Innholdsfortegnelse for 6/27/2022 i The Big Issue

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

Ahead of the field

Farmers of the future are more likely to be wearing sandals than welly boots. This intelligent greenhouse has sprouted up in Bozhou, China, lying equidistant from Beijing and Shanghai. Instead of leaving the success of crops up to the elements and mother nature, the plants are being constantly monitored to make sure they are given the best conditions possible to grow. With an LED light here and temperature regulator there, here an irrigation control system, there an air-quality monitor – there are soil-less-cultivated vegetables everywhere. Growing more food inside is happening all over the world. The Chinese, long the biggest fresh-produce growers, are leading the way. The pandemic pointed out some of the drawbacks that come with relying on goods being quickly exported and imported across the planet. And so,…

1 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

BIRD'S WORDS

Apparently a million people have been taken out of the workforce by the pandemic. That is a vast part of the UK’s workforce. No wonder the new reason for cancelled trains – which I’ve rarely heard before – is the lack of drivers. Perhaps that explains the increasing problems around the health service, passports etc; the simple fact that the pandemic has knocked us for a bigger six than we have so far realised. That society could be seen as a large patient that is still not fully recovered from its unfortunate run-in with Covid. Fuel prices are adding to the sense that many things are becoming more unreliable. That we might be returning to poorer and less provided-for times. There is also a sense that we might be mimicking…

4 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

Wanted: Five runners to endure/enjoy the virtual London marathon for The Big Issue

Places in the London Marathon are like gold dust. And there’s an expectation, sort of, to get a respectable time. Not to mention the fact you’ve got to get to London. So do it virtually. Big Issue Foundation is looking for five runners to take part in the Virtual London Marathon, held on October 2 – the same day as the physical race. If you start training now, there’s a chance you’ll be ready by then. But, as long as you complete the 26.2 miles in under 24 hours, you’ll be fine. Your route will be tracked on the official London Marathon app, and you’ll still get an official medal and finishers’ T-shirt. Money raised for Big Issue Foundation supports work to help vendors. In return, you’ll get a Big…

1 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

‘THE SPIRIT OF THAT FIRST MARCH LIVES ON IN TODAY’S GENERATION’

It has been three years since the last Pride in London. Three years since the streets of the capital city were ablaze with a carnival of protest. Three years since LGBTQ+ people and their allies took up space in the centre of London in a highly visible, highly political celebration. This year’s Pride in London on July 2 comes 50 years and one day after the first ever Pride march in the UK – and promises to be a show of solidarity with LGBTQ+ people across the world, as three years’ worth of newcomers join hands with veterans of the struggle, wearing their hearts on their sleeves, standing up for equality. This year’s Pride in London Parade will pay respects to the original marchers of 1972. The route will pass…

7 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

CULTURE

BOOKS Our courts are here to serve everyone, whoever they may be Wendy Joseph QC FILM Baz Luhrmann’s biopic looks at both the power and vulnerability of Elvis Anahit Behrooz MUSIC PR legend Barbara Charone on Madonna, Keef and many more Alan Woodhouse INTERVIEW The viral sensation who’s moving on from joshing with puppet dogs Lauren Layfield STREET ART THE GUVNOR By Rene Robbins A regular in Big Issue Street Art with her bold geometric artworks, which are often made using collages of clippings from newspapers and magazines, Robbins is in her nineties and suffers from arthritis and a degenerative eye condition. Following the death of her husband and son, Robbins experienced a period of homelessness. At a low point one of her friends invited her to attend an art…

1 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

‘I HAVE NO IDEA WHY THAT WENT VIRAL TO THIS DAY’

“We’re just normal men.” “What do you mean, normal men?” “We’re just innocent men.” Such are viral videos made of. A forgotten moment from CBBC in 2016 became a pop culture touchstone in April this year. In the 18-second clip, brazen puppet Hacker T Dog (performed by Phil Fletcher) makes co-presenter Lauren Layfield crack up with the most bizarre exchange a children’s television live link is likely to have ever had. The delivery so plaintive, the attempt by Layfield not to laugh so infectiously funny. Now she has the most famous snort in the country. “Pretty sure that snort is when my career peaked,” she tweeted after the clip went viral a little time after being shared by singer Jacqui Abbott, who was co-lead vocalist with The Beautiful South. “I’m…

4 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

THE DISPATCH

GRENFELL Michael Gove vows to help Grenfell survivors bring criminal charges Housing Secretary Michael Gove has pledged to help Grenfell survivors bring criminal proceedings against those responsible for the devastating 2017 fire. Speaking to The Big Issue, Gove, head of the housing brief in Westminster, said he was “totally” committed to helping bring legal or other help. “There’s a debate that goes on about whether or not the rules were perfectly clear or insufficiently clear,” he said of rules around building safety that led to the fire. “I think they were insufficiently clear, but that doesn’t let people off the hook for doing terrible things. The decision about whether there should be criminal prosecution is for the CPS after the police have made a case. I can’t tell the police…

11 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

LETTERS

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Home to roost The government needs to build 100,000 affordable homes. That would really help. Changing the rules in the current market [Renters Reform Bill] will not help anyone, so many landlords are selling up. The government needs to invest in housing and people. @John_Tuck Missing out In this week’s magazine [1517, June 13], you gave space to John Simmons and his 900-mile bike ride for The Big Issue, a marvellous undertaking. His JustGiving page has now expired so he will have to reactivate it himself in order to receive further donations (including mine). Shame to miss out on donations. Perhaps this could be revived? Apodos The right Guy Tony Rowe’s…

2 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

Make your rent payments mean something with the revamped Big Exchange app

Tired of feeling like you’re flinging tens of thousands of pounds to your landlord with nothing to show for it? That somehow renting for a decade gives you no advantage. No longer. A revamped Big Exchange app now lets you share your rent deposits with Experian, showing that you can keep up with regular payments. It’s one of a range of new features launched on the Big Exchange app, designed to help you keep on top of your finances as the cost-of-living crisis grips. It’s free and available for Apple and Android users. With rising prices and soaring bills, having a full picture of what’s going on in your accounts can be stressful. But it’s essential in navigating through tough times. Credit agencies often use “negative events” – missed bills…

1 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

STORIES FROM THE HEART OF THE AIDS CRISIS

As the Aids crisis in Britain grew in the mid-1980s, pioneering researchers conducted a series of audio interviews with gay men and their friends, producing an archive of frank, intimate discussions of life at the heart of the epidemic. This vital oral history resource has been in The British Library ever since. But now, an innovative new documentary series brings this real-time project to life, with young actors lip-syncing to original recordings. “One interviewee said oral history made it possible to ‘get into the closet with people’,” explains Dr Wendy Rickard, who conducted many of the interviews. “It offered a way to preserve their words for a time when they might feel OK for people to listen to them.” Aids: The Unheard Tapes airs 40 years on from the death…

3 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

Class analysis brimming with righteous rage

His affinity with those on the breadline never wavers; his anger at the indignities inflicted on them never flags All of author and documentary-maker Darren McGarvey’s work is a provocation, and I am easily provoked. So I consume it in a state halfway between admiration and irritation. Admirritation, if you like. But here’s the thing: I always do consume it. Often, the parts that irritate me most are the ones that keep me consuming, just as the points I take greatest issue with are the ones I find myself thinking about long after I am done. This is McGarvey’s USP: the ability to shake his audience out of its complacency. It is a skill he first displayed in his Orwell Prize-winning debut, 2017’s Poverty Safari , but has sharpened since.…

3 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

What happens on the inside of a courtroom drama

For the last 10 years I’ve sat as a judge at the Old Bailey. Now retired, I can look back at those years, pick up a pen and write about them. Almost every case I did there had a dead or nearly dead body in it. Murder, manslaughter and the infliction of appalling injury was my daily diet and a daily world of grief for victims and defendants, for their families and friends. Yet almost every terrible incident was utterly needless, utterly pointless. Put like that, you might wonder why anyone does my job. But I could put it another way. I could say that day after day I presided over a courtroom where 12 people like you sat as a jury, weighing the evidence, searching for the truth. Each…

4 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

ROBIN INCE IS ON THE ROAD

Now the world tour has begun, I decided to add a quest. I aim to read a book based in, or by an author from, every city I visit in the next year – from Reykjavik to Dunedin. On the way to New York, I choose Patti Smith and Just Kids , her memoir of becoming an artist with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. I was a teen when I first discovered Mapplethorpe and it made me feel grown up. I went to an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery with my friends Heather and Carolyn, two people a little older than me who helped culturally guide me into new worlds and possibilities, and may even be partly to blame for the shape of the person I have become. On the…

3 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

MY PITCH

Bristol Parkway station Monday-Friday 8.30-12 ROBIN PRICE, 47 I’ve moved pitch from Weston-super-Mare to Bristol Parkway station and in the week I’ve been here so far it’s been brilliant to be honest. I sold 34 mags on Thursday rush hour, another 20 on Friday morning and Monday was really good as well, but obviously I had to find my feet a bit and wait for the magazines to be delivered. But that wasn’t a problem – I still made about £50 that day. I’m a train enthusiast, so Bristol Parkway is a good fit. I’ve just been down the platform videoing a train go by. Perks of the job! I used to struggle to sell 30 books a week in Weston. And that’s not Weston’s fault or my fault. That’s…

3 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

EDITOR'S LETTER

The problem with asking people what they think is that they’ll frequently tell you. It’s what makes democracy the best of all possible means of government. No matter what those in power do, or claim they’ve done – whether parish council or Westminster – when it comes down to it, an individual going into a polling booth can make their single voice roar. Spin won’t defeat them. We’re not at a general election period, yet – but it still feels like there is a growing roar reacting to the difference between what we can see and what we’re being told. Last week the rail strikes were pitched as a leftist plot to stop the nation functioning, that those reds under the bed didn’t care for the wellbeing of the country,…

3 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

SOCIAL MEDIA REACTS TO PRINCE WILLIAM BECOMING A VENDOR [Issue 1518, June 20]

How cool is this? #PrinceWilliam wrote an article for the issue and then walked about selling copies. The video on YouTube is really great as well. @DancingInfinit1 That’s good. William has lots of spare bedrooms. @jld_84 William notes that as a society we can solve homelessness. How much would this cost @BorisJohnson and why aren’t we taking care of some of our most vulnerable? Homelessness can happen to anyone, and is on the increase. @Archaeo1001 So proud to see Dave on the front of @BigIssue with HRH Prince William. If you want to meet Dave you can buy the magazine at his pitch at Tesco’s Brook Green. You can also buy his cards and art on our website. @homelessmade Sad that The Big Issue is giving a platform to a…

1 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

‘PRIDE’S A FANTASTIC THING. BUT I LONG FOR A TIME THAT WE DON’T HAVE TO HAVE OUR OWN MONTH’

Ten years ago, Rylan walked on stage at an X Factor audition. Blond extensions as bright as his smile, bantering with the judges at a million miles an hour, it was his pummelling personality that got him through rather than his Ibiza-fied version of Des’ree’s I’m Kissing You . “Everyone thought I was a joke. I knew exactly what my role was,” says Rylan. “A lot of people go on shows like that and they don’t realise they’re that one. They think they’re Lady Gaga. I love singing, but I knew that my job weren’t to stand there and sing, my job was to perform. I think I done my job all right because I’m still going 10 years on.” The anniversary is a good time to reflect. The last…

9 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

GLENDA JACKSON

I was still at school when I was 16. Then I left and my first job was working in Boots the Chemist, and my wages went straight to my mother. I lived in Hoylake in the Wirral and the Boots in Kirby was just a bus ride away. I was a good student until I was about 14. Then I think I just got bored and I didn’t do particularly well in my exams. It became a very popular thing for me to hide in the cupboard making irritating noises during English lessons, I think I probably went on doing that for a good while. I came up with the idea but then everyone joined in. My classmates pretended not to hear the noises. We were just being beastly to…

7 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

On secret statecraft

1 The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst, 1945-2010 by Peter Hennessy Hennessy is the historian’s historian. His classic book on top-secret preparations for nuclear war is terrifying, revelatory and morbidly entertaining in equal measure. 2 The Zinoviev Letter by Gill Bennett As a former chief historian of the Foreign Office, Bennett knows her way around secret archives. Although a tale of spies, conspiracy and subversion from the 1920s, The Zinoviev Letter has particular resonance in our supposedly post-truth world of today. 3 We Are Bellingcat: An Intelligence Agency for the People by Eliot Higgins Spying is the world’s second oldest profession, existing well before states ever did. Today Bellingcat not only exposes secret statecraft, but reminds us that such activity is not limited to states. 4…

1 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

Love him tender: showing the human side of the King

When Baz Luhrmann, Hollywood’s most irrepressibly over-the-top director, turned his eye to F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in 2013, it ought to have been the perfect fit. Who better after all to adapt the empty decadence of the Roaring Twenties than a man who built his career on the potency of a gilded image, on how solid gold idols can disguise nothing more than gold leaf and a rotten core. Yet the resulting film aligned more with Jay Gatsby’s self-delusion than Fitzgerald’s prophetic, pre-Depression era vision. “They were careless people,” Fitzgerald warned of his characters; but Luhrmann’s film – its delicious design and starry-eyed ascription to the bruised romanticism of failed dreams – cared too much, believed too much in its own false god. Luhrmann has always been a…

4 min

The Big Issue|6/27/2022

Madonna, Keef, Elvis and me

Barbara Charone is a legend in the music world. As a journalist in the Seventies and a PR from the Eighties onwards, she’s crossed swords with a series of rock’s biggest names. She’s now written her much-anticipated memoirs, Access All Areas , which tells her remarkable story and, as expected, contains a star-studded list of characters. Charone worked for a host of publications including Rolling Stone , Sounds and NME , crossing the pond from her native USA in 1974 to settle permanently in her beloved London, where she wrote features on the likes of Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones – and she became close friends with Keith Richards despite his initial annoyance over elements of a piece she had written about the band. He forgave her,…

4 min