Innholdsfortegnelse for 9/6/2021 i The Big Issue

letters@bigissue.com Thank you from Tom I was recently diagnosed with a heart condition and have only, in the past couple of weeks, been venturing out to try walking short distances without being breathless. On Monday, I was in Glasgow city centre with my wife. We split up to do separate shops and agreed to meet back outside Marks & Spencer on Argyle Street. Monday was a very hot day, and I had walked a bit more than I had intended. When I got back to Marks & Spencer I was tired from over-exertion and the heat. I sat down on one of the posts outside the store to wait on my wife turning up. That was when I was approached by a young lad selling The Big Issue, asking if…

I have been reading about the Cold War, a long war fought for control of the world. Interestingly our latest dramas – a combination of forest fires and the Taliban – owe their birth to that Cold War. A war that grew out of the need to defeat Hazism, with two regimes totally opposed to each other coming together to destroy the German war machine. So in a way we are living in the afterglow of that great war that finally saw off all the pretensions, almost, of a vast British Empire, and allowed the two big players – the Soviets and the Americans – to lay out the postwar world. Love was not lost. Both needed security and control. And out of that thirst for control we have –…

“When I was younger, I thought that you could, like, infiltrate from the inside, this Babylon ting,” says psychedelic neo-soul and R’n’B superstar in the making Greentea Peng, speaking of her politically fired-up formative years as a member of the UK Youth Parliament. The Bermondsey-born now 27-year-old’s ambition to one day become prime minister fell by the wayside after she hit a rough patch in her mid-teens. Torn between her divorced parents’ homes in London and Hastings, bullied at school, self-confidence shattered – “I hate to make my shit sound dramatic because there’s always someone worse off,” she hastens to add – Greentea Peng lost her passion for music, dropped out of education at 17 and fell into a hedonistic and destructive party lifestyle. But don’t assume that her ambition…

For young people, the taste of freedom from pandemic restrictions is bittersweet. From sudden under-socialisation without schools and youth groups, crucial for our development and growth, to the double worries of paralysing eco-anxiety and constant fears of Covid-19 infection, the combination of the pandemic and impending climate disaster has left young people in the UK feeling stranded, isolated from our peers, and uncertain about what remains of our futures. Over the past two years, communication and connections among many of us have been rapidly changing. During the Fridays For Future climate strikes of 2019, climate strikers and activists were able to take advantage of the online work, meeting and organising spaces such as Zoom, Slack and social media – spaces that are now the hallmark of pandemic life, and have…

Amika George has had quite a year. The period poverty activist published her first book, Make It Happen, in January, was the youngest person on the Queen's Nonours list in June, and graduated from Cambridge soon after. It's no surprise the 21-year-old is now featuring in a celebration of "Hew Britain", but how does it feel to be the face of a generation? “It’s a huge honour," George tells The Big Issue. "The idea of a new Britain for me feels really exciting – this idea that when we come out of a post-Covid world it will be better and everything that’s happened over the last year and a half will be an opportunity to do things better. It’s invigorating." George began campaigning for free period products in schools in…

We met Stephen [Manderson, his real name] shortly after seeing his documentary Suicide and Me, which is an incredibly raw and brave piece of filming, around a topic that's very personal to us. It can't have been more than a week after watching it that he popped up in our DM's. We're not big on fate and destiny and all that, but it was a spooky coincidence. We've collaborated a bunch of times since on different charity projects, and he introduced us to the mental health charity CALM, who we've been ambassadors of for the last three years. We're huge fans of the way Stephen selflessly uses his platform to campaign on behalf of others, and seeing him constantly do that reminds us that eating Deliveroo in our pants and…

Time to write my piece for The Big Sssue. Crack knuckles, power up the laptop and stare down the blank page. Wasn’t it the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu who said every journey begins with a single step? Actually, was it him? Better check. Open a browser window and fire up the search engine. After all, every essay begins with a Google search… But what, in fact, is a Google search? What are we searching? One of Google’s engineers, Matt Cutts, explains: “The first thing you need to understand is that, when you do a Google search, you aren’t actually searching the web. You’re searching Google’s index of the web.” Other search engines are available, of course, but underpinning them all is the idea of an index, a table where you…

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One million children living in poverty returning to school aǽter the summer break will miss out on free school meals this term, child poverty campaigners have warned. Strict eligibility rules are locking almost one-third of disadvantaged kids out of the state-funded meals, according to Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and Covid Realities, with experts dubbing the proportion of children affected “an outrage”. Around 42 per cent of children from low- income backgrounds in Wales do not qualify for free school meals, the study showed, the highest proportion in the UK. England follows closely behind at 37 per cent, while 22 per cent of poorer children in Northern Ireland and 17 per cent in Scotland do not get free lunches. Free school meals are given to families on a range of…

Hugely talented, extremely hard working, humble, funny, smart, socially conscious, eloquent, inspirational, cultural icon. Pretty sure that's how Andy Murray would describe us. Just kidding. Andy doesn't really need an introduction, and his inclusion in our group of people who are inspirational Brits is self-explanatory. He's all of the above. The Connor Brothers Letter To My Younger Self By the time I was 16 I was really starting to think tennis was going to be my career. I started playing tennis when I was around four years old, mostly through my mum being a tennis coach and having a brother [top level doubles player Jamie] of similar age – there’s only 15 months difference between us. We used to do everything together. It was really nice to have a brother…

It’s very humbling and I’m grateful to be involved in a project like this with the Connor Brothers and The Big Issue. It’s sick to make my Big Issue debut. I’ve seen it about for a long time. I don’t know what I class myself as – I suppose I’m an entrepreneur-slash-film director. But what I really do is connect worlds. When I was about 15, I was given a camera as a gift. I started to run about and film artists who were not getting represented in mainstream media. I started uploading to YouTube when there was hardly any original music content – at the time, it was all funny videos or things ripped from TV. I saw a gap in the market and started uploading original filmed content.…

Every couple of years or so someone randomly pops up on our radar who leaves a lasting impression. We're not even sure how we first met Ryan, but we immediately knew that he was destined to go on to big things. He's a magnetic personality who radiates positivity and creativity, which makes him, roughly speaking, our opposite. Ryan is a cultural polymath, involved in everything from fashion and music, to TV and art and, even though we've tried, it's impossible not to be inspired by him. The Connor Brothers…

A screaming and shouting minority that exist on the outer points of left and right drown out any opinions of a majority who exist somewhere more in-between. There a fairer outlook on life resides, where people understand that issues such as poverty, homelessness, violence, racism, prejudice, addiction, disparity and deprivation don’t belong to those suffering them, but are societal issues that require the understanding and efforts of us all. Generational poverty has led to a lack of education, apathy and a lack of real social engagement, anger and a seething hatred which has been looking for a home. Hate is undoubtedly on the rise. Sadly that hatred is often aimed at their neighbours who may not be seen as being as British as them; there’s this weird faux-patriotic, anti-foreign vitriol…

01 Fire & Steam by Christian Wolmar An excellent place to begin a deep dive into the history of British railways that spans their birth to privatisation in the 1990s. 02 Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett The penultimate book in the Discworld series relives the excitement of Britain’s railway revolution in the setting of Pratchett’s wonderful fantasy world. 03 The Big British Railway Puzzle Book by the National Railway Museum If you like to while away your time with a few puzzles, then this is the railway book for you. Fun puzzles alongside a great introduction to Britain’s railway history. 04 Bradshaw’s Guide: The 1866 Handbook Reprinted by George Bradshaw Bradshaw’s Guide was indispensable for any Victorian traveller. This reprint of a 155-year-old tourist guide (complete with the original adverts)…

I am excited. Never before has there been such a strong community of amazing young jazz musicians in the UK. For decades this country has led the way musically and never more so than now. I moved to the UK as a child and quickly fell in love with the diverse music scene here. London is the best city in the world in so many ways but especially for music, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. In the last five years though, the UK – and particularly London – has undergone something of a musical renaissance. Young UK musicians who have grown up on club music, from drum ’n’ bass and reggae to grime and hip-hop and yet have still mastered their instruments, have started forming bands based…

VENDORS Following a long lockdown, vendors in England, Scotland and Wales are back out selling the magazine. Please continue to support them. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND SHOPS Since the first lockdown in March last year, we have supported our vendors with more than £1m of financial 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…

Each year we invite stars of the art world to take over an edition of The Big Issue. They bring a wholly different perspective. They encourage us to view the world differently. Frequently the artists bring friends and associates to tackle a theme. The results have always been fascinating. This time round, James Golding and Mike Snelle, The Connor Brothers, approach from a different angle. They look at where Britain is just now. Post-Brexit, post-Covid, in a time of identity politics, uncertain futures for many and what feels like closing borders, they offer a different view of a potentially better nation. They bring together art they have been creating that focuses on fascinating emerging and established names across sport, culture, campaigning and social change. It’s a glorious collection that you’re…

If you believe that when Adam ate the apple in The Garden of Eden he instigated a battle between good and evil that would play out over millennia, and that this age-old war would reach its' terrible zenith this century, when the devil invented love island, social media, and whatever influencers are, and it seemed all hope was lost, then you'll have been as relieved as we were when Greentea Peng arrived on the scene and instantly evened the odds. In a world where pretty much everyone is pretending to be someone else, Greentea Peng is entirely herself. The Connor Brothers…

Pre the world going to shit with Covid, the world was already going to shit, in a far more urgent and catastrophic way, with climate change. Fighting it requires individual, local, national and international action and cooperation, and it'd be easy to leave the problem to others, and assume that our individual actions can't make a difference. Noga is evidence that they can. They are one of the leading figures in The UK Student Climate Change Network, and were instrumental in organising the student climate change strikes, which saw tens of thousands of young people march in protest against the lack of action by older generations about an issue that will define their collective future. Otherwise known as bunking off double maths. The Connor Brothers…

We photographed Amika as part of a project about people we look up to, and the expression 'look up to' feels kind of an important one here. Traditionally, younger people have been talked down to, or patronised, when they voice their opinions, or ask to be heard on issues which affect them (and/or others). Talking to Amika makes you realise just how ridiculous that attitude is. And it's not that Amika is some kind of exception amongst young people, some kind of outlier, she's not. This is a generation which recognises injustice and demands change. Truth is, part of the reason we've fucked up the world so badly is that we didn't give sufficient and equal weight to the voices and opinions of young people, who often see things more…

“This portrait is really important to me,” says Ryan Lanji, the guerrilla club promoter, curator and surprise florist extraordinaire. “It’s the last picture that anyone took of me before I embarked on The Big Flower Fight. I remember talking to the Connor Brothers. They were like, ‘You’ll probably win’, and I was like, ‘OK, I will’.” As will be known by viewers of Netflix’s The Big Flower Fight – a Vic Reeves-fronted, floral take on The Great British Bake Off – Lanji did indeed go on to triumph in 2020, alongside his then-partner Andrew Whittle. Underdogs with little knowledge of the limitations of their materials, Lanji and Whittle turned their naïveté into a strength, letting imagination run wild. A blooming great big dinosaur, a Yayoi Kusama-inflected infinity mirror of foliage,…

The Connor Brothers are auctioning a unique set of artwork and selling a limited-edition print to raise money for The Big Issue. The print, which quotes Oscar Wilde, is limited edition, with only 75 available, sold through Jealous Gallery. Mike Snelle explains more about why the pair wanted to collaborate with The Big Issue: “Having experienced both severe mental health issues and addiction problems, James and I are very much aware of how easily life can spiral out of control, no matter our background. One year things seem okay, then the next a series of events unfold that leave you banged up in a psychiatric ward, or living on the streets. “You might think that being made homeless is something that only happens to others, but given the perfect shit…

If you want to write something that sells, write nature. The bookshop shelves are rammed with tomes about walking in the countryside, stopping to sniff the flora and fondle the fauna, taking time out of your hectic dash to the grave in order to appreciate Mother Earth’s glorious bounty. Then there’s its evil twin, climate change – endless books telling us how to live and how not to, that predict a fiery end regardless of what we might now do, and that guilt us for every plastic food container we toss into the wrong-coloured bin. Fiction never misses an opportunity. There are reams of post- apocalyptic novels that take as their starting point the careless carbon-death of society. In the hands of lesser writers, these books are awful: heavy-handed parables,…

Many seeds that were planted during the first lockdown and tended in subsequent periods of isolation are now bearing fruit. The six composers on the London Iymphony Orchestra (LIO) Panufnik Icheme had only just started their course when the initial stay-at-home orders were given: plans were adapted rather than shelved, and the result is a series of short ensemble pieces. LIO players recorded the works at Henry Wood Hall, with composition director Colin Matthews producing remotely via video call. The newly released Six Degrees Of Separation (NMC DL3046) is a testament to those challenging conditions, with works such as Emma-Kate Matthews’ Remote Overlap providing a musical response to the changes in communication and connection. Like many others, I found the second – or was it third? – lockdown particularly testing…

NEED HELP? Why not get together with other Big Issue readers on Twitter – @BigIssue Get the answers in next week's mag! Good luck 1. How many dots appear on a pair of dice? 2. Which river flows through the Grand Canyon? 3. Which Scottish band have released albums called Automatic and Darklands? 4. What is cynophobia? 5. Which animal can be seen on the Porsche logo? 6. In what city is the NFL Hall of Fame located? 7. How many colours are used on the South African flag? 8. Who was the first woman pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic? 9. Which member of The Beatles married Maureen Cox in 1965? 10. In Little Red Riding Hood, who does the wolf dress up as? 11. Which pop star…

My partner died in March. But my friends didn’t leave me alone for long Selling The Big Issue has become a way of life for me. It’s getting a bit harder as I get older but you’ve got to expect that. I get more cheek off kids now! I get my pension now and if it wasn’t for The Big issue doing a bit of paperwork for me I wouldn’t have bothered. They told me to get my finger out and get it organised and it has helped. I’ve been selling the magazine for over 20 years in north Wales – Wrexham, Caernarfon, Llandudno. It’s the best part of Britain. I hitched into Wales with a rucksack, a half-ounce of marijuana and £10 to my name because I’d had enough…