Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/2/2022 i The Big Issue

Can Keir Starmer repeat Blair’s trick by finding the sweet spot of centreground opinion, which New Labour so skilfully discerned? When Tony and Cherie Blair made their way up Downing Street on May 2 1997, glad-handing their jubilant Union flag-waving supporters, you could be forgiven for assuming the new Prime Minister’s only tenuous connection to Northern Ireland was his theme tune. Things Can Only Get Better pumped out of every loudspeaker at New Labour rallies after Blair’s spin doctors decided the D:Ream track, written by Derry’s Peter Cunnah, captured the mood for change across the UK. If you were a Blair admirer living in Northern Ireland, you weren’t allowed to join the party until 2006 (even then Labour made the move so grudgingly it banned me from filming would-be members…

Produced and curated by a terminally ill ex-homeless artist, Around the World in 80 Artists is a brand new event taking place in London. It will showcase a variety of work by established and non-established artists alike at a multitude of pop-up events over a two-week period. It’s the work of UK Colab collective co-founder Adrian Ekenhall, the extraordinary self-made artist who, after six years of rough sleeping, overcoming drug addiction, and surviving both a knife attack and then a traffic accident which left him with a broken back, has since discovered that he has stage four cancer. This event is the latest product of Ekenhall’s tireless drive to leave a united creative legacy. The artwork pictured is Pleasure Seeker by Lucy SM Johnston – another self-taught artist working with…

HUGH PALMER, 76 I want to sell The Big Issue until I’m 100. I’m only 76 now, so it’s a way off. But my mum is 105 and still going strong, so I’ve got it in me. Selling The Big Issue keeps me sharp – the conversations, jokes and regular customers are as much a part of my day as the sales pitch. A few years ago, when I’d been featured in the magazine before, somebody came and offered me a job selling things on the phone. I’ve often felt people don’t want to know once you get a bit older, so it was nice to have somebody tell me age didn’t matter. But the salary wasn’t good, and I discovered you’d get the bullet if you didn’t meet certain…

Truth and lies  Our PM is priceless. He tells us his lies are lies because he didn’t know they were lies. I have a grandson who will stand holding the offensive item while telling me he isn’t holding the said item; he is seven. I expect more from a supposedly responsible elected adult person. Johnson, you have failed this country. I am rather sad that I am a member of a country that allows you and your cronies to ‘rule’. As a kid I would have been made to stand in the corner, head bowed, though thankfully the Dunces Cap was a thing of the past. Steven Elliott James Ah, you’ll have to excuse Boris, he forgets. And doesn’t understand right from wrong when he’s breaking the law. Especially the…

It’s been six long years since award-winning documentary photographer Marc Davenant set out to take defining photos to show the reality of homelessness in the UK. He wanted to challenge perceptions with his Outsiders photography project, to put the focus on the people experiencing homelessness on the streets across the country every day. He succeeded in doing just that immediately – the first perception he changed was his own. “It was when I started to dig into it that I realised that I didn’t know anything about the subject,” he told The Big Issue. “It became bigger, became about homelessness in the round. It wasn’t just street homelessness, it was also sofa surfing and people living in substandard housing, and the project grew as I was doing it. “It became…

Smith shows the connections between the struggles that humans have collectively faced over generations on Earth In Companion Piece, Ali Smith has offered her readers a new gift. This novel, like its earlier, fictional cousins – the Seasonal Quartet – was written and published with remarkable speed. It speaks to the disturbing events of our current world. In visionary prose, Smith figures the rage-inducing experiences of these recent years of pandemic, while weaving in episodes of injustice from the distant past. At the novel’s core is Sand Gray, a queer artist who channels the exhaustion many of us felt during lockdown. Coping with the aftermath of her father’s heart attack, Sand has an existential crisis after an unexpected phone call from Martina Inglis, an old classmate. Martina shares a curious…

Even if you were an elite sniper peering through a hi-tech scope it would be easy to misidentify The Contractor as a mindless action movie. It is a Chris Pine vehicle in which the one-time Captain Kirk plays an ex-marine wading into the murky waters of the private military sector. Will our honourable soldier be able to hold his nose during a morally dubious operation far from home? If not, what vengeance might this highly trained warrior unleash? That the film has such a generic title and is premiering on a streaming service rather than cinemas adds to the impression that it will be a disposable B-movie to be consumed like gloopy takeaway pizza: avidly in the moment, but with a twinge of guilt afterwards. Thankfully The Contractor (from director…

I don’t usually weigh myself. What’s the point? Owning scales would only make me anxious. The size of my body is just another source of worry among all of the others. I have generally monitored the fluctuation of my body shape via the fit of my clothes. As long as my jeans still just about do up in the morning, I figure there’s no need to panic. But last week I was weighed at the GP’s for the first time in several years. Turns out, I weigh in at an impressive sounding 102kg. Impressive, that is, if I were a heavyweight boxer formed of sinewy muscle. But I am, in fact, a slightly spongy 47-year-old dad with a wobbly stomach. I typed my details into an online NHS thing which…

When colonial Victorianism collided with African culture, an unusual branch of classical music developed. Nigerian-Romanian pianist Rebeca Omordia has done much to promote this distinctive repertoire and her latest album African Pianism shares lesser-known pieces from this period. Rhythmic soundscapes meet Western melodies, resulting in free-flowing structures and fascinating harmonies. Omordia’s African Concert Series in London continues in the two-day festival at Iklectik art lab on May 3, and the Young People’s African Concert at The Africa Centre on June 4.…

The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue YOU RESPOND TO OUR EARTH DAY SPECIAL [ISSUE 1509, APRIL 18] Thanks to @BigIssue for sharing a really crucial message this Earth Day that biodiversity is in crisis. @CharityComms I noticed. One lone starling, one jackdaw, no robins, no thrush. In a few weeks the local council will again engulf all things green deemed unwanted in glyphosate. Madness. @PrimeFeral This wrong thinking is embedded into the language of our councils – “weeds” instead of plants, “pests” instead of rodents. To change our world we need to change our minds, but to change our minds we need to change our language. @dazzaross I haven’t used pesticides for years and my garden is lovely (as many…

Polls open on May 5, with local elections in England and Scotland and Assembly elections in Northern Ireland. Nationally, the conversation is focused on what a Partygate-inflicted drubbing might mean for Boris Johnson’s premiership. That is an issue, but it’s not the only one driving concerns. This set of local elections is a battleground for the issues affecting people’s lives. Dismayed by what they see around them, a growing number of ordinary people have felt compelled to put themselves forward as independent candidates. The Independent Network, an organisation helping people to run as independents, says three times more candidates have come forward than did in 2019. Come May 6 they could have a big impact on how we all lead our lives. We spoke to normal people running as independent…

I grew up in a very large Indian community. I had lots of cousins and you’d go to each other’s houses and hang out at the weekend; everybody was living quite nearby. When I was 16 I started working as an usher at my local theatre in Leicester, and I just remember being introduced to this world of acting and absorbing so much material. And thinking, was this something that I wanted to do in my life? I got into drama and not much later I did a play, actually at the Leicester Haymarket, where I had worked as an usher. All I remember was enjoying it and thinking this feels good, let’s see where this goes. I didn’t worry about whether being a British Asian woman would be an…

1 Mia Makes a Meadow by Rachel Lawston and Beatriz Castro This book is brilliantly inspiring, showing children how to share their outdoor spaces with animals and other people, modelling how communities can work together to care for the natural spaces around them. 2 In the Pond by Will Millard and Rachel Qiuqi This gorgeous board book is a lovely introduction to pond life. With read-aloud rhyming texts to walk you through each story and a great collection of first words to see and say, this book is a great resource for early language skills. 3 The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris With the appearance of modern words in our children’s vocabularies, we must not let the language of nature slip away. That’s the…

Sophie Marceau loves making movies for the same reason audiences love watching them – namely, a bit of escapism. “The whole process of making a movie is very special,” she says. “To me, it’s like recreating another world. Also, you are part of a family. For two or three months, you’re totally taken care of. And life cannot get to you any more.” Marceau is one of France’s most famous and prolific actors. To international audiences she is best known for Braveheart and being only the second main Bond villain who’s a woman, in The World Is Not Enough (Lotte Lenya in From Russia With Love the other), and the 55-year-old is a megastar in her home country. But despite being joined by her dog Litchi (French for lychee) for…

Sarah Alexander, chief executive and artistic director of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (NYO), is talking me through the recent changes to the ensemble’s recruitment process. I’m finding the conversation a little – to use current parlance – triggering. My own unsuccessful foray into NYO life involved an arduous journey to Kettering, where, despite possessing reasonable technical skill and obsessive interest, I failed to convey either aspect to an unwelcoming panel. I silently vowed never to go through such a process ever again and quickly switched to less collaborative activities. Today’s teenagers have a very different experience. “We like to see the people involved in the process as gate openers, rather than gate keepers,” explains Alexander. The NYO now works with hundreds of young musicians alongside the ‘official’…