Innholdsfortegnelse for 11/8/2021 i The Big Issue

BIG ISSUE INVEST Recycle your unwanted furniture Got a coffee table collecting dust? Instead of taking it to the dump or waiting for the council to come and collect, there are charities that collect furniture from your home and put it to eco-friendly use, helping those in need. The campaign group End Furniture Poverty estimates that 4.8 million people are living without at least one essential appliance, and only two per cent of social housing comes furnished. In 2017, charity Buttle UK estimated that 400,000 children are living in such poverty that they do not have a bed. “It’s quite horrific even in this day and age, when we go to deliver furniture we’ve seen children sleeping on cardboard on the floor,” said Marion Kenyon, chief executive of North Worcestershire…

In the far north-east of Russia – inside the Arctic Circle, further east than Japan – a mini-caravan of camels are adapting to their first Siberian winter. It’s -20C. Do camels like the snow? “I am not sure any animals really like the snow, but camels do well,” says Nikita Zimov. “We will be able to tell better next year. But they have extremely good fur so they should be good.” Camels are just one of the unexpected animals found in Pleistocene Park. There are bison, yak, cows, goats and sheep. The park was started by Nikita’s scientist father Sergey. In 1984 he was stationed in remote Siberia to study the ecology. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, Sergey stayed. He discovered two things. During the Pleistocene period, ending 11,000 years…

BOOKS How the pandemic inspired a poetic kind of hope William Wall FILM Yet another Diana film, and yet another cliché-ridden calamity Hanna Flint ON TOUR A rummage around Britain’s best independent bookshops Robin Ince MUSIC A new ballet to mark Dante’s death is simply divine Claire Jackson STREET ART HEADDRESS by Rene Robbins Ninety-year-old Rene has severe arthritis in her hands, which dictates her approach to her work. Headdress was made on a bad day with paper torn recklessly from magazines. The carefully rendered head was added later. While made without any conscious attempt to impose a narrative or theme, the work now reminds her of the time she worked as a nanny in Africa; the vibrant colours and sounds. The work on this page is created by people…

CLASSICAL Towering Inferno A heavenly new ballet with a special score is a fitting tribute to Dante on the 700th anniversary of his death In one of those moments that make you feel as though you might be in your very own version of The Truman Show, the radio played National Express by The Divine Comedy. The band takes its name from Dante Alighieri’s epic work, which chronicles the 14th-century Italian poet’s imagined journey through hell and purgatory to eventually reach heaven. Dante’s writing has had a huge cultural impact, inspiring everything from video games (Devil May Cry) and bestselling novels (Dan Brown’s Inferno) to iconic pop groups. While Neil Hannon’s collective has just marked its 30th birthday, events are taking place to commemorate 700 years since the death of…

MARICICA TATARU, 42 I started selling The Big Issue after I noticed some people on the street and found out most of them started because they weren’t in employment. I thought, this looks like a job to me and I want to do it as well. At the beginning I didn’t really know how to sell; however, I’ve learned really quick and now I’ve got used to it. Some days are really good and I sell well, and some days not so much. Mondays are good because people want to read the new issue, then sales are slow, and it picks up again at the end of the week. But it hasn’t been as good since the pandemic. It has been very difficult. The high street is not busy any…

“I was very excited to meet Sean. As soon as I received his letter I said I would be delighted to meet him. “The Malvinas issue is a big thing in our bilateral relationship. From a political point of view it is one of the hot topics. It is very difficult to manage, and for my country it is an absolute priority. That priority does not translate into British politics and this is part of the problem. “I think people who share pain share a traumatic experience. I’m sure that if you put Argentine veterans in a room with British veterans they would agree with many things. These people fought for both our countries and that deserves respect regardless of the position of each country. “We need to improve to…

REVIEW Biting satire takes a skewer to publishing’s most pompous It’s a brave and undoubtedly foolish author who produces a novel that is in effect a declaration of war on the entire publishing industry. Not one who values career longevity, say, or a future of cosy, drunken lunches on expense accounts, or, like, actually getting his books published. Dan Rhodes is such a man, and thank heaven for him. Rhodes is disillusioned and slightly nuts but also a loveable enigma. One of the funniest writers in Britain today, he’s a satirist who aims squarely at the pompous, the priggish and the over-promoted, and a tonic in an era of wearyingly short, spare, production-line novels excavating the somewhat limited contents of a twentysomething’s life. It’s six years since Rhodes’s last comic…

High Low Duo Ravel and Bartók The electric guitar is usually associated with rock icons, freewheeling solos and stadium gigs rather than classical music of the early 20th century. However, High Low Duo – New York guitarists Cameron Greider and Jack Petruzzelli, who have worked with Patti Smith, Rufus Wainwright and Chris Cornell, among others, have just released an album that shows the instrument is more versatile than we might think. The collection features new arrangements of works by Ravel and Bartók including pieces from the Mother Goose Suite and reworkings of violin duets. Rather than attempt to strictly transcribe the originals, the duo has used techniques better suited to electric guitar. The resulting collection is bright and colourful. Ravel and Bartók is out now on Sono Luminus…

Inside the COP26 conference area pledges were being made and the globe’s big players – from Bezos and Gates, to Biden and DiCaprio – gathered. Outside interesting conversations continued. The debt faced by developing nations remains a live issue. How can they service that debt AND meet costly CO2 demands is a good question. One campaign group, the Jubilee Debt Campaign, took an inflatable Loch Ness “debt monster” to the River Clyde to demand cancellation of debts and call for future climate finance to come in the form of grants, not loans. Shortly after their arrival, Nessie was seized and removed from the river by Glasgow police. It was, they said, due to fire safety regulations.…

Type “homeless veterans” into your social media platform of choice and see what comes up. Wild claims of ex-servicemen and women flooding the streets while foreigners live it up in the lap of luxury will soon appear. These sentiments were particularly prevalent after the Westminster government’s announcement in August that it would take 20,000 Afghan refugees over the next five years following the Taliban’s return to power. A quick scroll on Twitter soon reveals: “Why should Afghan children get laptops when British veterans are homeless?” or “Homeless veterans before economic migrants today” or “Homeless veterans would love half of what the illegals get”. You get the idea. But what’s the reality? To answer that question, The Big Issue spoke to Lee Buss-Blair, director of operations at Riverside, who has worked…

My 16-year-old self was insecure and worried a lot. She was happy and confident at times, and very hard working, but the insecurity came from loads of places. It is hard being a teenager, never wanting to fit in but always thinking others fitted in better, or worrying about exams, worrying about not being good enough. All those typical teenager insecurities. Teenagers spend such a lot of time worrying – and often worrying about things they can do nothing about. I spent so much time worrying about whether people liked me, which was such a waste of time. It felt so important. When I think about my younger self, I get quite angry that I didn’t know what I know now. I didn’t know that it was OK to be…

REVIEW SPENCER More tattle than tribute The latest in a long line of movies about Princess Diana merely reinforces all the worst criticisms levelled at her life I may be a traitor to my millennial generation, but a Princess Diana obsessive I am not. Maybe it’s because I am a staunch republican when it comes to anything royal-related and I find their continued stranglehold over British culture nauseating. So as much as Diana is a tragic figure, whose life was taken far too soon and in abhorrent circumstances, she was still an upper-class part of an overprivileged institution that should have been abolished decades ago. Since her death in 1997, the continued media and cultural fixation on the woman has been disturbing to behold. There’s the endless stream of tell-all…