Innholdsfortegnelse for 10/1/2018 i The Big Issue

Welcome to this week’s Big Issue Food Special. Among the tasty treats on offer you can find out what you’ll be paying for food this winter on page 19. Our cover star Joe Wicks gives us tips on how to eat more healthily on page 20. We also take a look at the food trends for the future – which include lab-grown meat and floating dairy farms – on page 31. I’m sure Big Issue readers will have some opinions on those. My own story is on page 54.…

It’s worth looking to Scotland from time to time. The Scots frequently lead and others follow. You may well agree and point to David Hume, Adam Smith and the rest of the lads who fundamentally changed European thinking through the Enlightenment. Or Alexander Fleming with his penicillin (useful) and John Logie Baird with his TV (also useful). I give you Bill Shankly, Jock Stein, Matt Busby and Alex Ferguson – revolutionary figures all. And Alan McGee, who made the careers of Primal Scream, Teenage Fanclub AND Oasis, thereby making the world immeasurably better. And then there’s Armando Iannucci, the great interpreter of our times. This list could grow. All of these names have one thing in common. They’re all men. Is this my shortcoming or that of history? Ever in…

FREE ART BY MB “I have experienced a very difficult marital relationship and after divorce a period of homelessness,” says this artist, who asks to be credited only by her initials. “Now I strive to improve and develop my personal creative skills. Photography and art helps me to understand and depict London. Originally I came here from Iran as a political refugee.” Street Art is created by people who are marginalised by issues like homelessness, disability and mental health conditions. Contact streetlights@bigissue.com  to see your art here. BUY STREET ART! You can buy prints of some artworks featured in Street Art through bigissueshop.com At least half of the profit from each sale goes to the artist.…

We all need to stand up and be responsible for what our actions are and how we treat our countryside. We all need to engage society in how we manage our landscapes in the UK and also globally because what we don’t want to do is just export our environmental footprint over to somewhere else just to have a cheaper product. Over many decades, farm support payments have mainly focused on food production. This has not always helped the environment and we know that our soil’s health has been decreasing, some of the water quality isn’t great and many species numbers have really plummeted. However, many farmers have been leading the recovery with some species and wildlife numbers increasing. I am quite excited about the prospect of a new agricultural…

Across the country, street food markets are awash with cruelty-free treats and Instagram is being taken over by wildly colourful plant-based buddha bowls. Veganism has truly exploded into food culture. Sanctimonious lifestyle crusaders ride their moral high-horses through social media, with members happily providing unsolicited dietary judgements to anyone who’ll listen, like the new witnesses of Jehovah. Religious parallels are easy to apply and they’re not ones of genteel “more tea, vicar?” godliness. Vegan Life magazine recently interviewed vegans who said they wouldn’t date a non-vegan, echoing the devout religious preclusion of marriage beyond your own church, except it’s not a church, it’s a kangaroo court of moral dietary judgements. Perhaps I’m being cruel, it’s fantastic to believe in something. Freedom of choice is the foundation of our society, we…

The Hubb Community Kitchen opened after the Grenfell fire, providing women who had lost their homes with a place to cook for their families and for each other. The diverse – and always delicious – dishes that they share highlight the vast range of cultures in the area. And above all the Kitchen shows the power of food to bring people together and restore a sense of home. A cookbook collating some of their top recipes, Together: Our Community Cookbook , has shot straight to the top of the bestsellers chart. Each recipe tells a story, of the chef who created it and the people they cook for, and proceeds will help keep the Kitchen open. Meghan Markle (pictured right) pitched in and last week she and…

READ MORE FROM... DOUG JOHNSTONE VISIT BIGISSUE.COM This week we have two brilliant novels lurking around the hinterland of the crime genre which deal brilliantly with questions of identity, whether we can outrun our past, and whether we can ever really change as people. First is the mesmerising The Lonely Witness by American author William Boyle. Earlier this year I reviewed Boyle’s debut novel Gravesend and was absolutely blown away by it. The Lonely Witness is even better. Again set in an unfashionable neighbourhood of Brooklyn, this is a loose sequel of sorts, picking up the story of one of Gravesend’s minor characters and delivering a tale that is poignant, compulsive and original. One of the things I loved about Gravesend was that it surprised me…

Glenn Close is sitting in the middle of a grand room surrounded by dozens of other actors, extras and members of a film crew, but hers feels like the only heart beating. She says nothing, yet her face and body language speak volumes. The simultaneous deconstruction and reconstruction of a character is taking place, a silent cyclone of emotion. Close has been nominated for six Academy Awards but has yet to win; another nomination is almost certainly forming in front of our eyes. The Big Issue is on the set of The Wife, being shot in Scotland. Based on the bestselling book by Meg Wolizter, the story dissects the fraying marriage of celebrated writer Joe Castleman (played by Jonathan Pryce) and his wife Joan (Close), examining the roles people adopt…

Not on the money Your Wonga article [September 16-22] states that Nicola Garrett from ethical lender Five Lamps supports “beefed-up financial education at school”. There are often statements about extra items in the curriculum for teachers. With two teachers in our family, I can say that this inclusion is a non-starter. Government demands on teachers make their life very difficult, hence the high number of teachers leaving the profession owing to the stress levels and the fact that the ones I know are paid for about half of the hours they actually work. Clive Pygott, Shropshire Staying positive I read The Big Issue today for the first time in three months (my local vendor disappeared for a while and is now thankfully back). I just wanted to say it is…

Big Issue vendors have brought Wales to life – in pencil. The Drawn Together project tasked people throughout the country to sketch what they could see in their daily life, and vendors in Cardiff and Swansea were quick on the draw to offer their artistic contributions. Among the 5,000 drawings which have been submitted, the doodles of the vendors’ day-to-day views on their pitch make up part of the unique map of the country, which is on display at Cardiff’s National Museum Wales until November 4. Polly Baggott depicted St John the Baptist Church near her Cardiff pitch on Royal Arcade, while Pete O’Day put his interpretation of a stopped clock close to his own pitch on the city’s Park Place to paper. Pete said: “I haven’t really drawn anything…

At 16 I was at school in South Africa, just shifting my passion from horses to boys and parties. We lived in Johannesburg in what would seem now to be a very luxurious style. But in those post-colonial days it felt normal – all well-off white families in South Africa lived in nice big houses. I was the daughter between two brothers. My mother was an actress, my father was a businessman. We were a ridiculously happy family, all very close. We didn’t have a lot of outside friends, but we did a lot together as a family. I think we had an idyllic childhood. I would attribute all my success to being constantly encouraged as a child. No one treated me differently because I was a girl, I was…

Last month, TV presenter Chris Packham unveiled his People’s Manifesto for Wildlife – things we can do to save Britain’s environment and animals. Martin was one of the experts who offered his thoughts on the future of farming. “There are some things that I think are really good and some that I would say we could do some work on and find common ground,” he said. “And then there are some things that I couldn’t support. But there are certainly some great bits about engaging with the public and bringing children back into food science and environmental issues.”…

DAIRY  Eleven consecutive weekly falls in production during the hot, dry summer meant grass growth was poor and grazing was poorer. The farm gate price of butter has risen 24 per cent since March and continues to climb, so it’s expected to be a difficult winter for dairy farmers – and cheese lovers. BREAD The wheat used for feeding cattle also goes into our most trusted staples like bread and pasta. In the UK, much of our grain is imported from the EU, where they suffered record high temperatures too this past summer. Industry forecasts point towards price spikes in the near future, triggering real concern for our bread-heavy British shopping baskets. FRUIT & VEG  The farm gate price of carrots has already skyrocketed 80 per cent this year, with…

Food poverty. Healthy eating. Vegetarianism. These sound like 21st-century concerns but in fact, they were the bread and butter of the advocacy and welfare provision of East London Federation of the Suffragettes (ELFS), who campaigned for more than votes for women. Pages of the ELFS newspaper The Woman’s Dreadnought were devoted to food activism in light of shortages, inflated prices and rationing caused by the First World War. Sylvia Pankhurst helped establish cost-price restaurants. The first of these opened at 400 Old Ford Road in Bow in 1914 and provided cheap, nutritious food for working women and their children. By 1915 three restaurants in the capital were serving 400 meals a day. A Pay-What-You-Can Cafe recreating the Bow address was recently built at The Women’s Hall in Tower Hamlets Local…

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE by Diana Wynne Jones Sophie Hatter must become a crone (bewitched into old age by an evil witch) in order to find her own power and save a reprobate wizard. Funny, with a twisty-turny plot. A brilliant book for all ages about the dangers of dreaming and the realities of loving. THE TOMBS OF ATUAN (EARTHSEA CYCLE NUMBER TWO) by Ursula K Le Guin Tenar is a priestess – a living sacrifice to the gods of death. Entombed in perpetual darkness, her youth is devoured year on year. Tenar’s heroism lies in her refusal to surrender her humanity to the malevolence of the soul-devouring labyrinth. Her desire for light is renewal itself. THE CHANGEOVER by Margaret Mahy A supernatural coming-of-age story. To save her little brother and…

“This ties the genre to a swivel chair, shines a bare lightbulb on the clichés and gooses it” READ MORE FROM... LUCY SWEET VISIT BIGISSUE.COM If you’re a woman, it’s hard to get what you want, like respect, equal rights, agency over your own body and not being murdered. And most things that are made for women, even things we’re supposed to enjoy, involve a certain level of suffering: dieting, bras, exfoliation, difficult trouser trends, pink razors, ladies’ nights, fanny waxing, facial peels, high heels, highlights, websites that tell you you are doing everything wrong… (I would go on, but this is only a 500-word review). So when, as a woman, you’re served something different, it’s a genuine revelation. Not a pinkified, Diet Coke-fied, tediously feminised,…

Reflecting on John Bird’s recent piece on trade [September 17-23], it seems at first a bit at odds with other progressive thinkers – such as Andrew Sayer in his intriguingly entitled Why We Can’t Afford the Rich – who want to ditch capitalism in favour of a better system. A closer look, however, suggests that there’s more common ground than it first appears. Both writers want to see an end to exploitative business practices; both (surprisingly, perhaps, from the anti-capitalist perspective) envisage a healthy, competitive market as a key part of the society they would like to see. There may well be variations in emphasis, and indeed disagreement, but there is a strong common thread. There is so much that needs to be done urgently if our generation and those…

If you’ve got this far into this magazine you will already know the importance of a magazine cover – and a new book is celebrating the most iconic global covers since the 1950s, including The Big Issue. Industry veteran Ian Birch has put together the hardest-hitting, revolutionary magazine covers from heavyweights like Time, The New Yorker, Private Eye and more for his book Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers. The Big Issue takes pride of place among them with our Remembrance Day 2014 cover featuring Bryan Adams’ poignant photo of Sgt Rick Clement, who lost his legs while serving in Afghanistan in 2010. As Big Issue editor Paul McNamee puts it: “I thought, that’s the reality of what we’re talking about. They go away as happy young boys and they come back…

The Creditworthiness Assessment Bill I introduced in the House of Lords has now passed through to the House of Commons. A private member’s bill, most of which never get anywhere in the strange life of parliament, it’s been taken up by former Education Secretary Justine Greening and is backed by Labour’s Shadow Chancellor JohnMcDonnell and MPs from every political party. It’s an achievement to get it this far. But in the shark-infested waters of Brexit-obsessed Westminster it might be put on ice due to no parliamentary time being made available; although whether Her Majesty’s Government chooses to give it a hearing remains to be seen. From the SNP to the DUP, having all-party support is extraordinary. But what’s so great about this draft legislation that’s ponderously been labelled the Creditworthiness…

Food isn’t just fuel and pleasure: food is power, too. The UK has a rather anachronistic attitude to edibles: one in eight people regularly go hungry, yet we bin millions of tonnes of food each year. And, while it appears on the surface that there should be plenty to go around, this year foodbanks reported empty shelves and issued desperate calls for emergency supplies, with 8.4 million people struggling to afford to eat. Experts agree that the problem has knotty roots tangled right through the system, from farm to fork. Through over-production, short shelf-life and labelling errors, the food industry wastes 1.9 million tonnes of edible food a year. As consumers we are encouraged to be increasingly aware of how food gets to our plates. Government anti-waste campaigns, allied with…

Joe Wicks has a new workout buddy. His first child, Indie, was born in July and he has already incorporated her into his fitness regime. “I’ve just been filming three baby-carrying workouts,” he says. “I’m wearing a baby carrier – with a baby, obviously – doing squats and lunges. It’s been a tough morning, I’ll tell you that. It’s not easy. It’s trying to get women who have just had a baby back into fitness.” The Body Coach, as he is best known to millions of social media followers and disciples who lap up his bestselling cookery books, speaks as fast as he scissor-crunches while preaching the benefits of exercising and eating right. Forget fictional superheroes, Wicks has some top tips to change all of our habits in a way…

Having been a chef in restaurants for years, a stint working in an Edinburgh hostel showed Fiona Donaldson how the poorest were priced out of an important social activity – eating with other people. You might buy someone who is homeless some food but would you feel comfortable sharing a meal with them? That was the question, and the problem Donaldson was ready to address as she set up social enterprise Prep Table. “Despite a willingness to donate to charities, or to buy someone a sandwich, generally people’s mindset has not been changed,” says Donaldson. Collaboration is key. Prep Table works with established organisations in Edinburgh, such as Streetwork, Rock Trust, Salvation Army, Social Bite, Women’s Aid and Home-Start, with people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Kitchens…

Back in 2008, I was reporting and writing about petroleum when a group of scientists at the US-government-run Joint Genome Institute invited me on a ‘Termite Safari’ to gather 10,000 termites in the Arizona desert. JGI was then sequencing the genes of the microbes in termite’s guts in the hope of replicating the bugs’ ability to digest wood, but for human purposes; they wanted to create biofuels from wood and grass that could combat greenhouse gas emissions. I was intrigued – and tired of the problems of oil – and so I accepted their invitation and then spent a few days with them, driving around and finding termites. That trip through the scraggly desert of Arizona was an introduction to the ways of termites. I searched under rocks and in…

READ MORE FROM... EDWARD LAWRENSON VISIT BIGISSUE.COM Columbus takes its name from the city in Indiana. Among the many things this debut drama is concerned with are the modernist buildings that have made Columbus a magnet for design aficionados: this small Midwestern conurbation is host to pioneering buildings by masters of post-war modernism like Eero Saarinen and Harry Weese. From the opening scene, the movie revels in this architecture. A middle-aged woman follows an older gentleman through a series of interiors – spaces of poised, harmonious geometry impeccably filmed by a stationary camera. We find out a little more about this couple as the film progresses, but for now they are subsumed to a far grander design. Less characters in a fiction, they’re more like figures…