Innholdsfortegnelse for 9/13/2021 i The Big Issue

The Big Issue wasn’t around during World War 2, so it fell to another publication to be the most popular in those days. While plenty of big issues were happening in the world, Picture Post specialised in giving people a view of different parts of Britain outside their own town or city. Picture Post revolutionised the way photographs captured the ordinary and everyday people and places. As a result, it provides a unique record of the time and lives it reflected, explored in a new documentary, Picture Stories , released this month. UK screenings of Picture Stories will take place from September 15 and will be available on digital download from September 27. picturestoriesfilm.com…

London, 1982. I am five years old. A mixed-race only child in a single-parent family from a council estate in pre-gentrification Peckham. My understanding of what it means to be British is limited to patriotic cliches and caricatures. The Second World War ended more than three decades ago, yet for the dads and grandads and the boys waging war with plastic toy soldiers, victory over the Nazis still demonstrates how great Britain is. The cries of “two world wars and one World Cup” ring hollow to my young ears. Margaret Thatcher, mass unemployment and the miners’ strike are to define my childhood more than past glories won in honour of the British Empire. Great Britain is a place that exists only in history books and old films. I experience racism…

Double Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead’s name has a cultural presence few of his peers can match. Io it’s something of a surprise that The Underground Railroad author and revered social historian’s new novel Harlem Shuffle treads such ostensibly light ground, presenting as an Ocean’s Eleven meets Ozark heist caper, written with an air of mischief and humour and peppered with sidelong cheeky winks to its omniscient reader. Setin early‘60s Harlem,the novel tells the story of furniture shop owner Ray Carney, whose financial struggles, lower-class background and deep black skin disappoint his socially aspirational in-laws (“Alma used the word settled the way the less genteel use motherfucker”). Best then that they don’t know about the violent criminal father whose lifestyle and reputation he has worked hard to rise above, cultivating his…

VENDORS Following a long lockdown, vendors in England, Scotland and Wales are back out selling the magazine. Please continue to support them. SUBSCYIVTIJDS AND SHOPS Since the frst lockdown in March last year, we have supported our vendors with more than £1m of fnancial assistance to make up for lost sales. We still need your help to make sure we can continue to support them through uncertain times. HOW YOU CAN HELP 1. If your local vendor is selling The Big Issue, please buy from them. Vendors buy magazines for £1.50 and sell for £3, keeping the difference and working their way out of poverty. 2. If you cannot buy from a vendor, subscriptions to the magazine are available on a three, six or 12-month basis with a new edition…

The shocking and chaotic scenes we have witnessed in Afghanistan over recent weeks have yet again exposed the inadequacies of the UK government’s current immigration and asylum policies. Sadly, it’s an all too familiar story of incompetence and indifference which has come to characterise the UK’s response to refugees fleeing war, violence and persecution. It was of course entirely right that the UK prioritised the evacuation of UK nationals and Afghans who worked for the British military and UK government. However, not all have been successfully evacuated and their fate remains unknown. At last week’s foreign affairs select committee, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab admitted that there were hundreds of UK nationals still in Afghanistan. He was unable to give precise numbers of those Afghan nationals and their families who worked…

‘DRUGS ARE PROLIFIC IN ALL WALKS OF LIFE’ Bangor, North Wales  Thirty years ago, Reg Mercer hitchhiked his way to north Wales. He says it’s the best bit of the UK: “You come up here and the climate is different, the people are different, and no one is interested in politics and crap like that.” Reg now sells the magazine in Bangor, on the longest high street in Wales. “The only downside is drugs are prolific in all walks of life, unfortunately young people as well,” he says. “A lot of it is boredom, a lot of the community stuff has gone.” Drug misuse deaths have been increasing in Wales in the last decade. The year 2018 saw a peak of 208 people dying as a result of drug misuse.…

Shaun Ryder has made it to the age of 59 in spite of an appetite for narcotics that ranks among the most extraordinary in rock and roll history. And today he is as productive as he has ever been: successfully juggling parallel careers with Nappy Mondays and Black Grape while finding time to release a solo album. St’s called Visits From Future Technology and is filled with sundrenched bangers, many of them laced with the euphoric grooves that Ryder has been synonymous with since the Nineties. The album is also rich with the surreal lyricism and psychedelic poetry you’d expect from Ryder. Lead single Mumbo Jumbo ranks among one of his greatest ever efforts, combining references to Top Of The Pops, electric socks, calling the cops and a protagonist who…

Surrounded by wifi and mobile reception, you are always available, reachable and answerable to anybody and anything demanding your attention. You try to break away. Try to take a phone-free walk. Try to change your relationships with your device by turning off notifications, imposing screen limits or visiting a digital detox retreat. We all still feel lured back online, feel the hand instinctively reach for the smartphone, feel some crazy internal urge to check email and Twitter and check out from the reality in front of us. I’m as guilty as anyone, even though I haven’t owned a smartphone since 2009. Initially this was a decision out of frugality. It has since morphed into an obstinate refusal to carry what I believe is a devilish device that hijacks our attention…

Leicester is mourning the loss of much-loved Big Issue vendor Sean Irish, the long-time seller who was a “landmark” in the city. The 54-year-old became a familiar sight on Leicester High Street during the 13 years he sold the magazine and was known for his “cheeky demeanour and charisma”. He died on July 31 after suffering from cirrhosis of the liver. Big Issue staff have paid tribute to Sean, recalling how he would sell more than 5,000 magazines a year before the pandemic and was so committed to the job that he would never miss a day on his pitch. Shane Ludlam, a sales and outreach worker in Leicester, spoke at Sean’s funeral about the big part The Big Issue played in the vendor’s life. “He survived on selling The…

Dominic Cummings is a gas. Remember Dom? The frequently angry-looking fellow in an ill-fitting shirt. Liked driving around the north east then sitting behind a trellis table in a garden talking about it. Became seen as the Machiavellian puppet master and enforcer for a PM who couldn’t be bothered. Or at least a PM who liked to make it look like he couldn’t be bothered. Cummings was the epitome of a by-all-means-necessary administration. He could be relied on to be a shield or a policy changemaker. To many, he was the de facto leader. Not sure where that Dom has gone because he’s been replaced, on Twitter at least, by a very different beast. This Dom comes on like a young blogging tyro gunning for a birth on Novara Media.…

I had come through a lot of trauma in my early teens but being 16 was a great period for me. I left school at 15 and was taking lots of jobs. One day I was a bricklayer, next day I was a hairdresser. When you get kicked out of school with nothing, it closes down a lot of doors, but I was just starting to get an angle on whatI wanted to be andwhatI wanted to do. There was a period where I was signing on and using my dole money to buy records. Young Americans by David Bowie was a defining record for me and I had the firstinkling thatmaybe I wanted to be in a band. ButI found it difficult to work out how you actually did…

Long-time regular Itreet Art contributor Mary’s colourful, aquatic paintings are her way of helping to deal with a history of depression and homelessness. Her latest works are created in memory of her daughter Iusan, who died last year. The work on this page is created by people who are marginalised. Contact street.lights@bigissue.com to see your art here. To see more and buy prints: bigissueshop.com At least half of the profit goes to the artist. FILM Any chance of a quiet life seems to be getting more and more tricky Steven Kurczy BROADCAST Vigil walks the fine line between genius and nonsense viewing Lucy Sweet MUSIC How the genius of Gil Icott-Heron caused a revolution Anne Frankenstein…

01 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Created by one of the greatest living authors, Gilead is a dystopian version of the USA; women are subjugated in a patriarchy with religious undertones. Penned in the Eighties, the novel reflects on attitudes of the time as much as it imagines a different one. 02 1984 by George Orwell The archetypal novel about a controlling bureaucracy, and as relevant now as when it was first published in 1949. It gave us Big Brother and doublespeak. Never have media control and the idea that “ignorance is strength” been more dangerous. 03 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Set during the Second World War and written in the 1960s, Catch-22 is now the phrase for any self-contradicting rule; in this, the number of required bombing missions…

Next month, the singer, author and poet Gil Scott-Heron will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, a posthumous recipient of an Early influence Award alongside Krafttwerk and Charley Patton. Electronic music wouldn’t be the sprawling powerhouse it is today without Krafttwerk’s influence, and hip-hop owes an equivalent debt to Scott-Neron. Ne was rapping truth to power since 1970 when his debut album, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, opened with the now-celebrated The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a track which, despite containing dozens of cultural references specific to the era, somehow seems more and more eerily prescient as time presses on. Being included with Patton on this year’s honours list feels perhaps even more apt – Patton was the blues musician’s blues musician, credited by…

PITCH: Yoyal Arcade, Cardiff, daily, 11am-7pm I’m new to The Big Issue and have been selling the magazine for about two months. It’s been fairly busy and I’ve had no problem approaching customers. I’ve tried to be genuine – I feel like I can approach anyone and speak to anyone. It doesn’t matter who they are. There are no tactics. I don’t need to shout anything. I just say, “Big Issue, please buy a Big Issue,” and that works for me. I just try to sell the magazine the best I can. It’s still early but I’ve not got any regular customers on my pitch at the moment. I see a hundred different faces every day where I am. I decided to start selling because I had no money, I…

A hand up... Our sellers BUY the magazine for £1.50 and sell it on for £3, keeping the difference. Not a handout… Vendors earn a legitimate income, and gain valuable social and employability skills. With your support, we can continue to help them now and in the future. The right to citizenship… The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps magazine sellers to tackle social and financial exclusion. Prevention… Big Issue Invest offers backing and investments to social enterprises, charities and businesses that deliver social value to communities.…