Innholdsfortegnelse for 3/25/2024 i The Big Issue

Most of the children who are brought before the Family Court in care proceedings are from economically disadvantaged communities. The parents have often had traumatic childhoods themselves, but had no help to deal with the long-term repercussions and the impact on their ability to parent. When a local authority has evidence that a child is suffering or is at risk of suffering ‘significant harm’, the legal threshold is met for care proceedings to be issued. In most cases, before going to court, the social worker will start what is called the ‘pre-proceedings process’. The parent or parents are invited to a meeting and told in clear terms what the worries are and what they need to do in order for the local authority not to issue proceedings. For example, a…

I was 16 when I first found the idea of performing. We were doing Hamlet at school and I got a smaller part than I wanted. But I still got the gravedigger, who is really good. I enjoyed it and wanted to do more, so I got together with some mates and we put on a production of The Homecoming by Harold Pinter in the tiny little theatre at school. I remember feeling like I was connecting with lots of people. And that’s a really lovely feeling. At the start of The Homecoming, we put on a track called The First Big Weekend by Arab Strap. This was the first time I was getting into music as well. Bands and plays – my brain was opening up to something I…

1 The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson When first published in 1951 this book was a sensation. Offering a dazzling portrait of the ocean’s past, present and future, it combines the rigour of Carson’s scientific training with a poet’s ear and eye and remains astonishing more than 70 years later. 2 Omeros by Derek Walcott Saint Lucian poet Derek Walcott is most famous for his extraordinary poem The Sea is History, but Omeros explores many of the same questions about identity and the poisonous legacies of slavery. The portrait of the passage across the Atlantic on a slave ship is particularly wrenching. 3 The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina In this remarkable piece of reportage, American journalist Urbina explores the lawless and often perilous world of the high seas,…

I went to see a Smiths tribute band at the weekend. They’re called The Smyths. It was in the backroom of a local pub and it was life-affirming. It helped that I love the music of the actual Smiths. It also helped that the pretend Morrissey was not the real Morrissey and I therefore didn’t need to wrestle with any of my tedious liberal scruples over enjoying his performance. But most of all it was about the atmosphere in the room, as the sounds of rainy 1980s Manchester whipped an audience of clapped-out middle-aged bastards like me into an improbable state of ecstasy. The familiar bittersweet lyrics that narrated our youth, laced with those euphoric melodies: it had a narcotic-type effect on the hundred or so who had walked through…

HOMELESSNESS Destroyed tents and bleach-soaked violence: Most rough sleepers say they’re treated unfairly by police A Greater Manchester Police officer dragging and “stamping” on a rough sleeper is just the latest outrageous example of unfair treatment facing the most vulnerable people in our society. Footage uncovered by the BBC last month showed a police officer dragging a rough sleeper along the ground in Manchester in September last year. The man caught up in the incident – believed to be a 31-year-old from Sudan – said he was left with blood in his urine following the stamp on his stomach. The video, described as “appalling and degrading” by homelessness charity Crisis, resulted in an apology from the Greater Manchester Police, which also said the incident “must not be repeated”, while the…

Investment in social housing is investment in people For all the palaver around the budget there was little discussion about the housing shortage that affects the poorest – and even the children of the comfortably off and professional classes nowadays. As I said in parliament last week, our wealth is to be found in housing. Around 80% of bank transactions – virtually their entire activity – involve the buying and selling of property. No wonder most of the wealth in the UK is expressed through your relationship to property. Property, property, property: your road to social mobility, getting as far away from poverty as is humanly possible, all relates to property. You are defined – increasingly so – by your place on the housing ladder. If there was an economic…

Lisa Wrightsman USA Lisa Wrightsman’s life story could be quite the motion picture in its own right so it’s fitting that she features in The Beautiful Game. The American fell into homelessness after her dreams of being a professional footballer didn’t pan out and addictions tore her life apart. But the Homeless World Cup offered her a way back in life and she played for the Street Soccer USA team in the event in Brazil in 2010 – an experience she told The Big Issue was “mind-blowing”. She went on to coach the USA team at subsequent tournaments and set up women’s coach programmes in her native Sacramento. But the crowning redemptive moment came last year when Wrightsman welcomed teams all over the world for the Homeless World Cup in…

CULTUREART “The picture is of an amaryllis that a friend gave me for Christmas, but it is also a picture of my workspace,” says regular Street Art contributor Howard of this painting, which gives an intimate view of where much of his art is created. “My desk is where I do a lot of painting and writing, and when I caught sight of how the elements worked to describe an important part of my life, I thought it would make an interesting painting. “The idea of a flower growing towards the light kind of makes the picture into a story of how I aim to develop and learn to be a better person.” The work on this page is created by people who are marginalised. Contact street.lights@bigissue.com to see your…

REVIEW Summoning up the spirit of ’84 Talk about a spooky coincidence. Everything seems to have lined up perfectly for the 40th anniversary of Ghostbusters. After some thematic detours in recent films – including an all-female outing in 2016 and a Spengler family trip into the wilds of Oklahoma in 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife – the new fifth film brings it all back home to New York and the familiar Ghostbusters firehouse HQ. Despite its rather uninspiring title, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire features the nostalgia-tickling sights of a classic-looking Ecto-1 weaving through Big Apple traffic with its siren blaring plus spuddy green spectre Slimer splattering ectoplasm everywhere. It also leans hard into the current trend for ‘legacy’ sequels that avoid hard reboots in favour of acknowledging the beloved films and actors that…

JAZZ A sound like Alice Spring has finally arrived, and with it a stunning inaugural release to mark the Year of Alice, celebrating the music of Alice Coltrane, also known as Swamini Turiyasangitananda (or Turiya for short), whose luminous, profoundly spiritual sound is every bit as galvanising as the brightening season. Alice Coltrane was a pianist, harpist, composer, bandleader, Hindu spiritual leader and the wife of John Coltrane until his death in 1967. Her interest in spirituality had an enormous bearing on her husband’s music, and she is credited with helping him to create his masterpiece, A Love Supreme, in 1965. John Coltrane has long been an emblem of the avant garde and free jazz movements, whereas awareness of Alice’s work, and the many albums she recorded as both a…

BIG ISSUE RECIPE COLLECTION There’s dumpling you should know The Big Issue Recipe Collection is bringing together budget-friendly delicious dishes, and this week it goes international Matt (below), known as MBK, sells The Big Issue Australia in Melbourne and has submitted this recipe, with roots in his own heritage. He said: “When I was young, my sister and I would often be at my grandparents’ house. They were Ukrainian immigrants who came to Australia in the 1950s. They may have met in a work camp near Russia at the end of World War II, but that might just be family myth. They knew how to make food tasty and cheap. “Sharing this recipe I remember their chrome-edged kitchen table covered in tea towels full of vareniki; helping prepare the dough,…

CRAIG ATKINSON, 44 I ran into [Big Issue founder] John Bird on my pitch recently. He had a meeting at the university and was passing through. It was the first time I’ve met him and he was great. I don’t know what happened that day but the sales just went absolutely mad. It’s as if people needed to go to the meeting with a copy in their hand or something. I don’t know what happened. I started selling the magazine on Pelham Street and Columbus Street in Nottingham because I got myself into the position where my kids’ mum could lose them at any minute and it’s been like that for months. Before I used to do little bits and bobs of crime but now I can’t be in a…

A sensible response to the political vacuum I like the spat between Sir James Dyson and Jeremy Hunt. According to insiders – you know, INSIDERS! – the chancellor didn’t take Dyson’s criticism of his economic policy well. The pair met in Downing Street a week or so ago. Dyson has been very vocal in support of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini budget. I suppose if you’re a billionaire you’re somewhat insulated from crippling mortgage rises. According to a source – you know, a SOURCE! – the bagless vacuum king has been so annoyed recently at government fiscal plans, and at corporation tax deadweighting growth, that he has been writing “quite aggressive letters” to the treasury. So Hunt had him in for a meeting. On a sidenote here, if…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Tucker’s pluck Just to say we took advantage of the one-off screening of Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son in Canterbury last week. Well done to all involved in the production – not least director Lorna Tucker, who obviously had to take a painful journey down memory lane in order to make the film. We’re pleased to see she is to become a Big Issue Ambassador [Issue 1606, 11 March]. The film was a very moving insight into the world of addiction and homelessness. It makes one realise how important a happy, secure childhood is for a start. Kim Young, Canterbury Through the looking-glass There will never be a better UK while we…

INTERVIEW In Drift, Cynthia Erivo plays Jacqueline, a Liberian refugee trying to piece her life back together on a Greek island after experiencing unspeakable trauma. A tourist asks her: “How did you get here?” “Same as everyone else,” Jacqueline responds, “Plane, ferry, boat. Luck.” It’s more than luck that has taken Erivo to Hollywood, where she’s speaking to The Big Issue. It’s a couple of days after the Oscars where Erivo – a two-time nominee herself – presented awards with Ariana Grande, her co-star from the feverishly anticipated adaptation of stage smash Wicked. “There’s a little bit of luck but I definitely used a plane to get here,” she smiles. “It’s having the curiosity to pick different things that challenge me and to make brave choices.” It’s more than just…

ESSAY What we owe to the worm that wasn’t squished On June 15, 1905 Clara Magdalen Jansen killed all four of her children, Mary Claire, Frederick, John and Theodore in a little farmhouse in Jamestown, Wisconsin. She cleaned their bodies up, tucked them into bed, then took her own life. Her husband, Paul, came home from work to find his entire family under the covers of their little beds, dead, in what must have been one of the most horrific and traumatic experiences a human being can suffer. There is a concept in philosophy known as amor fati, or love of one’s fate. We must accept that our lives are the culmination of everything that came before us. You may not know the names of all eight of your great-grandparents…

Tony Curran is quite the veteran screen actor these days. From his stint on This Life in the ’90s and a major role in Andrea Arnold’s Red Road in 2006, to his beautiful guest role as Vincent Van Gogh in Doctor Who and a stunning, heartbreaking performance in recent BBC drama Mayflies. Then the roles in huge US productions from Ray Donovan and 24 to Elementary and The Flash. The 54-year-old from Glasgow has played a great many characters over the years. But this one has some especially lurid descriptions thrown his way. King James VI of Scotland and I of England, as well as being the man who first combined the thrones of England and Scotland, was apparently also “so cockstruck it’s like a curse”. Crivvens. That’s surely no…