “We do repair them. It’s expensive because we have to buy the soles from them and it’s difficult to get right,” Timpson says. Every pair of the yellow-stitched shoes which get brought to Timpson shops for repair are sent to a prison in Warrington. There, the soles are removed with a ..read more

Inequality is widening faster than ever before. According to the World Economic Forum, the world’s five richest men have doubled their combined wealth since 2020. In the same timespan, 60% of the world’s population have become poorer. And it’s not just economics – inequality plagues the world across politics, identity, gender and race.   But amid all the hand wringing, no one has yet managed to capture the world’s imagination with a big idea to save us from capitalism’s seemingly dystopian endgame.  Darrin M McMahon. Image: © Jerri Graham Photography For starters, nobody seems to a ..read more

Rolling in with a chastening set of local election results, Blackpool South’s by-election saw Labour win the seaside seat away from the Conservatives. The overall result may not have shocked many – but the battle for second caught attention as Reform UK came within 117 votes of the Tory candidate. Thursday’s (2 May) local elections have proved a bruising night for the Conservatives at the ballot box as initial results flow in, with a loss of nearly 100 seats hailed as the “worst losses in 40 years”. But what does the small margin between Reform and the Conservatives tell us about the shape o ..read more

Oil and gas giant Shell has unveiled eye-watering ‘better than expected’ profits for the first quarter of this year. The fossil-fuel company has announced earnings of £6.2bn in Q1. Luckily, it’s putting the money to a good cause: lining shareholder pockets. According to the Institute for Public Policy Research, Shell spent £11 transferring cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends for every £1 it spent on renewable energy. But £6.2bn could make a huge dent in climate action. Here’s how you could put some of this money to a good cause. Electrify around one fifth of the UK rail netwo ..read more

It’s never been more expensive to rent a home in England and Wales, and now statisticians have revealed the areas hit hardest by surging payments in 2023. New analysis from the Office for National Statistics looked at the estimated number of households affected by rising costs and how that compared to the proportion of their disposable income taken up by rent. For each of the 328 areas in England and Wales, statisticians allocated the area a score between one and seven to show how exposed private renters had been to rising rents in 2023. It showed a distinct north-south divide in the renting ..read more

Earlier this year, Southwark resident Aysen Dennis’s one-woman crusade against the demolition of her council estate successfully thwarted plans for the Aylesbury estate to be leveled – for now. That high court ruling also lit a fire almost 200 miles away in Runcorn, Cheshire. Residents of the Uplands Residents Group are fighting the regeneration of their own estate, fearing that the number of homes delivered will be fewer than currently exist. They wrote in to the Big Issue to ask us to meet them. Glenys Cotterill wrote to us to highlight the situation. Image: Liam Geraghty Riverside Housing ..read more

Voter ID rules are blocking people from casting their ballot at today’s local elections – including a Tory MP who backed tightening the requirements. Today (2 May) is a big day for democracy. Voters are going to the polls in 107 local authorities across England – while London, Manchester and eight other cities will decide who they want to be mayor. But not everyone has been able to cast a vote. Under rules introduced last year, voters across the UK are required to show photographic identification before being given their ballot paper – and the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) has already field ..read more