Innholdsfortegnelse for 05-10-20 i The Big Issue

Our Ride Out Recession Alliance is gathering pace among leading economists and political heavyweights. This week, former Prime Minister and Chancellor Gordon Brown adds his support to RORA as he highlights the moves his own coalition is making to ensure that there is a safety net for those facing unemployment as collateral damage in the imminent post-pandemic economic catastrophe. Our goals are closely aligned and we will work together in the coming weeks and months. But alongside high-profile professionals whose experience is invaluable in mapping a way out of the crisis, we are actively seeking to hear the voice of the public, from our readers, and anyone who has ideas for how we can ameliorate the effects of the recession, and cushion the blow to people across the UK. Innovative,…

VENDORS Restrictions on movement are changing week to week, area to area. Our staff are working closely with every vendor to make sure it is safe for them to be selling, and safe for customers to buy. We are providing masks and hand gel, and encouraging vendors to follow government guidelines on an ongoing basis. This is a tough time, so please if you can, support your local vendor by buying The Big Issue from them each week. PITCHES Towns and cities across the country are quieter than normal so our teams are moving vendors to pitches where they have the best chance of selling magazines, depending on local safety measures and circumstances. An ever-increasing number of vendors are offering contactless payments so they are not losing out as people…

Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan’s work thrives by basking in the complacency of loss. His elegiac style has transported feelings over landscapes, time periods, decades. His distinct technique as both a novelist and investigative journalist, as in his earlier work Our Fathers, presents simplistically, almost objectively, every detail and sinew. His new novel, Mayflies, is based around one such loss; the loss of a friend, and the loss of youth. The sense of changed lives and innocence decayed is embedded into the atmosphere of this work, created by a love of life and its possibilities. O’Hagan claims the book to be “autobiographical”, and much of it is set in the former industrial Ayrshire towns reeling from the harshest side-effects of Thatcherism. Two young men, Jimmy and Tully, roam their local area…

It was back in 2018 when the Hollywood trade press revealed that indie writer/director Miranda July (The Future, Me and You and Everyone We Know) was going to make a heist movie next. With Brad Pitt’s production company on board, and Evan Rachel Wood leading a cast that included Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger and Gina Rodriguez, it seemed on the surface like it might be a project that leaned July closer to the mainstream, and broke her work through to a larger audience. Certainly that’s how it plays out in the early parts of that resultant film, Kajillionaire. In spite of the film’s title, we meet a family who are scrabbling around with small-time scams, looking to raise tens of dollars rather than billions. A small money-earner involves simply taking…

Necessity is the mother of invention, according to the proverb. As social distancing restrictions look set to remain part of our immediate futures, the music world is finding creative solutions to ensure that the show goes on. The Grange Festival recently hosted an hour-long promenade performance set in its bucolic home in Hampshire. Precipice was entirely open air, with optional seating arranged around the ‘one-metre-plus’ rule, using the Grange’s neo-classical architecture and surrounding fields as an expansive stage. The Chagall blue colour scheme worked to tie the disparate elements together (the programme itself was something of a variety performance) and summed up the current sense of dystopia. The music included The Flower Duet from Lakmé (the vocal piece used in the old British Airways advert), the ‘Flieder Monologue’ from Die…

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

We are saddened to announce that much-loved vendor Ed Sirani has died. Veteran vendor Ed died in hospital on September 20 at the age of 63 after a decade of selling the magazine on his pitch outside McColl’s and Morrisons in the town New Milton. He was known as a champion of The Big Issue cause and his consistency and dedication saw him named Vendor of the Year by The Big Issue’s Dorset and Hampshire team back in 2015. Kirsten Thomson, The Big Issue’s South West regional manager, said: “Ed was very much part of the community in New Milton and he was proud of selling The Big Issue.” Customers have left touching tributes and flowers on his pitches. Regular Joe Bailey said: “Ed has not been well for a…

I come from a family of incredibly useful men. That wasn’t difficult because I had five handy brothers, and the only useless ones in the family, in terms of building and making things, and repairing things, were me and my mum. We seemed to break things rather than mend them. We were dazed and confused by electric plugs and wallpapering. We got as much paint on us as on the wall. We were never dragooned into doing more than washing up and sweeping floors. Even my mother’s cooking left much to be desired. She could make nothing out of something, the exact opposite of what it should be. My dad was the better cook; my brothers excelled at it too. My cackhandedness was clearly demonstrated when I was six and…

‘SHOWBIZ IS LIKE WAR AND IRISH TEETH ARE SAVAGE’ What happens when the most outspok en band in Britain meets its most provocative comedian? The Big Issue brought together Idles and Stewart Lee, both masters of the art of railing against injustice in the world. Lee has been a dedicated fan from the first time he saw Idles perform, describing their music as “snowflake oi”. Their songs capture the mood of an uncertain nation, sounding a siren for the underdog and downtrodden. Their third album, Ultra Mono, has just been released, showcasing an evolving sound drawing on hip-hop influences, with guests including Bad Seed Warren Ellis and Jamie Cullum, but the humour, hubris and urgency remain. Model Village is a cutting portrait of little Britain’s small thinking (with a video…

Greek myths weren’t something I read as a child; they were something I watched. Every bank holiday, I was glued to the television as Jason and his Argonauts set sail in search of a golden fleece, or Perseus and his winged horse, Pegasus, embarked on a quest to defeat a mighty sea monster. I’m sure my brother and I must have owned a book of myths for children, but I have no recollection of it. Meanwhile the skeletal warriors which spring from the ground to fight Jason, the bronze giant which comes to life and tries to crush him, the shimmering fleece which he eventually seizes, these have stayed in my mind since the first time I saw the Ray Harryhausen-animated film. I still love these films now: the special…

“Jolene is old school. I compare her, which is maybe a bit bold of me, to Tony Soprano at the beginning of The Sopranos.” If Hayley Squires is feeling bold, then little wonder. For her latest role, Squires, whose devastating performance as Katie Morgan in I, Daniel Blake moved, shocked and impressed in equal measures, leads a starry cast including Rupert Everett and Joe Dempsie in Channel 4’s big autumn drama, Adult Material. She plays Jolene Dollar: business owner, devoted mother-of-three, veteran porn star. While the tone of the four-part series written by Lucy Kirkwood is largely playful, and the costumes and sets can dazzle, there is no disguising the serious themes at its heart. Issues around consent, control and the impact of porn on young people’s attitudes come into…

Our Ride Out Recession Alliance is uniting titans of the business world, the homelessness sector and campaigning to protect jobs and prevent homelessness as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to bite. Unilever, Generation Rent and Shelter are among the partners who have joined our campaign in the search for vital solutions to the growing challenges facing the jobs market and the wider economy. But we also need your ideas too, bringing everyone’s skills, specialisms and perspectives together to ensure no one gets leǽt behind. We have already had plenty of ideas but keep them coming! Here, Ray and James dig in to plans to help people get back into work. Having been interested in history and archaeology for most of my life, I have been involved, as a…

Our social investment arm Big Issue Invest (BII) is making its biggest investment to date to help Scotland’s first social enterprise letting agency make affordable housing more accessible in Glasgow. BII is investing £3m from the Big Issue Invest Social Enterprise Fund II to help Homes for Good to progress their ambitious plans to double their portfolio and expand into other parts of the UK. HFG provides pioneering letting agency services to landlords and a unique and flexible tenancy support for the people who live in its 500 homes. They have also refurbished almost 250 dilapidated properties since 2014 before letting them out to people in housing need. Big Issue Changemaker and executive director for Homes for Good Social Business Group Dr Susan Aktemel said: “This significant deal clearly shows…

When I left school at 16 there was only one thing I wanted to do, and that was to make music. The academic side of life never appealed to me, I just wanted to join a band. So I did an audition to join the band Shades of Midnight – I remember I sang Summertime from Porgy and Bess – and I got through. From then on it was all about the music. I learned to hold a rhythm on a stringed instrument when I was about five or six years old. My mother’s friend bought me a blue ukulele. A blind man taught me the first three chords G, D7, E minor, then back to G. I taught myself the rest. I used to make my own little instruments,…

01 Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson She’s considered the queen of modern gothic, and for good reason: these stories are sinister, gleeful, mysterious, desperately sad, and so tense I forget to breathe while reading them. 02 Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Mexico is perfect for a gothic story. It’s more than just seeing the usual gothic tropes overlaid on a non-European setting; Mexico’s history and culture are vital to the narrative. And the evil at the heart of the story? Patriarchy! 03 Beloved by Toni Morrison You can never go wrong with Toni Morrison, but this is my favourite of hers. The tale of the ghost baby and the horrors of her world will forever haunt me. 04 Dream Date (Point Horror) by Sinclair Smith Since starting the Teenage Scream…

Conspiracy theories create fog around the duplicity that is in plain sight “We’re going to get balls deep into the truth,” started one podcast about Covid conspiracy that explained its impartiality before going straight in to a strenuous defence of Donald Trump. It is easy to be blind to our tribalism and getting easier. You are just telling your truth which, as luck would have it, coincides with the objective truth. Another week where I have no idea what is parody, what is a Dadaist experiment and what is meant to be heartfelt. Having been involved in a Covid-19 podcast I have had plenty of conspiracy theories and misinformation popping up into my life like a parade of grotesque angry jack-in- the-boxes. The world is beginning to look like a…

1. What is the largest island in the world? 2. What does Au stand for in the periodic table? 3. What is the smallest continent? 4. Which philosopher coined the term ‘I think, therefore I am’? 5. Which two authors won the Booker Prize in 2019? 6. Which two countries are Europe’s biggest exporters of beers? 7. Who is the patron saint of Spain? 8. What are the four Little Women sisters called? 9. Which country has the highest number of bicycles per capita of any country? 10. A hovercraft is sometimes known as an ACV, what does this acronym stand for? 11. Scottish businesswoman Ann Gloag was co-founder of which international transport company? 12. The M11 is a 55-mile motorway that links which city with North-East London? 13. In…

I used to be a tattoo artist but because of my disabilities I can’t do it any more. I’ve got bipolar, and also arthritis and sciatica. I came to tattooing later in life but I was always interested, even back when I was really young. I’ve always drawn and painted so it just felt right to do that for a living. I don’t have an outlet for my creativity at the moment, and I do miss it. I miss drawing and painting but with my bipolar I don’t always have the right head space to sit and draw. I had a business called Bony Ink and I’ve tattooed myself plenty of times. I’ve done my own feet, my left arm, my left hand, my leg and my ankles. You’ve got…