Even those people who rarely watch EastEnders – or, gasp, prefer Corrie – will be familiar with the show’s opening credits, the blue ribbon of the Thames swirling as the camera pans over a map of London.
Today’s title card shows the end result of 40 years of building and gentrification: denser buildings, open spaces hemmed in. Somewhere in the title card for the first episode, then with areas of the East End showing simply as black smudges, lies the true heart of EastEnders. Big Issue’s job this week was to find that heart: past, present and future – which means following the trail from postcode to postcode.
We’ve gone on a hunt for the real Albert Square – from Walthamstow to Dalston to Stratford. In this week’s issue, we reveal what we found.
The uncomfortable answer to the UK’s growth and homebuilding problem might just be immigration
Labour’s grand plans to trigger growth include big infrastructure projects and building 1.5 million homes. But they come with a small snag – who is going to do the building? Last year Big Issue reported that as many as 300,000 construction workers have been lost to the industry in the last five years. The uncomfortable truth for a government that has vowed to crack down on legal and illegal migration is that the answer to their problems could be immigration.
Residents in Tower Hamlets are fighting plans for a new Chinese Embassy on their estate
“I love all the culture that’s going on around here, I like all the history,” says Mark Nygate as he takes Big Issue around the estate he has lived on since 1998. When he moved in, he could not have envisioned the geopolitical row that would take place just yards from his front door.
The residents of St Mary Graces Court in London’s Tower Hamlets have found themselves at the heart of a row between Beijing and Westminster over plans to build a new Chinese Embassy on their estate.
