Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/9/2022 i The Big Issue

From pizza to lipstick, palm oil is present in almost half of all packaged products found in supermarkets. It gives products a longer shelf life, it’s odourless, colourless and used as a cooking oil across the world. Indonesia is responsible for the majority of palm oil, but late last month announced it was banning exports. This came as the price increased 200 per cent since 2019 and after hundreds of people in Jakarta had to queue to obtain affordable supplies. It’s not just the supply of palm oil that’s drying up. Ukraine produces around half of the world’s supply of sunflower oil, and since the war began exports have dropped by 95 per cent, prompting retailers in UK and Europe to limit the number of bottles customers can buy –…

Prima Facie, according to the dictionary, means ‘at first appearance’; self-evident, obvious. And this is the term that playwright Suzie Miller has used for the title of her courtroom drama. Played by Jodie Comer, it is a 90-minute one-hander, not a monologue, but a play that is skilfully handled by a single actor. I went to the press night last week expecting nothing in particular because I wasn’t feeling like a West End night out. My mind was too full of matters like ‘it’s very expensive to keep people poor’, and the fact that I had just finished a silent retreat. The play seemed initially to be a portrait of a comprehensive school girl making her way inexorably towards some high point in her chosen career of law. Everything looked…

On January 6, 2021, the US Capitol building was under attack. More than 2,000 people – waving the stars and stripes, guns, and signs supporting Donald Trump – stormed the seat of federal power. American democracy was poised on a knife edge. Across the country, Matt Bellamy was in his LA home watching the turmoil unfurl. He was in the midst of his longest-ever absence from England, had just become a dad for the second time… and was starting to write Muse’s ninth studio album. “It’s been a very unusual period of time to be getting creative,” says Bellamy. “It’s very hard to get creative without thinking a little bit more about what’s going on out there.” Bellamy was in Los Angeles with his wife, American model Elle Evans, and…

Six is a musical phenomenon. Having first appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017, the show’s popularity grew rapidly, leading to London’s West End, Broadway and on to worldwide tours. Its retelling of the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII is funny, fearless and has a lot to say about history and big contemporary issues. So do the cast. The six original West End cast members – and the understudy who covered each of their roles – have continued their story by forming a pop group, SVN. They aim to carry on spreading the message of girl power and strength in womanhood, with their rousing debut single Woman exemplifying this. All seven members of SVN – Jarnéia Richard-Noel (Jaye’J), Millie O’Connell, Natalie Paris, Alexia McIntosh (Lexi), Aimie Atkinson,…

HOUSING Boris Johnson wants to bring back Right to Buy in a very big way. There could not be a worse time to do it, warn experts Boris Johnson’s plan to extend the Right to Buy scheme to allow housing association tenants to buy their home at a knockdown price has been labelled as a ploy to secure votes from low-income households in traditional “red wall” areas. The Prime Minister is looking to give as many as 2.5 million people the chance to buy their home for a discount of up to 70 per cent on the market price, depending on the number of years they have spent living in the property. Johnson is also exploring using money spent on housing benefit to contribute to mortgages, according to reports in…

Speaking over the phone after parking his bike by the riverside near his home in the Basque Country, Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell is candid about his encounters with street life as a young man. “My personal experience with homelessness was very real in terms of knowing a lot of people that were on the streets,” he says. “When I was a teenager – it’s been well publicised – I was a heroin addict. Anyone who knows about scoring heroin, you’re going to end up interacting a lot with people who are down and out, who are on the fringes of society within the city. That was when I first encountered The Big Issue as something that existed to try and help those communities of people out. “When you get to know…

Frequent Street Art contributor Geraldine is in her sixties, and has in the past struggled with drug addiction and been homeless twice . This painting is an A3 oil on canvas depicting a London street scene. Art has been a major part of Geraldine’s rehabilitation. “I am currently painting in my home studio,” she says. “I am also working on some street art this summer with a homeless graffiti artist.” geraldinecrimmins.co.uk…

Where last year saw some festivals tentatively dip their toes into the post-Covid waters, in 2022 the river is full and the banks are breaking. This year is the true return of that great weekend outing, the festival; the chance to experience music, literature, food, film and art with thousands of other people of varying levels of giddiness and intoxication. The pandemic stole away the idea that culture can, and should, be experienced communally, that feeling of ambling up to a random stage in a field and finding your new favourite band, or making fast friends on a campsite that you’ll sing along with for one night only. The following listings show that festival season is back and perhaps bigger than ever as Covid restrictions have been ramped down. The…

Nothing brings a sense of place and people more than being there I get a little obsessed by the 10,000. If I don’t get the steps in, I feel jittery. If it’s close to the end of the day, I’ll take the dog out, again, or find some other reason to walk round and round. Talking to others about your step count, I’ve been reminded more than once, is like sharing your dreams. Not your hopes and aspirations, but the actual details of what you dream about. It’s of little interest to others. And yet, here I am. The 10,000 step thing is a confection. It’s a marketing ploy, dreamed up in the early 1960s by a Japanese corporation to sell their new pedometer. Scientists have since calculated that around…

BIG ISSUE ART Artist Heath Kane on why he set up an auction to raise thousands for Big Issue vendors “People take it for granted that there are billionaires, but nobody ever really thinks about the maths of a billion,” says artist Heath Kane. Kane points out that, to make a billion, you’d need a salary of £20 million a year for 50 years. “It seems impossible. So how is it we’ve now got multi-billionaires?” Such is the level of mega-wealth now that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is around 400 times wealthier than the Queen. It must be hard to know what to do with that kind of money. Musk is buying Twitter – but what would a regular person do? That’s the question at the heart of…

MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is a nonprofit, independent and impartial humanitarian NGO, delivering vital medical treatment where it’s needed most, even inside conflict zones. Celebrating its 50th anniversary last year, MSF has grown from 300 volunteers to 65,000 people worldwide. It was established with the belief that all victims of armed conflict, epidemics and natural or man-made disasters have the right to medical assistance quickly and efficiently irrespective of religion, race or politics. MSF teams have been directly responding to the global Covid-19 pandemic over the last two years, while ensuring treatment and demands for non-Covid-19 needs such as cholera, HIV and TB are met all over the world, while increasing their vital work in Ukraine. Vickie Hawkins from MSF explains how the concert will…

As John Simm marks 25 years at the top of British TV, he reflects on his key roles, from The Lakes to Sunday night detective drama Grace. Breakthrough, Blair and Britpop The Lakes was a game changer for me. I remember driving up to the Lake District in my little Golf at night – because that’s when the roads were quiet – listening to the new Charlatans album. It was all kicking off, wasn’t it? We were filming up a mountain the day Labour got in. It was a great time to be alive. After The Lakes there was Human Traffic, then 24 Hour Party People. While all that was happening, I turned 30, had a kid and, you know, tried to grow up a bit. Serious success I did…