Brain-training firm struggles to remember who it has work...
Lovebrain claimed a dazzling array of global brands as clients. It wasn't all trye - and the booming brain fitness industry is built on shaky science
Evie Breese
Hello! I am a journalist, workers' rights advocate, and writer of Not a Bot ✔️ profiling real people, real work, reshaped by AI.
I have five years' reporting experience, including time at The Big Issue, Roman Road LDN, and The Independent, complemented by two years producing stories from behind the scenes at migrant and low-paid workers' rights charity, the Work Rights Centre.
My work holds government and businesses accountable by exposing worker exploitation, in-work poverty, and corporate harms.
Based in London for more than a decade, I also spent time reporting in Indonesia (for The Jakarta Post), and Cambodia (for The Southeast Asia Globe), before getting an MA in Journalism from Goldsmiths, University of London. I grew up on an island in North Wales — yn anffodus, dwi ddim yn siarad Cymraeg.
My most read work
My articles
‘It took away everything I loved about journalism’: Meet the AI-assisted reporter
Tom’s first job in journalism didn’t begin with a notebook and a door-knock, or an awkward challenge to vox-pop eight high street shoppers by 10am. It began with a copy and paste into Newsquest’s bespoke AI-powered writing tool. Zero human interaction, minimal writing. But at least he was getting hundreds of bylines a month.
Callous UK asylum plan puts refugees at risk of labour abuse | Context by TRF
‘British compassion has gone too far’. Or so we have recently been told. For many Brits, the UK has a proud tradition of providing sanctuary to people fleeing war, torture and persecution. But as part of the Labour government’s new plans to upend the refugee system, this journey to permanent sanctuary will have to be earned...
Britain’s work visa system is enabling modern day slavery | Context by TRF
Imagine you had spent your life savings moving to a new job abroad, but were then forced to work punishing hours for a fraction of the promised pay. Would you feel free to speak up? Probably not if it meant you risked being sacked and deported. Yet this is the power imbalance at the heart of the UK’s sponsorship system. It...
Brain-training firm struggles to remember who it has work...
Lovebrain claimed a dazzling array of global brands as clients. It wasn't all trye - and the booming brain fitness industry is built on shaky science
Visa reform is the minimum owed to exploited care workers
A contradiction sits at the heart of the problems currently facing the UK care sector. On the one hand, there remains an acute shortage of workers to bathe, feed, dress, converse with and comfort the UK’s aging population. There was a 6.8% vacancy rate in England’s care sector in March 2025, according to data from Skills for Care. For domiciliary care roles it was 9.4%. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of migrant care workers in the UK who, due to a recent government crackdown, are...
Migrant care workers: how to stand up to exploitation
At the Work Rights Centre, we are supporting an increasing number of migrant care workers who have been scammed out of thousands of pounds by bogus recruiters, left without work and indebted, or facing exploitation in their jobs. At first there...
Scene & Heard: The wild and wacky theatre project where kids write the plays
There’s only one rule at Scene & Heard; you can’t create human characters. “This allows the children to really liberate their imaginations, free up their creativity and explore themes that otherwise might feel more difficult to explore,” explains Roz Paul MBE, artistic director and CEO. In the charity’s 24 years of creating plays about objects, animals, aspects of nature and even chemical elements, there has never been a character too zany, too bizarre to be brought to life. “We do not edit or c...
London borough becomes first in country to give free school meals to all
“We see the child poverty, we see the cost of living crisis, we see the need,” he told The Big Issue on a visit to Swanlea school, his stomach full from a roast chicken dinner.
Your support changes lives. Find out how you can help us help more people by signing up for a subscription
Rahman was kicked out of office in 2015 after an electoral commission investigation found him guilty of voter fraud.
Staging a comeback after his five-year ban from politics, during which Labour politician...
Your support changes lives. Find out how you can help us help more people by signing up for a subscription
Rahman was kicked out of office in 2015 after an electoral commission investigation found him guilty of voter fraud.
Staging a comeback after his five-year ban from politics, during which Labour politician...
Two years after fleeing the Taliban, these Afghan evacuees are rebuilding their careers
The job readiness course also teaches new arrivals to figure out how the UK education system works, how to access the NHS, how to navigate the transport network, and how to access childcare for parents who want to work. Because securing a job interview is only one step in the process of securing stable employment.
Saghar Khalid is a 27-year-old Afghan woman who was recognised as a promising young journalist before she was evacuated to the UK with her husband in August 2021. She has been tryin...
Saghar Khalid is a 27-year-old Afghan woman who was recognised as a promising young journalist before she was evacuated to the UK with her husband in August 2021. She has been tryin...
Afghan refugees: ‘I built homes for the UK government, now I’m facing homelessness in Britain’
Cabinet Office minister Johnny Mercer announced in March that Afghans would be moved out of hotel accommodation, arguing the financial cost to the UK taxpayer stood at £1 million a day. He announced £35 million in new funding to enable local councils to transfer Afghans from hotels into settled accommodation across England.
One in five Afghan refugees who have since been evicted from hotel accommodation in England have presented as homeless to their local council, the Local Government Associa...
One in five Afghan refugees who have since been evicted from hotel accommodation in England have presented as homeless to their local council, the Local Government Associa...
Housing crisis: I lived in a hostel for 15 months because of London's extortionate rents
At first I moved into a three-bed room, sharing with one other girl, then moved up the waiting list to bag a private room. On each floor there were a couple of showers and bathrooms shared by everyone.
Cooking dinner was the most difficult thing to navigate. Across the two kitchens, there were three sinks, two toasters, a single oven and another smaller electric oven that wouldn’t work, and that was for 70 girls and women to feed themselves. So there was a lot of queuing, a lot of waiting, an...
Cooking dinner was the most difficult thing to navigate. Across the two kitchens, there were three sinks, two toasters, a single oven and another smaller electric oven that wouldn’t work, and that was for 70 girls and women to feed themselves. So there was a lot of queuing, a lot of waiting, an...
These high street shops have been caught paying below minimum wage
“Our minimum hourly pay has never been below the national minimum wage, it is currently above it and no colleagues were ever underpaid because of this,” they said.
Argos also said that the underpayments were due to a technical payroll error, identified in 2018, that has been rectified.
The 202 companies listed face penalties of nearly £7 million, according to the Department for Business and Trade.
“Whilst not all minimum wage underpayments are intentional, there is no excuse for underp...
Argos also said that the underpayments were due to a technical payroll error, identified in 2018, that has been rectified.
The 202 companies listed face penalties of nearly £7 million, according to the Department for Business and Trade.
“Whilst not all minimum wage underpayments are intentional, there is no excuse for underp...
Here’s why British LGBT Awards has dropped ties with fossil fuel giants Shell and BP
The annual awards ceremony is supposed to recognise those who have helped advance the fight for LGBTQ rights, but with sponsorship from some of world’s largest fossil fuel companies and funders producers, campaigners are imploring people to boycott the event.
Lycett was nominated for his protest of “shredding” £10,000 in an attempt to persuade David Beckham to withdraw his ambassadorship for the Qatar World Cup, but has confirmed to the Guardian that he will not participate in the event....
Lycett was nominated for his protest of “shredding” £10,000 in an attempt to persuade David Beckham to withdraw his ambassadorship for the Qatar World Cup, but has confirmed to the Guardian that he will not participate in the event....
Kieran Yates: 'I lived in 20 different houses by the age of 25. All I wanted was a home'
And the sad reality is that experiences like hers (and mine and quite probably yours) are becoming increasingly normalised. This is because “we don’t have good long-term solutions to think about how we live today,” says Yates.
“When I was in my 20s going through housemate auditions and learning close up how the internet plays such a role in the optimised idea of what a housemate is, I felt that was completely normal,” she explains.
“And when I lived in a mouldy room, I thought that was...
“When I was in my 20s going through housemate auditions and learning close up how the internet plays such a role in the optimised idea of what a housemate is, I felt that was completely normal,” she explains.
“And when I lived in a mouldy room, I thought that was...
Inside the chocolate factory run by young autistic people
Around 700,000 people in the UK have been diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum, however this is a largely misunderstood and undiagnosed neurodiversity. Autistic people are the least likely to be in work of any other disabled group, according to research from the Office for National Statistics. Just one in five are in employment, compared to around half of people with disabilities overall.
So the Shahs decided they would need to create their own workplace where A...
So the Shahs decided they would need to create their own workplace where A...
Paris Paloma's Labour: The story behind the viral soundtrack to 'female rage'
Paloma sat down exclusively with The Big Issue to explain what inspired her viral hit.
“Women are just doing more and more, and men are not doing any more than they’ve ever done,” she says.
“Women are just doing more and more, and men are not doing any more than they’ve ever done,” she says.
5 reasons a four-day working week is the future, according to the largest ever trial
Calling the trial a “major breakthrough moment”, Joe Ryle, the director of the 4 Day Week Campaign, said: “Across a wide variety of sectors, wellbeing has improved dramatically for staff; and business productivity has either been maintained or improved in nearly every case.”
“Surely the time has now come to begin rolling it out across the country”, he added.
Is the four-day week a solution to some of the problems gripping Britain today? Here’s some of the findings from the biggest ever fo...
“Surely the time has now come to begin rolling it out across the country”, he added.
Is the four-day week a solution to some of the problems gripping Britain today? Here’s some of the findings from the biggest ever fo...
Britain on strike: Have we reached boiling point?
The last ten days have seen hundreds of thousands of people walk out of workplaces across Britain. On Wednesday February 1, an estimated 500,000 people took a stand demanding better pay and conditions. At what could be the most northerly strike in Britain, search and rescue coastguards on Shetland staged a windswept two-person picket. The award for the longest picket-line, if someone was measuring, might go to staff at the University of Cambridge, lined up outside the Department of Earth Sciences with a four-metre banner reading “the longer the picket… the shorter the strike”.
From benefit claimants to bankers: Here’s what the mini-budget means for your pay packet
Liz Truss’ new government has announced an emergency mini-budget to tackle the rising cost of living crisis. Presented as part of new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s “The Growth Plan”, the duo are aiming to boost the economy by cutting taxes. This is an ideological shift in how the government runs the country’s economy, one that Kwarteng was keen to highlight, from the spending of the Johnson years, towards a model of cutting taxes and boosting the rich that many have said is akin to the Thatcher and Reagan years of so-called trickle-down economics.
Amazon wildcat strikes enter second week as UK workers protest over pay
The union has this week submitted a formal pay claim to Amazon seeking a £15 an hour minimum wage for all employees at its UK warehouses, though the company is not legally obligated to respond.
A sit-in at the Bristol warehouse restarted again on Wednesday when around 150 employees went to the canteen instead of their posts. The sit-in continued into Thursday.
Speaking to the Big Issue, one employee said: “We got paid for the protests last week, but we were told we...
A sit-in at the Bristol warehouse restarted again on Wednesday when around 150 employees went to the canteen instead of their posts. The sit-in continued into Thursday.
Speaking to the Big Issue, one employee said: “We got paid for the protests last week, but we were told we...
DWP staff are having to claim benefits themselves
“How is someone working full time, a single person with no dependents, having to claim universal credit? Their income should suffice.”
“A lot of people claiming universal credit won’t think that people on the other end of the phone might be claiming it.
They added: “There’s an irony in that I’m dishing out the benefit that I’m claiming.”
Civil servants’ pay rises were capped at 3 per cent this year, with most receiving a 2 per cent raise, despite surging inflatio...
“A lot of people claiming universal credit won’t think that people on the other end of the phone might be claiming it.
They added: “There’s an irony in that I’m dishing out the benefit that I’m claiming.”
Civil servants’ pay rises were capped at 3 per cent this year, with most receiving a 2 per cent raise, despite surging inflatio...
Hundreds of Amazon warehouse workers stage wildcat strikes over 'pathetic' pay rise
Workers at Amazon warehouses across the UK have downed tools over a “pathetic” pay rise.
The ‘wildcat’ or unofficial strikes were started by workers at the Tilbury warehouse on Wednesday night, and have now spread across the UK to Amazon distribution warehouses in Bristol, Staffordshire and Coventry.
Some 300 staff at the warehouse in Avonmouth, near Bristol, stopped work for a second time on Friday in response to the 3 per cent pay rise, equating to an extra 35p an hour....
The ‘wildcat’ or unofficial strikes were started by workers at the Tilbury warehouse on Wednesday night, and have now spread across the UK to Amazon distribution warehouses in Bristol, Staffordshire and Coventry.
Some 300 staff at the warehouse in Avonmouth, near Bristol, stopped work for a second time on Friday in response to the 3 per cent pay rise, equating to an extra 35p an hour....
Amazon warehouse workers down tools to protest 35p pay rise
A union representative has estimated around 800 workers over two shifts “downed tools in the depot” on Wednesday evening. The Big Issue has been told that the majority returned to their posts in the afternoon with around 150 continuing the protest. An employee at the Amazon Tilbury warehouse told the Big Issue that management “told them if they don’t go back to work, they’re not going to be paid”.
'We're not going away!': Striking BT workers threaten more walkouts and label CEO 'food bank Phil'
Ward confirmed the union would be prepared to take further strike action if BT fails to offer a better deal. He also emphasised the financial toll strike action had on workers, saying the CWU will “come up with other ways to pile on the pressure on BT.”
BT has put its broadband and telecoms prices up by around 13 per cent, adding £53 a year to the cost of a BT Fibre Essential deal.
Labour MP Kate Osborne joined the picket line in central London to “stand shoulder to shoulder with workers...
BT has put its broadband and telecoms prices up by around 13 per cent, adding £53 a year to the cost of a BT Fibre Essential deal.
Labour MP Kate Osborne joined the picket line in central London to “stand shoulder to shoulder with workers...
Load More